the industry all their life that could pick up a guitar for the first time and play something like that after only a few weeks,” he told me in awe.
“That’s probably because their guitars don’t take them away. Mine can take me anywhere I want to go if I just close my eyes.”
He continued to stare at me while I started to play the song again for him. I kept right on playing when he spoke next. I was already lost in my own world of music, but I could still hear him. I could always hear my daddy when he spoke.
“Don’t you ever forget that, hummingbird. You can go anywhere you want to go, be anything you want to be. Play because you love it and for no other reason. The day you stop loving it is the day it becomes a job. Making music should never be a job.”
I stopped loving it the day he walked out on my mother and me. I could understand why he would want to leave her. That part had never been a mystery to me. Even as a teenager, I knew he felt trapped. I could see the unhappiness etched on his face. He was tired of the arguments, tired of the guilt, and tired of not being happy.
“You look sad, Daddy.”
“Don’t worry about me, hummingbird. I’ll be okay. I have you and that’s all I’ll ever need to be happy.”
I didn’t blame him, really. I was the stupid, naïve one who thought that I could be enough for him.
My mother never wanted children and she made that perfectly clear to me on a daily basis.
“You are more trouble than you’re worth. I always knew having a child would ruin everything.”
She never wanted to ruin her body or have another human being share my father’s time and attention. I lost track of how many times she and my father fought over me. I was an accident, something that never should have been. But he begged and pleaded with her not to terminate the pregnancy. He promised her he'd do anything she asked if she only did this one important thing for him. The first time I heard that argument I was six years old.
“I knew promising to go through with having that child was a bad idea. All of your stupid promises you made me when I was pregnant about how you’d do anything for me if I kept it were all lies. All you care about is HER!”
At least back then he wanted me. He really wanted me.
The majority of my early life, my mother ignored me unless she felt like she wasn’t getting enough attention. But after I learned how to play the guitar, and my father taught me how to harmonize and sing as well, she could no longer pretend like I didn’t exist. Especially when strangers stopped her in the grocery store to tell her how beautiful my voice was the previous night during a school concert. Teachers, faculty members, and the women she spent every afternoon at the club with pulled her aside to tell her how amazing my natural talent was and how they’d never seen anyone so young play a guitar with such passion. My mother knew at that moment she’d finally found a way for me to pay her back for the misery she endured as my mother. I could never forget the fight they had the evening he died. It was long and loud and things were said that could never be unheard.
“I HATE her! Do you hear me, Jack? I can’t even stand to be in the same room with that ungrateful brat! And all you do is coddle her. She can fiddle around on an instrument and carry a tune. Why the hell shouldn’t she finally pay us back for all these years of putting up with her?”
My mother wanted to capitalize on my talents. My father just wanted me to be a kid for as long as possible. He knew I had more talent than anyone he’d ever seen, but he also knew what the pressure to be something more could do to that talent. It would turn it into something you worked your fingers to the bone for, something you sweat blood and tears for, instead of something you loved. In his career, as the owner of Hummingbird Records, he saw that happen to more than one person over the years. He didn’t want that for me, his little