Willie, Jesus, & Me

Willie & Me

I finally got to see Willie for the first time last June.  Lovely Husband bought tickets for me, watched the boys for 13 hours AND gave me spending money!

I wrote the following post a year or two ago and until this moment it has only been shared with my Facebook friends.

This is probably the sole reason that I have tried to be a good the best mother possible to my boys and any future little souls who come my way.

I try to live my life so that my little peeps never have to live with the same fears and horrors that I did.  In fact, I will shield them from such ugliness as long as I can. 

Why I feel this way about Willie

or

Willie, Jesus, and Me

Willie Nelson and I go way back. He must've been 60 and I was 3. Just a couple of babes.

I remember Willie's voice lulling to sleep in the back of my mom's jeep. I can still smell the pot mixed in with the Georgia honeysuckle. His voice would carry me off to a place where Angels Fly Too Close to the Ground & we live in The Promisedland.

It's almost amazing that I have these fond memories evoked by Willie's music.

I'm on the left, my sister on the right

There are some songs that carry me back to being 4 yrs old & huddling up in a stranger's bathtub holding on tightly to my sister. My mom was just 2 rooms away shooting up with people who did not love me.

But none of those songs are Willie's.

I don't go back to the day my mom told me she'd waited too long to abort me so here I was.

I don't go back to the day my Pop told us mama wouldn't be home for Thanksgiving because she tried to kill herself.

I don't go back to the day that she told me I was fat.

She spent a lot of my life in a haze. Whether induced by illegal or legal drugs. She talks in sentences no one understands. She thinks the voices are real and that she's the only one who hears them.

I always knew she was going crazy again when she'd pull out her albums. David Allen Coe, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and even my Beloved Willie. It was like watching someone wind a clock. She would put on a record and silently slip into crazy. Letting go. Giving in. Then she would trash the place. I hid under a blanket once while she put a guitar through the stereo.

No, instead of the bad times- when I hear Willie's voice, I am embraced again by the breezy nights in Lawrenceville with the cool smell of jasmine growing wild. I'd listen to The Highway Man and ride the music all the way up to Heaven where the lord Himself would be waiting for me. We'd sit barefoot on the top step in front of the Pearly Gates and share the earbuds of my walkman. Jesus and I would sing Seven Spanish Angels and you wouldn't believe how much Jesus sounds like Ray Charles when he really gets into it.

After that, Jesus let's me lean on him as Blue Eyes Cryin' In the Rain washes away the sins of my mother. I forgive her for not being able to love me the way that Willie and Jesus do.

Some people think I'm nuts for being this way about Willie, but he's as much a part of me as the memories in my head and the guts in my belly.

His music soothes both.

Craptastic phone pix, but there he is!