I learned most of my driving social principles in the bar where my mom worked. I was young, too young for a bar really, 15 16 17. It was a small place you couldn’t get lost in, at least I never did. I drank sodas and soaked in what I saw.

I’m 7 years old. My dad is standing behind me. His big arms are wrapped all the way around my tiny body helping me support the weight of the pistol in my hands. I can smell the ivory soap he used in the shower hours earlier. “Ready?” he says to me. I nod my head yes, but I am never ready for the boom. I feel his sturdy finger press mine into the trigger and my small arms do nothing to fight the recoil. “Getting better,” he says, “Just need more practice. Any daughter of mine is gonna know how to protect herself.”

I’ll make this about my mom too. My dad knew everything was about her, she deserved it. Even his death felt somehow in response to or in spite of hers.

The women of my childhood and of Appalachia seemed to me to unabashedly handle their shit. They may not have read as many books as you but by God they would pay their bills and go get some beers at the bar and take their kids to the river and be at work bright and early on Monday morning or Saturday night or whatever their start time happened to be at whatever job they happened to have.

When I was 13 or 14 or 15, Mom asked me to paint some of their lyrics over an old sign for her, Shine my life like a light was the line, from the song “Let It Be Me.” When I got the sign done, mom put it up on the back deck, she hung it proudly. A small reminder of the important things. A reminder to shine her life and she did. She shined it upon everyone and everything she encountered. That sign hung on her back porch until she died.

Flat. The great big middle of America is flat. From an airplane window you can see the round irrigation circles arranged neatly in the grid of agriculture. I never thought much of it until I was amongst the flatness. I didn’t think it was anything to see. But standing in it, I can’t deny the feeling of infinite possibility in a place with so much space and so few bounds. Vast fields roll off into the farthest distance, equal parts sunflowers and sky.