Did My Parents Do It in Nashville?
Just reading that title makes me want to hurl. But, my parents first lived in Nashville after they got married. I *think* I was conceived in the Country Music Capital of the World. My Mom can tell us whether or not that information is correct.
I hope she doesn’t. I’d really prefer to be kept in the dark on that one.
I tagged along with my husband on a work trip to Nashville this week, primarily because I wanted to visit The Hermitage. I didn’t get out there. We decided not to rent a car and, this being America, it isn’t easy to get twenty minutes outside of the city without a car. So, I was stuck downtown on a dreary, wet day.
Armed with scant information about my Mom’s working days in Nashville as a Group Chief Operator for the telephone company, I set out on foot in the rain. Right next to my hotel was an alley, Printer’s Alley, and I ducked into it to avoid the gale that was hurtling into my face and blowing my coat open. I walked along the wet bricks, paying attention to every step I took.
I know my Mom walked this way to work every day when she lived in Nashville.
Did my feet touch down where hers did, when I was nothing but a shaft of light in her eye? I was overcome by the urge to walk back and forth across the length of street, trying to cover every bit of it in an effort to step on something she may’ve touched before I existed. I had to stop and lean against the door of a strip club. Ironic that was the place where I wiped away a tear or two.
Leave it to me to walk down a public street and cry without shame or reservation. I wondered what my Mom thought about as she walked that way to work every day in the late 1960′s. Did I get a glimpse of anything she saw, teetering to her job in her high heels and smart dresses, her hair styled just so? I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my Mother, a girl in her twenties.
I think she brushed past me. And, she smiled.
