I hope y’all listen to this song before you read this passage. I have to tell you. It hit me. It hit me hard. Time and age changes so much, but I can tell you when I return to this house...this place that my Grandpa built, it all comes back. It takes hold of me. It’s there, and it’ll stay there.
There is a spot that we come to as we drive there and my heart stutters and calms immediately. I can’t imagine my life without this place. I can’t imagine my life without the touches my great grandparents left on it.
I think back to all my summers spent running the woods there. I think about walking through the brush to a barbed wire fence that separated me from a gorgeous field that was atop a mountain and the quiet that came with being there. I know that universal sound. I know it in my soul. I hear it when I dream.
Over time I let things get away from me. When I finally make it back, it welcomes me like I never left. When we leave, it’s like I leave a piece of me there. It’ll never leave there. My heart is always there. It’s what we have left of my Granny and Grandpa, and when I walk in it’s like a hug from them. I picture Grandpa fishing blue gill at the pond. I see Granny sitting on the river bank in her polyester dress watching her family in the river. They loved us so much. They loved being with us there. I got out of the car the other day, and I laid on the grass with Noah. I closed my eyes while the kids played, and I thought this piece of Heaven is mine. It’s mine forever.
My Pappaw keeps the camp up, and he honors what he built with his Daddy. I see the look on his face when he walks in the door and I know that my Pappaw knows that universal sound. He’s practically singing it when he’s there. I am so thankful for a Pappaw that taught me about honoring family and tradition.
I think about the vices I've let take me over time I recall when I was a baby, I didn't need nothing around But a little bitty rattler and the universal sound
I'd close my eyes It was all so clear It was all right then It was all right here
I focus on my breathing and the universal sound I let it take me over from the toenails to the crown Of the body that I'm in 'til they put me in the ground And I return to the chorus of the universal sound
I've been up on the mountain and I've seen His wondrous grace I've sat there on a bar stool and I've looked Him in the face He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow Him down He was humming to the neon of the universal sound
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