Strong is a word I used to hate. What does strong mean? What is strength? I feel like Pontius Pilate as I ask these kinds of questions. When I graduated from Union University a semester early, summa cum laude, I was called strong because I had achieved something. When I crawled out into the barren wasteland called the economy, I was called strong because even though I contemplated suicide, I kept trying to live.
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There is nothing beautiful about a neighborhood razed and left for kudzu and vines to swallow trees whole, while grass begins forming veins in the cracks of the abandoned streets. There is nothing beautiful about a lot tended only enough to keep back tall grasses. So when I say I love the patch of abandoned land called Westwood Gardens, I get that it’s kind of weird.
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This past Saturday afternoon I dropped by Lisa Garner’s Love Day Pop-Up Shop at the Neely House in search for a little something for my wife and two daughters. And while I walked out with a small stack of mini valentines for my loves (thanks, Courtney Searcy!), I left being reminded of why Jackson has my heart. As the sun began to slowly warm my skin from the cutting breeze, I realized it had been nine years since I last stood on the porch of the former Murphy Hotel.
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I got my first tattoo when I was twenty-three years old. I worked for it, too. I was married at the time, and it took me two years to convince my wife that I should have one. I guess the compromise was that it would be a cross, which was hard for her to argue against. I picked the cross off of a poster-sized print hanging in the tattoo shop. The design was “flash,” which is a stereotypical design of a tattoo, but I didn’t know that at the time. I knew I wanted a tattoo, so I picked one out.
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After my divorce I almost left Jackson to live on the Appalachian Trail, expecting to leave for six months and return somehow different, new, and with a long beard. I also contemplated living in my Subaru, hopping from town to town like a wandering nomad. I even considered becoming a farmer, finding friends among the crops and pigs.
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