I Love New Mexico

My mom and dad as newlyweds.

Every morning I wake with ideas of stories I could write about my dad. He’s a character, that Kenneth Terry. Just ask anyone who knows him. There are a million tales I could tell and there are an equal number he could tell you, most of them true.

Just yesterday when I was with him at their house in Logan, discussing the devastating fires in northern New Mexico, he told me a new one.

“There was this time we all got together to pray for rain. It was the middle of summer, and the heat wouldn’t let up, not even at night, and our crops were wilting and dying in the field, and it hadn’t rained a lick since April. So of course, Brother Arnold set a time for us to get together to pray for rain. We all showed up down at the Baptist Church just like he said we should, and after we sat down, he took one look and said, ‘Here we are, about to pray for rain, and not a one of you brought an umbrella.’ He was sure disgusted with us!”

And then Dad laughed, his laugh not so loud and forceful now that he’s almost ninety, but it didn’t matter, because he still finds that story funny. And telling.

“You gotta have faith, you know,” he said and smiled, and I nodded and smiled as well because that’s what I do when I’m listening to Dad.

I want to have endless faith and then I look at Dad whose feet and back and hands hurt all the time, every day.  He has a hard time eating because of his false teeth, and hearing because his hearing aids are such a complexity, sometimes needing to be cleaned or turned up, but never providing the amplification they promised when purchased. I want to have faith and yet I get angry at God for allowing such a good and faithful servant to suffer so many physical ailments after a life of only loving and trusting in all the promises his Bible gives him every day.

I feel angry about the fires. Why won’t the wind stop blowing? Why won’t it rain?

Dad would scoff at my anger. He’s always quick to remind anyone who will listen that his life is full and happy. That he’s been more blessed than anyone in the world ever deserved. And he reminds me that we’re not in charge, that more than half of our life will be spent wondering why life is sometimes hard to endure.

He says that’s what faith is all about.

When I showed up a few days ago, he and Mom were sitting outside on the porch with the record player turned up, listening to Bob Wills sing “San Antonio Rose.” They love to share memories of hearing Wills play at the Tucumcari Armory during World War II. They talk a little bit about that, about Dad driving his older brothers to the dance (he was eleven), and about Mom spending the night with my cousin Gwen and someone else, sneaking out and “going to town for the dance when we were barely out of grade school.”

“Remember those Sunday nights when we’d all decide to get together for a dance?” Mom says, and Dad nods. They’d move all the furniture from someone’s living room, frequently my Aunt Thelma’s, out to the front yard so they had space inside for dancing. “Nobody had anything fancy,” Mom says, “just a bunch of sticks that were easy to cart outside.” It was the late 1940’s in eastern New Mexico.

Someone had a radio, or if they were really “swanky,” a record player. They’d turn the volume up, listening to Hank Williams singing “The Lovesick Blues” for just a second before jumping up to dance. They danced miles and miles on those hardwood floors, sometimes to their own set of steps they called the Porter Shuffle.  My daddy is still the smoothest dancer I’ve ever had the privilege to step out onto a floor with. He and Mom are seamless in one another’s arms, two-stepping through a crowd without a hitch.

Now they mostly listen. When I arrived on Friday morning, they were laughing and singing along. I asked Dad if he’s been up out of his chair to dance, and he leaned forward and patted his chest. “I dance now in my heart,” he said, and this morning, writing that makes my cry.

I don’t know if I cry because I’m sad that he’s too weak to dance or because I’m so happy to have had parents who never hesitated to dance.

All my life we could count on Dad reaching for Mom’s hand when the right song came on the stereo. I knew as early as the second grade that the love in our house was something special, that not everyone’s parents jumped up and danced together whenever they got the chance.

“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” is one of the first songs I learned as a child. They loved to waltz and that was music they had handy.

Today I think about praying for rain, which is what we’re all doing in northern New Mexico this week. I think about all those folks loading up their belongings to evacuate Las Vegas and Mora and all the tiny mountain towns in between. This is a hard week in New Mexico and there’s nothing to say that will make it easier.

All I know to do is to continue to tell stories about love and faith and grace. About dancing.

I listen to the music my parents love. I pray for rain. I pray for safety for the families who are losing their homes. I donate money to the fund that’s feeding the firefighters and the displaced residents.

I write about all those camping trips we took to the mountains above Mora. About the Terry family reunions at the Methodist Camp in El Porvinir where we played softball and hiked to Hermit’s Peak when my kids were little. I heard yesterday that the Methodist Camp burned to the ground in the last couple of days.

There’s smoke in the air. My throat aches from the smoke and from trying not to cry. My daughter-in-law’s eighty-six-year-old grandpa has been evacuated from his ranch in Mora. Why now? Why at this stage in their lives is my daughter’s grandpa only able to dance in his heart and her wife’s grandpa is sleeping in a guest room in Albuquerque?

I feel like the longer I live, the less I have the answers.

My YouTube playlist is in the background while I write, and now Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys are playing “Stay a Little Longer.”

That’s what I want Mom and Dad to do. Stay a little longer. Tell us more stories. Teach us how to be more faithful every day. Teach us about grace, about letting go when there’s nothing we can do, and about being vigilant when there is. Teach us about love.

(FYI – The featured photo is Mom and Dad as teenagers, right before they were married. On May 12, 2022, they’ll celebrate their 72nd anniversary.)