The Story of How You Came to Be- pt. 1

I think it’s important for you to know the history of our family up until the time that you can remember. I haven’t gone into a lot of detail with you guys about how you came to be, because a lot of the details are embarrassing and painful for me. Painful things are a part of life, and they are generally the things that shape our lives the most.

I feel like I don’t know a whole lot about either of my parents lives, especially my dad, before I was born, so I’ll give you a quick summary of my parents lives, my life, and then how your life started.

My mom was born in Charleston, South Carolina in a small house near downtown. Her dad was an engineer and her mom was a teacher, so they never had very much money, but because both parents were smart and dedicated, were able to give my mom and her siblings a great childhood. When Mom was young, her family built a house in Conway, South Carolina that your cousins Jamie and Michael hedges live in now. My grandfather, John Jones, designed the house and worked tirelessly for the rest of his life to maintain a sturdy, functional, and beautiful estate. He built a workshop for himself, by himself, when he was 80 years old. Mom had an idyllic childhood in a small southern town and went to college at Winthrop University, which is where she met my dad, who was going to Furman University at the time. (I’ll fill in a lot more details and stories from her childhood in the future. I want to record everything I can remember)

I don’t know a lot about my dad’s childhood because I think it was very traumatic, and he’s never volunteered to tell me much and I’ve never been brave enough to ask many questions. The stories he has told me are about adventures, being an Eagle Scout, captain of the football team, president of a prestigious university, a foray on the campaign trail in 1972, kayaking with his buddies and crazy court cases. He has lived a full and adventurous life.

The traumatic part was that your great-grandfather was an alcoholic and would be verbally and sometimes physically abusive with his kids. I don’t think that dad was physically abused, because he was the oldest and maybe most responsible, but I understand my aunt Julie was abused pretty heavily. Unfortunately I don’t think that was an uncommon situation growing up in America in the 1950s. Our culture was (and is) unhealthy in a lot of ways, and fathers being abusive was relatively common, if not the norm.

Regardless, my dad was an outstanding young man when he met my mom in college. I think they got married before my dad went to law school, and mom went to Chapel Hill to get her masters degree in early childhood education. I have a huge amount of respect for both of my parents. They are both brilliant, insightful, compassionate, and hard-working. The older I get, the more respect I have for my dad. Despite his traumatic childhood, he has lived a healthy and full life, and most importantly, he was a great father. He somehow managed not to pass his trauma on to me. He was never abusive, always made time for me despite his ridiculously busy schedule, and took me on cool adventures, taught me how to build a fire and paddle a canoe. My mom has been an invaluable resource for me as a parent. She is probably a part of the reason my dad was such a good father, and she is definitely the reason that I have been the father I have. All of the good parts, at least. She has always been wise counsel, a safe place for me to go, and my strongest advocate, my whole life. I haven’t met many human beings as evolved as her. I know I haven’t been the best dad, and I still have many flaws as a person, but I got all of the good stuff from them.

I was born in 1981 in the same hospital as you, and grew up in the big, beautiful house on Stonehenge Lane that you remember from childhood. I always wanted to live in a neighborhood with lots of other kids, but I had plenty of friends in neighborhoods where I could go hang out. I didn’t realize until an adult what a huge benefit the forest around my house was to me. I spent a lot of time in the woods by myself or with Jennifer, hitting things with sticks, having adventures, throwing rocks in creeks, jumping off tall things, swinging on vines, etc.

My best friend growing up was named John Stakeman, and we hung out all the time because our parents were also best friends. They were a very different family, and so I got a totally different perspective on the world from hanging out with them at their house. We had many sleepovers where John’s dad would let us watch R-rated movies and teach us about guns, and play us for doing chores. John has lots of kids in his neighborhood that we played with, many of whom I’m still close friends with. During the summers, our parents would pawn us off on each other, and I would spend lots of time either at the Stakeman’s house or they would come stay at our house. They were like a second family; John and his sister Lane were like siblings to me and Jennifer. I could fill thousands of pages with stories of the adventures that we all had together, but that’s for a different book.

I spent a lot of time alone at home, but my having a second family meant that I got to have a big friend circle and neighborhood as well. As a teenager, I wanted to be hanging out with my friends all the time, so every day after school I would ride my bike several miles to a neighborhood where I had friends and hang out at other people’s houses, play pick up football, video games, cards, toy guns, you name it. I would ride my bike all the way across town to get to church, where I went several times a week. That’s where I got my start in music, taking guitar lessons when I was eight years old because I thought it was cool when I saw one of my older friends play guitar.