Advice from a country girl's mother

I love country music. No, that isn’t exactly true. I love country love songs. I can do without the crying-in-my-beer, redneck-with-a-truck-and-a-dog kind of country and western songs. But I have to tell you, no one can write a love song like a country music artist.

Of course, my favorite songs won’t be playing when you are grown, baby girl. Or maybe they will – country songs have a way of hanging around forever. Every once in a while I still hear some song I remember my daddy singing as we drove along the road on a hot summer day with the windows down on his old black Chevy truck. Wow, that sounds like a good line for a country western song.

Here’s what I find so special about the ones I like these days. The guy singing the song is bowled over, down to the bone in love with a woman. He can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t take his eyes off her. He loves her when she’s crabby, when she’s bossy, when she’s down. He looks at her and sees something other than hair and face and boobs. What he sees is the future mother of his children, the keeper of his soul, the reason he gets a tightness in his chest for no particular reason when he catches a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye.

To me, there is something freeing about that. That woman never has to worry about how she looks in her flannel pajamas when the lingerie commercial comes on. She can be who she wants to be, not who she thinks every man wants her to be. And still have this immense confidence that she is loved. That she will always be loved. That for one incredible man, she is sexy, beautiful, amazing and worth an eternity of minutes, hours and years.

I don’t know many women who have been loved like that. I can probably count them on one hand. My grandmother, but not my mom. My good friend, but not me. The woman who sits on my left at work, but not the ten others who sit to my right.

All I do know is that I want that for you.

He’s out there somewhere, you know. Don’t make the mistake of thinking any old guy with a truck and a dog will do.

Hold out for the guy who looks at you like his heart is about to burst. The guy who takes to listening to country music for no apparent reason. I’m betting he’s finding his own personal story – the one that has you in it.

And watch out for the guy who likes the songs about saying goodbye, about all the women he’s loved, all the exes he has in Texas. His heart and his head aren’t in the right place. He’s not the kind of guy you can turn into the other guy. There isn’t anything you can do to change his way of looking at life. Just realize that he isn’t looking for the same thing you are just because he’s looking in your general direction.

I can already tell you that the guy who breaks your heart will break my heart, too. They say that Hell hath no fury than that of the mother of a woman scorned, or something like that. In the words of my daddy, ‘that dog won’t hunt.’

You might just warn guys in advance. Or maybe I will. I know, I’ll sing’m a country love song.

Me and every redneck mother in the history of country music have your back, girl.