Tennessee Fire

30 March, 2021

Hey Mom,

I guess it’s been a while. Things haven’t been quite the same since you left. Dad’s been drinking again and you know how he gets, especially when he’s upset. Granted, that’s not to say I haven’t dabbled in the bottle of scotch he’s been hiding in his underwear drawer. Not the best hiding spot he could come up with, but creative enough to keep it hidden from you when you were still here. It made it easy to sneak sips from it when you were still around. And it made it easy around him too, especially when he would drink enough to not remember how much he drank let alone what bottle he drank from. It reminds me of when I was still in high school.

Do you remember Sarah Palmer? My best friend from school? She remembers you enough. Still considers you as a second mother. It helps we were the only ones who would take her in when she was having trouble at home. I still remember the nasty right hook you gave her mom when she confronted you about ‘kidnapping’ Sarah. Well, Sarah was almost a mother herself after having one too many at a bar we went too, but it didn’t work out, and she joined the Marines. We had a wild night before she shipped out, and that girl is no light weight. She probably has me to blame for that. We weren’t really the sober girls in school. Which brings me to a time in senior year; something I never really told you about and something I willingly let dad take the fall for. I guess what I am trying to say is I have a confession to make. A little late considering I can’t exactly say it in person, but maybe this letter will have to do.

Back in senior year, when I invited Sarah and her girlfriend Andrea over for a sleepover, I got the wild idea to sneak the bottle of Tennessee Fire you had stashed away in the back of the liquor cabinet. We drank the whole bottle and woke up in the worst shape we had ever been in. The worst shape that I had ever been in, and I had been stealing sips out of those bottles for a couple of years already… another story for another letter, and a different bottle of bourbon. (I find it hard to think about you without being a little tipsy). Anyway… you were away on vacation and dad didn’t seem to care that the bottle went missing. That much in his own system, and he might not have noticed it regardless.

“Never let me let you talk us into that again,” Sarah had said. Andrea was pretty much in the same boat, but she decided to punch me for it instead. That black eye I told you I got in a school fight? It wasn’t a total lie, but it was at the same time.

Either way, I remember dad got the worst of it when you got home. I tried to hide the bottle the best I could at the bottom of the recycling bin, but I didn’t expect you to go through it when you discovered it was missing. One thing about us that will always remain our biggest bonding point; we both love cinnamon whiskey.

It wasn’t the first time I stole from that cabinet either. I can’t even begin to count how many times I took from that shelf and snuck bottles of the same into varsity football games and got drunk behind the stands. We never got caught by security and you blamed dad for every bottle that went missing. I was starting to wonder when you were going to put a camera on the cabinet to see who it was that was actually taking it. That, and I though you would have known it was me when you took me out for my twenty first birthday and I took shots of cinnamon whiskey like it was nothing.

I really miss going out with you and dad for birthdays. He didn’t take me out this year. When I asked him about going out, he simply walked over to the cabinet and pulled out the bottle we had, and poured three drinks. Two of which he took himself and drank watching those old western movies he always hated but knows you loved. That’s all he does anymore. Me, I have trouble drinking cinnamon whiskey anymore. Too many memories. Even if some of them are memories of me sneaking them from you.

I hope you’re doing well, wherever you ended up. Maybe I’ll bring some Tennessee Fire with me the next time I come to sit and talk to you. We’ll see how long the flowers last this time.

I love you!

~Samantha