When my sister and I were younger, all we listened to was country music. We spent hours with our ears pressed to the boom box speaker — memorizing each guitar chord, each twang.

We used to have a radio in each room of our home, and every day after the school bus dropped us off at the end of our driveway, we sprinted inside, turned every radio in the house on, and patiently waited and wished and hoped that at least one of our favorite songs would play.

Saturday nights we tuned in to the top-30 country countdown. Weekday mornings on our way to school we begged our bus driver, Mark, to blare the morning show as loud as he could tolerate. During the summer, we would open a window and press the radio speakers as close as possible to the screen, and swim in our backyard pool to the sound track of an old Dolly Parton song.

We knew nothing about beer or broken hearts, but we did know a lot about driving down a country backroad, dust billowing through the holes in the floor boards.

We knew how it felt to live in the middle of nowhere and breathe in the wide-open spaces and we knew how to listen to mystery of the magic that is held in the palm of the prairie.

When I moved away from home, I can remember resenting the way I grew up. My sister and I were completely cut off from the world most days. My parents sheltered us and kept us from most of the ugly things that happened around us — but I couldn’t see it that way. Instead of allowing my parents to guide me, I took it upon myself to hike out in the wilderness all alone — and I got lost.

When I was home over Thanksgiving Break, my 13-year-old brother begged my sister and me to sing karaoke with him. To my surprise, the first thing he wanted to sing was “Jolene” by Dolly Parton.

As my siblings and I belted out the lyrics — off key and overly loud — it took my breath away. In that moment I realized — no matter how far I am, or lost, angry, sad I am — that music, and the love that is held between each note, will always, always call me home.