We live in a country that has been captivated by shows like Yellowstone, where millions of followers flood to Instagram accounts featuring influencing cowgirl wannabes, hobby ranchers, and rodeo fashionistas. Post Malone now sings in Wranglers, and Beyoncé performs in assless chaps, because this life is now for everyone. A cosplay that you think would amplify cultural respect, preservation, and rekindle God-fearing values, but is mostly a fashion show; a Hollywood exploitation, a chance to move out West, buy land with cash sight unseen that you have no real respect for, just to jack up the cost of living for locals, get bored after a year, and eventually move back to your shitty condo in LA because, “winter in the Rockies is, like, really really cold.”

Maybe it’s pregnancy, maybe it’s just that Father’s Day is around the corner. Either way, it stirs up so much of my grief — namely, my longing to know him better and to understand him, even though he’s gone.

When I approached her, I instantly noticed my favorite view in my limited experience thus far: the face of a proud first-time mother, exhausted but beaming with a radiance of love. She was somehow so familiar and unrecognizable at the same time.