It must have started in 1987, when my grandparents took me and my sister to the new Dollywood in Pigeon Forge (Dolly Parton had just become co-owner and renamed what was formerly Silver Dollar City Tennessee). I was still afraid of roller coasters (this was before a memorable day two years later at Opryland in which I rode the corkscrew Wabash Cannonball eight times to commemorate my newfound interest and addiction to controlled fear), so we went for a coal-burning train ride on the Dollywood Express, while, no doubt, listening to “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” the engineer interjecting tidbits of Dolly trivia all the way. We had fudge covered ice cream cones and a funnel cake, listened to a bluegrass band play “Dixie,” and watched a man glassblowing a butterfly ornament into being. My grandfather bought my sister and me both birthstone necklaces--mine was emerald, a luminescent green marble secured to a gold chain. At any moment, I expected to look up and see Dolly standing there in a red and white checkered button down with western pockets and a pair of tight white jeans with stilettos (“It takes a lot of money to look this cheap,” she has said), and I have to say that in my memory, we did see her--she smiled at me, waved, and said hello--but it's possible I imagined it (or maybe she was just cardboard).

I admit that Dolly Parton has secretly been my hero for years. As a kid, I would (as a rule) ritualistically tie on an apron, hit the play button on a mix tape with her “Here You Come Again,” and clean my room. I distinctly remember crying the first holiday I heard “Hard Candy Christmas,” on the radio, and I have always preferred her version of “I Will Always Love You,” to Whitney Houston’s. I can’t tell you how many times Jim has had to come into the bathroom to ask me to keep it down while I was belting out the chorus to “You’re the Only One,” in the shower. And at this very moment, I’m listening through earphones to “The Grass Is Blue” while my my belted-khakis-and-tucked-in-shirt clad husband watches--yes, the Masters. 

Lip-synching Dolly songs nearly always involves a clenched fist and lots of head shaking (both of which are best accentuated with a high, curly hairdo and way out of the lines bright red lipstick--high heels don’t hurt, either). But none of this is required. I can sing Dolly in my mind, smack dab in the middle of a tele-video conference with the CEO of my company out here in Alaska (complete with key changes and everything), and I’m returned to a place and time (not Dollywood, but a lot like it), where I feel at home. A time when both my loving grandparents were still living, when the chore of tidying my room was secondary to the song I sang while cleaning, when I still had the hope of growing into a chest a fourth the size of hers, when holidays meant driving around Alabama with the whole Patten family looking at gaudy Christmas lights and getting stuffed animals and a keyboard with the new demo song “Old Folks At Home” to drive everyone crazy with on the car trip home (“way down upon the Swaneeeee river”), when I still imagined that as a grown-up if I argued with someone there would be music playing in the background while I talked in a country accent and they would simply be compelled to forgive me on the spot. A time when a funnel cake could sustain me for an entire day, when a marble on a chain was the most I could ever want.

My niece and namesake has it in her, too, we’ve noticed. Given the choice between a pleated plaid skirt from J. Crew and a Lee stonewashed denim one with rhinestones and a fringe, she’ll choose the latter every time. I think she realizes the classier and more appropriate of the two is the former. It’s just that, much like her aunt, she knows right off the bat which one she's going to have more fun wearing.

For the most part, the Dolly in me is still suppressed, hidden from those of you who, for instance, prefer a five star restaurant to Cracker Barrel. And it comes more easily to make fun of myself for this than to just admit it--but writing this has helped me to put my finger on it: you can take the girl out of Dollywood, but you can’t take the Dolly out of the girl.

Years ago, I remember watching as Dolly Parton accepted a song-writing award for “I Will Always Love You,” the song which Whitney Houston made so much more popular in the 90s. She hugged the award, kissed it, and said, “Whitney’ll never take this one away from me.” 

My feelings exactly, Dolly.