I’m laying in a hotel bathtub in North Carolina, and will head back to the beautiful, cool northland tomorrow.

What a trip this has been! Full of surprises and affirmation. In many ways I think it has been a life changing trip.

I’ve reconnected with my history through spending time with my sweet mother and father, through the house and its hopeful future. I’m bringing pieces of it home.

Raymond has connected with his cousins, met his grandparents and my brother and sister-in-law who welcomed us with such warm hospitality and a surprise birthday party.

It is bittersweet.

My mom told me she doesn’t know how much time she has left. None of us do. All we can do is live this moment the best we can.

Every moment.

I’m bringing furniture back to Minnesota. Much of it is older than I am, and was part of my childhood. There is a table made by my maternal grandfather, and there is his dresser. I have the bowl that my father walked past every time he walked through their dining room when he was a boy. His parents received it as a wedding gift in 1925.

U Haul’s biggest trailer couldn’t contain all the pieces I wanted to bring.

And then there are the photographs my parents took of my early life… photos their parents took of them. My history encrypted in slides and prints.

So many pictures!

And the African things. And my grampa’s printing press.

It’s been a whirlwind trip, and it is half over.

We will have to empty the current stuff out of the house to make room for the new stuff, which is the old stuff.

It will make me think of my parents and my grandparents, and I will say to my kids, “your great grandfather made this table.”

Like the day Luuka asked, and I told him, “Your great great grandfather painted that picture.”

I’m in yet another hotel bathtub. This time, in West Virginia.

We stopped at my childhood home this morning. The house is being renovated, and I was able to go through the whole thing.

Several months ago, I wrote about the Brady Bunch home renovation, and said that I could not connect with the Romeo home. I was wrong about that.

I thought I would just drive by and shoot a picture from the road. I thought I might go down Inwood and hike the old gravel pit fields behind the house. I wanted to see the back of the barn that I wrote about in Flash Meridian.

At first glance, the house looked derelict. It looked like it was in ruins. The whole thing looked like it was falling apart.

I felt very sad. We drove on by, and made a right turn on Inwood, but trees and brush had grown up so high I couldn’t see a thing. In the old days, you could see the whole farm from Skyline Ranch.

I felt I had lost the house again, first physically, and now even the fantasy of it was gone.

I went back to the front of the house and pulled in the driveway. The construction sign looked like a for sale sign.

Someone was in the yard, and Helena encouraged me to talk to him.

“You’re personable,” she said.

And so I did.

“I lived here 50 years ago,” I explained. He introduced me to the new owner.

I knew so much about the house. Not only the physical details, but names and dates. Neighbors. The original owners.

The outbuildings were sagging. The orchard was gone. The merry-go-round and barbecue were no longer there. The kitchen and dad’s office were gutted. The only finish I recognized was grampa’s paint in the breezeway.

We walked through the house and I talked nonstop. I remembered everything. The window seat and bumpy plaster on Jonathan’s wall. The secret hiding place under the bottom shelf in Mark’s closet.

I looked in my own closet to see if any of my notes remained on the wall.

The rooms felt much smaller. Everything was overgrown.

The silo roof was gone, but I knew that from the satellite images.

After we left, I spent the rest of the day driving and muttering “wow”. My emotions ran high.

I could not believe that it had actually happened. I stood in those spaces. I looked out those windows. I even looked in the closet where Ditto nursed her kittens. I stood where I stood that Peach Festival weekend, where, after the parade, Sandy came down from his perch in the garage to greet me. He was snapped up by Pax who crushed him in her jaws, and he and I both screamed in horror until he was dead.

I stood in the room where I refused to put the trombone to my lips during that final lesson. It was the first time I stood up for myself.

I drove and cried and laughed and said “wow” over and over, searching for other words I could use.

The house is loved again and still, and is being renovated with new materials as well as respect for its history.

I’ve regained the reality and the fantasy as well as a new friend.

Now my son and I share an experience on that property. For me, a flood of memories and for him, the black rat snake in the deep end of the pool.

I will have much more to say about this, because if I could have gone anywhere in the world, it would have been exactly there. If I had known how to make it unfold perfectly, it would have been exactly that.

I’m in a hotel bathtub again, this time in central Michigan.

Tomorrow I will see my childhood home, midway through a pilgrimage of sorts.

Three years ago I was trying to reinvent my life. I was shuffling the cards, and hoping for the best.

The best happened, but in a way I could not have foreseen.

Each day, I believe we do the best we know to do. The plan I had made sounded good on paper. The reality was unfulfilling at best. It’s sometimes hard to admit when we’re wrong. But admitting I was wrong was the turning point.

I left my home without selling it. I bought a house in a city that would never be home. I was hoping things would just fall into place.

What’s that saying about hitting rock bottom?

Rock bottom is a beautiful start.

Hitting rock bottom is a beautiful opportunity to reinvent yourself.

That’s what I did.

The first gift was in knowing where I belong.

The second gift was in knowing that I could have what I dreamed of.

Being single. Being male. Being in my late 50’s. These are not reasons to not have more children.

Naysayers. Challenges. Money. These are not reasons to give up.

Listen to the people who believe in you. Don’t listen to the ones who are tired. Narrow minded. Afraid.

If you don’t have a cheering section, cheer for yourself. You are enough. You are enough, exactly as you are.

It won’t always be comfortable. It won’t always be easy. But following your dream will be worth it.

Even when I was a child myself, I dreamed of being a dad.

Today as I traveled, I spoke with four of my children.

One is with me. One is at my house. One had a dead phone so I left a message. One wished she could be here with me.

I wish they were all here with me.

I went into a building today that brought back a lot of bad memories.

My friend pointed out that I now have the opportunity to remake the memories into good ones.

I did the very same thing to my house over the past 18 years. I wanted to make it unrecognizable from the way it was in an earlier period of my life.

I’ve changed almost every detail of my house, but that is not what makes me love it. It’s the people… my children… that make my house my home.

There are good and bad memories everywhere. Some people say we should focus only on the positive.

I think there are lessons to learn from the uncomfortable, painful and disappointing times. I don’t want to dwell on them and I sure don’t want to repeat them. I can, however, celebrate them. I can celebrate that they are over. I can celebrate the gift of empathy they brought.

Abandonment brought me confidence that I never knew I possessed.

Rejection showed me I can be self sufficient.

Loss showed me I can reclaim what was always the most important to me.

Being told lies showed me the importance of being truthful.

Squandering instilled in me the importance of financial responsibility.

These things are valuable. They were worth learning, and they are worth passing on.

I have not yet learned all the lessons I need. That is why the pain still comes.

I wish I could learn the lessons for my kids so that they never have to suffer, but I can’t, and besides, I don’t want to deprive them of the gifts to come.

2/11/19:

They make whole movies and documentaries about people who meet magical beings. Beings that defy the routines of normal life.

I knew a magical being in real life. I called her a ray of light, and her name was June.

One of the greatest compliments I’ve gotten in life, was when June referred to me as her best friend.

Over the last nine months of her life, I got to spend a lot of time with her, and we said “I love you” to each other almost every day.

June didn’t think she was special. She often said “I’m nothing.”

She couldn’t see what I saw when I looked at her. The love she had, the sacrifices she made, and the joy of realizing, at age 92, that you can be yourself. Every day. You can be who you are.

June told me that she knew at age 3, that she was a little girl. She was not the little boy that other people saw. Not the boy that she was told she was.

It was a different world then in many ways. She didn’t have the options that trans youth have today.

I’m not saying it is easy. But June found, at age 92, that most people in her community accepted her, even if they didn’t understand, and loved her for who she was, not for who they had assumed she was, or the clothes she wore.

I worked the night shift in the long term care facility where June lived, but we had known each other for three decades prior.

A year earlier, I cared for June’s wife. Within six months, June lost her son, her son-in-law, and her wife.

In a different way, she lost her daughter and grandson, because they did not want to see her as June.

Over the last nine months of June’s life, we had coffee together at 2 am, and we talked. At the end I did most of the talking, sitting by her bed.

We talked about big and small issues. One night, June looked at me for a while, and then said, “Nothing I can say will ever shock you, will it?”

Another great compliment.

June taught me that it is never too late to follow your dreams. As long as you have life, you can live it.

A month after June moved into the Care Center, I started the process to adopt children. I thought I was too old. Single. I thought it was impossible.

June shared my dream. She encouraged me. Like me, she was frustrated when things took too long.

And she was able to meet my son before she died.

Now I will raise him without Grandma June. But not really. June lives in me, through her words and lessons she taught me.

What I boil it down to is this: it’s never too late. It doesn’t matter what other people think or say. You are a unique person, and only you can determine the course of your life. There will be those who criticize you, but there will also be those who love and support you.

2/2/20:

Dear June: I think of you almost every day. Your Star was on the top of our Christmas tree this year, and I kept pointing it out to the kids. “That is Grandma June’s star,” I said, and they knew what I really meant… I miss you.

I think of all the things you told me. About flying in airplanes during the war, about fishing, lipstick, the animals around your house, and how you cried every time you mentioned your wife.

I think of how I planned our trips to Duluth so you would have safe bathrooms, and how we laughed and reminded each other how much we loved each other.

I think of the last time we talked… when I read you the messages from Facebook, and you finally got to see baby Eleanor.

I miss our 2 am coffee time. Everything has changed for both of us since then.

6/26/20:

Hi June. I miss you so much.

The other day, we bought an old travel trailer. She’s beautiful… a few flaws, but nothing I can’t fix.

We named her June. It was Raymond’s idea.

The camper gives me even more opportunity to tell people about you, and what you meant to me. I think about you every day. I love you.

For as long as I can remember, I have drawn pictures. I drew them, and I gave them away. I didn’t value them, I enjoyed the process, and the response.

By the time I applied for art school, I had no work to put into a portfolio. I couldn’t apply without examples of what I had done.

It was always a thrill when I was able to borrow my dad’s camera. He loved photography, and through seeing him, I learned to love it, too.

I submitted a collection of my photos, and was accepted into art school.

Photography was easy. I just looked through the lens, focused, adjusted the light, and clicked.

45 years later, I still take pictures, and I still love it. It’s even easier now.

I just shoot what appeals to me.

I developed a style of taking pictures unintentionally, just by doing it so much, and by learning what appealed to me, and how I best liked to tell a story through photography.

I’ve defined some of what I like, but much of it is just instinct, like composition.

I like natural light, and when I can’t have that, I like indirect light. Some shots just want to be black and white.

I take pictures of strangers… kissing, reading, smoking. I take pictures of boats and cars. I take a lot of pictures of my cats and my kids.

I have pictures of almost every one of my childhood birthdays, because my dad did the same thing. That’s where I learned it.

That’s where I learned to be a dad.

Every one of us is different. We all have our own strengths and challenges in life.

We express ourselves differently.

Each one of us communicates our unique self in our own way.

Those of us who paint, do it with our own style. It doesn’t make one of us right and another wrong. You don’t have to criticize someone who does it differently than you do. You don’t have to convince or change someone who believes differently. You don’t have to correct someone who doesn’t spell as well as you do. You don’t have to stress over another person’s grammar.

Words are for communicating. True, there are rules. That’s how language remains language. But I can understand the meaning even if someone uses the incorrect to, too or two… there, they’re or their. We can learn a lot from anyone if we pay attention to the message they are trying to convey.

It is unkind and unnecessary to demand correctness, even if it makes you feel superior.

I’ve often heard artists say they don’t use black paint. They say black doesn’t occur in nature. I like to use black. It’s graphic. It may not occur in nature, but it occurs in my paintings. My paintings aren’t nature, even if they make you think of trees, animals and landscapes. I can describe something visual with words. I can also describe it with paint or ink. Words and images are language that describe other things, and let us share information about what we’ve seen or felt.

I painted in my studio today. I mixed some dark brown color to start with, and I made the shapes of trees against a large field of blue. Then I added yellow to it, and it became a shade of green that still had the brown in it. I painted for a while (the painting was pretty big), and when that green started getting low, I added more yellow to it. Then I had a brighter green, but it was still made of the green I had used before, which was still made of the brown I started with. When the green got too bright, I knocked it back with some red, and just kept going. I used the same brush, and just kept adding different colors to the mix I had been using all along. This way, the colors shared something. They were partly made of the same paint, which I added in dots of color, my version of pointillism.

That paint cup made me think of a cooking show I saw about an authentic molé sauce that the chef just kept adding to over years. It had elements that had been simmering in the mixture for a long, long time. When I found myself painting with a dusky purple, I knew it still contained some of the original brown and yellow… and I thought of black, and how people like to make rules that they want everyone else to follow.

My mind wanders all over the place when I paint.

If I paint a scene of trees, people sometimes say, “where are the fish?” If I paint trees with fish in them, then people say “do you have one without the fish?” And so I realized that if you want the painting to be different, you really want a different painting. If I haven’t done the painting that you want, then you should look somewhere else, or paint it yourself. I’m not going to paint from your perspective.

The cool thing about being human is that we share so much. We see and feel a lot of the same things. When I tell you about my experiences, you might say “Yes! That exact thing happened to me!” or you might say “You’re describing what I have always felt, but I didn’t know how to put it into words.”

When I make a painting that you can relate to, or you like so much that you want to put it on your wall and see it every day, it’s because we’re made of the same stuff. Like the paint, or the molé, there are bits of me coursing through your veins, and I have molecules of you sparking in my brain, or controlling my fingers.

Just go back far enough, and you will see that we are related. We are all connected, even if one of us is bright green and another of us is dusky purple.

I don’t look for evil in everything, but when it is there, we need to see it and take a stand against it. Painting a rosy picture when so many are suffering is a testament to your privilege. Protesters protest to bring about a positive change, not to magnify the negative.

Lucky you, if you’re comfortable and content, like I am.

I can’t take credit for the color of my skin. I did nothing to deserve the unconditional love I was shown by my parents. I don’t deserve more respect than you. Or you. Or you.

I’m sick of platitudes that unintentionally blame the victims because change is a threat to your way of life.

There is no narrow, exclusive path of love. Differences don’t make other people wrong. Privilege is not perfection. It’s not even admirable.