From time to time, I will come across a piece of art I made many years ago somewhere out in the world - at someone’s house, a school, or someplace surprising. I don’t make much art anymore, so it’s always a nice experience. I’ve always said that it’s like seeing an old friend. Each piece comes from a particular time, a particular place, and a particular me. ​

A couple of weeks back as I was on the two-week countdown to my 20th college reunion, I got a text from my sister that included a painting I had made for my senior honors exhibition at Wake Forest University. I hadn’t seen the piece in 19 years. She had come across it hanging in a local soup kitchen down the street from where I grew up - which is the same house where I live today with my Mom and Wife and Kids.

My sister and niece are having their joint 50th and 16th birthday party in the community room at the parish with donations to benefit the soup kitchen in lieu of gifts. The woman who worked there knew the painting had been done by “a kid from the neighborhood” but didn’t know anything more. She was thrilled to make the personal connection via my sister to me and back to the painting, and I was thrilled it still meant something to someone.

Reunion.

Now, a soup kitchen may seem an odd place to find a piece of art, but the painting was of a homeless man, face obscured, laid out on a park bench in the park across the street from my house - the space that separates my house from that soup kitchen. It was from a series of faceless portraits of people who lived on the streets and often slept in the park. Some of them I knew. Many of them my parents knew. Most of them came and went before their faces, much less their names, were familiar. This man was in the latter category.

In my senior show, I was wrestling with the reality of these faceless, nameless people, and a sense of loss of my own identity and disconnection from my upbringing - especially after four years away, cloistered on a pristine university campus, the opposite of the grittiness that had so defined my neighborhood growing up. In some pieces, I wanted to draw attention to the body, the physical humanity laid out, so often with a face hidden from light or for comfort or perhaps a childlike sense of privacy. Regardless, most of those bodies were faceless. They lacked identity.

I alternated the body portraits in the show with portraits of only faces, specific, with telling eyes and smirks and wrinkles and stories. For these, I didn’t show a body. I only showed the humanity that lives in the eyes and countenance of each of us. These were people. They had identities.

Back to the present: Within a few days of getting that text from my sister, a few days closer to my college reunion, the doorbell rang at my house. As I approached, I scanned the woman in the window trying to see if I recognized her. We still get a lot of doorbell rings for a lot of strange and sundry reasons. As I approached to grab the key, I still wasn’t sure. But then, I locked onto her eyes - eyes I had studied more deeply than she will ever know - eyes that gave meaning to her portrait in my senior show. Eyes that still hung on the wall in my house.

It was Luann. Over 20 years sober with a healthy body that suggested nothing of the toothless, colorless, emaciated addict I had known when I created her portrait. She came in and talked with my Mom and me for a good while, and I introduced my girls as they sat and listened intently.

Life is still tough for Luann. She works hard to help others who have found themselves where she has been. The streets. The drugs. She talked about the day she had given up and found herself on the Shelby Street Bridge ready to jump before a police officer talked her down. My Father had stood on that same bridge with those same inclinations. She talked about my Dad and when she found out about his suicide. She visited and wrote us a note that day. I can’t imagine how such a thing impacts someone who has lived what Luann has lived. To bring it all even closer, she shared that Dad had committed suicide on her birthday, which was the day before his own birthday. She thinks often about him and Mom and their impact on why and how she is still here.

Reunion.

Luann said a lot. She talks rapidly. Passionately. Even feverishly, losing herself and forgetting that my young children were in the room listening curiously and with concern.

So, when she left, we had to debrief. I called everyone back into the living room. We needed to talk about what it means to be addicted to drugs, what it had meant for Luann. We needed to talk about how amazing Luann is and what she has overcome - giving some context to her feverish monologue. We had to explain what Luann meant when she said “Satan lives in East Nashville” and why that is true for her, but that they don’t need to be afraid.

Once I was convinced we had at least given the girls space to ask their questions, I took them into the kitchen and pointed up on the wall to a dry point portrait - scratched into metal with a sharp tool, inked, and printed on paper - of Luann 20+ years and probably 50 pounds ago. Her emaciated face, crevassed and deeply wounded in a way that suggested eternity but no specific age. But, her eyes - once you found them sunk deep in her hollowed out sockets - were still there shimmering. These were the same eyes I met in a new visage, in a new body, in a new life at the front door 23 years later.

Reunion.

Last weekend, when I finally got to campus for my college reunion, I went by the art studios and the first face that I recognized was my former painting instructor. We’ve been in touch here and there over the years, at least enough to feel connected. But, after a pause and a couple of slow moments of recognition of my aging countenance followed by a big hug, I couldn’t wait to tell her of this sequence of events that had curiously led up to my visit. How it was that painting that I hadn’t seen in so long, that portrait that I see every day of that person I hadn’t seen in so long, that art I had wrestled with 20 years before, that work that had helped me explore my story, create my first art show, helped me find my voice through art, start my creative journey - that those experiences that happened in a few undergraduate art studios 20 years ago still mattered deeply to me, and to at least some people I don’t even know about.

Reunion.

I started my morning the other day quite blissfully - which is honestly rarely how I would characterize the start of my days. This particular morning, I was taking my kids to camp and daycare, which my wife does most mornings (I do pickups), and so I had just a few extra minutes in my morning schedule to be with my girls - and they had both woken up a bit early.

If that weren’t enough, Wimbledon was on, and that’s what my girls actually wanted to watch! (parenting victory) So, there I was on a work morning, lying on my couch, my arm around one girl on my shoulder and rubbing the head of the other who was lying on my legs. Some mornings, I don’t even get to see them, so this was a pretty magical way to start the day.

And then, the questions:

Which player is that one?

Who’s the other one?

Which one lives closer to us?

Is Serbia in New York?

What is Belgium?

Who’s the guy in the chair? (umpire)

Why is he wearing that coat? (well, it’s just the custom, I guess.)

What’s a custom? (…something people just do because they do it…)

Who are those people against the wall? (line judges)

Why do they yell? (they say if the ball is outside of the lines)

What are they yelling? (out)

Why do they have blue shirts on? (…)

Who are those people with their hands behind their backs? (ball boys and girls)

Why do they have their hands behind their backs? (um…to keep them out of the way…)

Why do they hold their hand up in the air? (to offer the player the ball to serve)

What’s a serve? (how they start a point)

Why is that guy throwing the ball in the air? (that’s the serve)

Is it over? (no, that was just one point.)

Who is winning? (the guy closest to us)

Why is it 4 to 3?

Why does he have 30 points?

Love?

Why did he get 15 points?

Did he win? (no, it’s deuce)

What is deuce? (40-40)

Did he win? (no, it’s his advantage though)

How do you win?

Did he win? (he won the game, but it’s just 4-4 in the set)

What’s a set? (it’s made of of games and part of a match)

...

You probably get the idea - and probably did about 10 to 15 questions ago!

For the briefest moment, I wanted them to hush and watch the match - or I really didn’t care if they did, but I did, and I wanted them to let me do it in peace. But, the question barrage was so fierce and so valid that it became the sport itself. It added to the morning bliss.

I love tennis. But, it is very odd and chock full of quirky rules and customs that I simply can’t explain. I can only offer them as fact - that’s how they do it in tennis. This just happens to be a very unsatisfying answer to both me and my girls.

And, I started to think about all of the new things that they experience almost every day that are just like tennis to them. New. Quirky. Arbitrary. Full of weird adult rules. And, yet sometimes entertaining. In some ways at their age, it’s all tennis to them.

Thus, my paternal wish from this little blissful morning scene: may my girls always find themselves in weird, arbitrary, and entertaining places, having new experiences, and with quirky people where they are flush with questions and are empowered to ask and learn - or at least to ask.


Photo: A Brief History of Wimbledon

If you’ve read my blog, you know that I am a lover of questions and you know I encourage my daughters to ask them - whatever they may be.

But, I’ll be honest, this one caught me off guard. And, just to confirm - yes, it was in reference to President John Quincy Adams.

My five year old was in stream-of-consciousness talking and questioning mode as she was both trying to get my attention and trying to pretend that a nap wouldn’t be her best option at the moment.

At some point, in hopefully as kind a way as possible, I shared that I was not going to keep answering questions that I knew she already knew the answer to - that I was happy to answer the questions I could, but I wanted her to try and answer for herself when she could. (This was a modestly diplomatic attempt at avoiding saying that she was driving me absolutely crazy.)

So, I was pretty well tuned out when she dropped this one on me. It worked. She got my attention!   

I was immediately laughing hysterically inside - trying to process exactly where this question came from and how - and if -  I was supposed to pretend I knew or didn’t know an answer. So, I did the obvious thing that any decent Dad would do: I let my 7 year old answer.

Yes. Someone had to have seen John Adams’ penis.

With her confident and informed response to her little sister, I recalled that the 7 year old had been learning about Presidents at school. And, of course, she’d remembered the most important facts underlying our Democracy: William Howard Taft got stuck in the White House bathtub and had to be craned out, and John Adams went skinny dipping in the Potomac. So, again, by a leap of logic easily made by a 7 year old but still suspect by a 5 year old - President Adams’ penis was out for the viewing. (Perhaps, a timely lesson on the value of transparency in Democracy?)

The giggles about learning what skinny dipping means had long passed from our initial discussion, but this burning question persisted in my daughter’s mind. And, I was reminded that the barrage of questions she’d been asking that she already knew the answer to were not bad questions. They were just unnecessary. She had to be reminded she knew the answer already - or could easily find them for herself.

So, the only bad question really is the one you have but you don’t ask.

For so many reasons, this was not just a good question, it was epic. ​

That every day we may ask and be asked at least one good question…

On the day before his 62nd birthday, my Father committed suicide. I’ve written pretty extensively about this in previous blogs. Needless to say, I sobbed. In fact, I broke.​

I was on emotional lockdown. I didn’t want to be around people. I didn’t want to talk. I needed quiet. Noise actually physically hurt. For the first time in my life, I understood what anxiety really felt like.

I was hunkered down. Surviving. It had been almost a year.

Around that time, a homeless friend brought a 10 week old puppy to my Mom’s house. It had followed him from wherever he lived - he would never tell us. But, our friend was drunk and this tiny, fluffy, adorable, little puppy was annoying him. So, he left it with my Mom and said she had to take him.

Mom had a dog.

Mom calls me.

I go see it.

I call my wife.

Now, we have a dog. I should mention here that I am actually allergic to dogs - but the sweetness of this little animal was an antihistamine.

But, wait. Ugh. What just happened!? I didn’t want a fucking dog! I didn’t want any new relationships! I wanted less. I wanted to be left alone. I sure as hell didn’t want to have to take care of some helpless little animal. I was having enough trouble taking care of myself at that point.

I had swooned at this puppy’s cuteness and I regretted it immediately.

But, then I started to love him - Augustus Buster a.k.a “Gus”.

But then, within months, we were at the vet. Gus had severe hip problems, probably wouldn’t live for very long - at least not without severe pain.

Goddamnit! I knew I didn’t want this fucking thing. This was all just a setup for more fucking loss and hurt and loneliness.

I was furious. So mad at myself. So mad at the world. So mad that I had opened myself up to this little animal - this creature for whom we were already predicting his end-of-days in his first year.

I sobbed.

But, I also started healing.

One of my first blogs about my Dad’s death was entitled “Living With Suicide.” Before I got my dog, I wasn’t. I was surviving suicide. But, when I opened myself to loving him, as painful and frustrating and scary as it was - as temporary as it might be - I began to live again.

Today, almost 12 years later, we had to put my dog down. Cancer.

I sobbed. I broke.

I’ve not cried like this since I lost my Dad. I feel the horrible emptiness of losing Gus, but it has also pulled at something deep in the wounds from my Father’s death. I’ve thought about this day since that first visit to the vet. I knew it would be brutal. I knew my dog’s death was coming. But, I had no idea how badly this would hurt.

I miss my dog. I miss my Dad.

My natural instinct again today is to hunker down, but I can see my dog looking up at me with his big, brown, knowing eyes: “did you miss the whole point!?”

Life and love are full of fear and loss and anxiety and vulnerability, but they are also the source of healing and peace and our connection to something beyond ourselves. Life and love take courage, but also create meaning.

Death doesn’t take that meaning away. It reminds us of it.

​

I grew up and still live in a house with no right angles. It’s just the reality of a now 130-year-old structure. Between plaster walls and settling foundations, you are best served just to eyeball distances and angles, or at least eyeball and measure - but trust your eyeball.​

Which is why I stopped in my tracks yesterday and snapped this picture. A marble. Sitting still. On a smooth surface. In our house. Seriously, what the hell? Never seen it. Never conceived of it. Not in our house.

And, like anyone whose brain never cared much for - nor knew much about - right angles, I didn’t really care about how that marble was sitting there. The science. I wanted to know why.

I saw the marble as I was doing post-holiday house cleaning and, as is often the case when I am doing chores, I was deep in my head. I was deep in the sadness of goodbyes to family, shaking off the echoes of my sobbing child - so sad to see her cousin and great aunt and uncle leaving. Fighting my own tears. I was processing the realities of aging loved ones and the impotence of limited time across great distance. I was wrestling with the chronic unknowns of a sick family member now weeks in the hospital. I was wondering about my dying dog - how much longer? What’s our plan?

We all have our stories. Mine is not unique nor is it even particularly extreme. In fact, I acknowledge that sorrow such as mine is born of fortune and abundance. This messiness (the right angle-less-ness) is just part of the rich possibility of human existence.

And, most of the time, I am fine with this. I see it for what it is. I thrive in the fluidity, the uncertainty. It’s probably why I became an artist. It’s how I understand the world and it reinforces my beliefs in why I am on the planet for this relatively brief period of time.

But, there are also times when it is frustrating and even overwhelming, when the lack of right angles starts to feel like formlessness, when I feel the need for structural reinforcement. Stillness and stability from somewhere.

And yet, this marble. Shining. Reflective. Still. Fragile, but whole. Simple, but profound. Somehow insistently present, defying the potentiality - and probability - of its rolling, falling, getting lost.

It couldn’t just be sitting there on the dresser; that would be impossible in our house. It was somehow transcending the crookedness of its world - or perhaps just owning it.

At the same time, the marble also drew my eye to some old pictures of my family. And, given my unsettled spirit at that moment, I just spiraled further into what wasn’t, what was wrong, what was past, what was no more. Memory. Reality. Sadness.

I need a fucking right angle!

Except, I didn’t. I was missing the why of this odd, little marble.

There is no real truth to my memories or my longing or my emotional analyses. There is no truth in my fighting the dissonance and sorrow of here and now. These are tools to futilely seek and feign control over life itself. Struggle.

The truth is in this marble somewhere, this thing that drew me in, out of myself, reminding me of a deeper, more real - and yet more nebulous - truth. A truth of both passing time, and yet, a truth eternal. Of life and loss, of highs and lows, light and shadow. A truth where our connections with others, with the world, and within ourselves manifest as the ultimate why of our existence and the surest path to our transcendence.

A truth where right angles may or may not exist - it doesn’t matter.

This truth is love. Shining. Reflective. Still. Fragile, but whole. Simple, but profound. Somehow present amidst all of the temporary conditions that could start me rolling, falling, getting lost.