M Ryding Story Painting

Story Painting

These stories highlight extraordinary moments in ordinary lives. Some are important events, some are just a blink in time, and some are quotes from others that have stuck. These are moments that prompted a shift in perspective, sometimes just a nudge, sometimes a drastic 180. Some are ‘Aha moments,’ some require finding resilience, and some just make me laugh. Do I have words of wisdom? No, sigh. I’m pretending I’ve got things figured out just like everyone else.

“There is no greater burden than carrying an untold story.” Maya Angelou
“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” Hannah Arendt

Music: Light in the Dark
A painter friend once told me she could stand in front of the most amazing paintings and would never be as moved as when listening to a piece of good music.
I also paint. And I agree. A simple line from Yo Yo Ma’s cello or a Segovia guitar piece or Tracy Chapman’s smooth alto voice always lighten a dark mood.

Oh the Place You Will Go!
What is it about being 3? Everything is interesting so out you go, confident and curious. It’s a wide wild world out there and this little guy was ready to explore.

Out Standing
He built a church in Unalakleet. He had been taught to draw detailed plans and was shown building techniques by master carpenters. He had been trained to practice skills with tools made by unknown craftsmen. He was joined by the strength and skills of so many others from the village. Aren’t we all out standing on hundreds of unnamed shoulders?

Skating to the Edge
I understand that following a trail of blood isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time. Really, I get it. But this one time it was a life-saver. The winter day that I skated alone on the Bering Sea I realized how easy it is to do something stupid. One of the village hunters had gotten a seal out at the edge of the ice—less than a mile out. I heard there were some interesting ice formations there. It was spring, the several more hours of daylight had begun to warm the air, so I tied on my skates and set out.

There was a fog rolling over the village that day. I skated west from the village. Ocean ice surface is inconsistent so I was enjoying the patches of smoother ice, tiptoeing over the rough places, and flat walking where the snow hadn’t blown free. Once in a while I’d chance on a glassy spot and practice a few twirls. You take you take it as it comes.

It wasn’t long before I skated across the drag trail where the hunters had pulled their load across the ice. The farther out I skated, the more I focused on the ice and how my skates traveled across it. The fog grew thicker and heavier. I could see less and less, until it was just me and my skates on the ice.

I crossed the drag trail again and noticed a few drops of bright red blood on the hard white ice and I stopped then, to take a look around. The fog had now completely closed in around me. I couldn’t see much more than a few feet in front of me. Turning around I realized that I couldn’t see the shoreline, the village had disappeared, there was no horizon line anywhere. Engrossed in the journey, I had skated my way into a colorless void.
The world I knew by sight, touch, sound, smell was gone. I was suddenly very aware of my cold feet, my wet mittens, my hungry stomach. I was completely alone, with no person in sight, no sound, not even a breath of wind. Absolutely alone. I skated a few steps crossing the drag trail again but after many turns and twists I realized I had no idea which way was towards the village and which way went to the edge of the ice and the open Bering Sea. I chose a direction and after a while I had my answer: there by my feet began those fantastic, bizarre shapes of the ice that had cracked and bunched up along the edge. In the fog they were absolutely surreal.

The experience was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Sometimes the practice of artworking can take you to that place where you are so overwhelmed by a certain awareness. It's a meditative state, when reference points disappear and structure dissolves and you are left at the edge, taking a chance at the direction you will take.

Knowing that the fog could last for days, and that no one knew where I’d gone, I turned around and stayed on the drag trail back to the village.

So Much Swagger
We all barely tolerated this know-it-all who turned up in Inuit Alaska from California. So when he swaggered into the storage shed and bragged that he knew ‘how to work one of these CPR dummies’ no one stopped him. He strutted over to the sheet-covered figure on the table, leaned over, ready to demonstrate mouth-to-mouth, whipped back the sheet, and found himself inches from the decomposing face of a recently recovered drowning victim. He bolted outside gagging and hurling. No more swagger.

Garage Jumping
When my younger brother was around 14 or 15 he had extra time on his hands and way too much energy to use it all up. So he and his best friend made up a secret, under-the-cover-of-night racing game.

In our neighborhood each lot was arranged with the garage set back farther than the house, creating the boundaries for the backyards. After dark, they would start at one end of the block and race through the backyards to the end of the block. This required getting by the garages, and they found going over them more fun than going around.

They developed techniques to scale the walls, climb over the roofs and drop down on the other side to run through the yard to the next garage. They spent their daylight hours practicing skills, scouting the obstacles and planning their next run. They kept track of the full moon, neighborhood dog habits, the location of grills and lawn chairs. Most feared was our hermit neighbor ‘Sober Si.’ He allowed no person or animal in his yard.

At night they would race, facing different challenges each time. There were always different variables that would determine their success: darkness, animals, rearranged lawn furniture and of course ‘Sober Si’ (who sometimes sat on his back porch with a shotgun in one hand and bottle of whiskey in the other). Each day they would practice and plan, and at night the thrill came from that element of chance that they couldn’t predict.

That summer was pivotal for my brother. He was afraid of heights. Somehow, whether it was the challenge from his friend or the darkness hiding how high they were climbing, he overcame that fear. A few years later he earned his pilot’s license.

Where Are You Going?
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver, poet
“Oh the Places You’ll Go!” Dr. Seuss

What I Learned from a Tree
Feed your roots.
Drink water.
Keep your trunk strong.
Branch out.
Stretch towards the light.
Go out on a limb.
If you can bend you don’t break.
Turn over a new leaf.
Leaf through the hard parts.
Cast shadows.
Fall like you mean it.
Leave in flaming color.

The Oven and the Funeral
On a short winter day, a long time ago, the Unalakleet church bell rang to tell people the funeral service was about to begin. People began filling up the church to say goodbye to a young girl. Mom was at the piano playing some old familiar hymns while waiting for the pastor to start the service. Family and friends, neighbors and strangers shuffled into the long wooden pews.
She played, they waited. And waited. For over a half hour the pastor was a no show. Finally an old deacon came and whispered in Mom’s ear to just keep playing. Seems there was a problem.
What he didn’t tell her then was that the frozen body of the sweet little girl didn’t quite fit into the coffin that had been built for her. Their solution? Thaw the body just enough to bend the legs to fit into the box. And so they did, in my mom’s oven (since her place was so handy next to the church).
Even decades later she couldn’t open an oven door without thinking about that little girl. Life isn’t always predictable and tidy

Each Generation
"The function of one generation is to make change possible for the next. The real function of each generation is to sow the seeds that will make a better world possible in the future." Joan Chittister, theologian

Yellow
“Art is to console those who are broken by life.” Vincent Van Gogh
My Grandmother once told me that during the Great Depression many people painted their kitchens yellow—it was an optimistic color she said, like the sky when a late afternoon storm breaks. A brighter day is coming.

Pete
Pete was one of my dad’s favorite people. He was a mentor and a great hunting & fishing partner. Pete was quietly understated, but he had an impish spark in his eye. Pete didn’t need to talk about his adventures and escapades he just got things done. In the 1920’s, long before my dad ever knew him, Pete had proved his Inuit skills. There was an outbreak of diptheria in Nome and serum was desperately needed, so Pete was one of the many mushers who ran their dog teams to get the serum from Anchorage to Nome, relay style. Many decades later this route would become the Iditarod Dog sled race.

On Ice
When my mother was very pregnant with me she had a little adventure. At the end of her term she was flying to Nome for a checkup with the doctor. The small ski plane took off from Unalakleet planning to pick up packages in Golovin, another village on the way. They landed on the mostly still frozen ice in the bay in front of the village and immediately began to sink. This was not good. The seasoned bush pilot quickly tried to take off but the plane was too deeply submerged.
Seeing the problem from the shore one of the men from the village put on his hip-waders, sloshed out to the plane, picked up my mom and carried her back to the village. This greatly lightened the load for that tiny plane and the pilot was able to take off for Nome so that he could return with a different plane. (That bush pilot teased her for years about weighing down his plane.)
But probably the worst part of the whole situation was that while she waited for the pilot to return she had to sit in the post office/general store which was run by a woman who had had her eye on my dad. A few years back she had threatened my mom when she found out they were engaged. Awkward.

Dragon Flying
“In July the ant works, the dragonfly flaunts.” – Russian proverb

Big Dipper, Big Dream, Big Lie
When I was 4 or 5 I heard that the Alaska state flag had been designed by a school student. It’s an elegantly simple design. Yellow stars of the Big Dipper and the North Star. A kid did that! If a kid could do that I wonder what I would do? So I asked my mom what I would be when I grew up. I thought that’s how it worked. She said I could be what ever I wanted to be. I was thrilled. My 5 year-old dream was to grow up to be…Irish! All a lie of course. Turns out you can’t be anything you want to be. Plan B was to be a gypsy.

Lies I Was Told as a Child
1. You can be anything you want to be when you grow up. (so now I’m Irish?)
2. You are so talented. (some teachers disagreed)
3. It’ll be fine. (who even knows what fine is anyway)
4. Clowns are so funny. (terrifying)
5. Santa is watching. (creepy, really creepy)
6. Maybe… (just a stall tactic for ‘no’)
7. Girls don’t climb trees. (umm…)
8. Your bangs will grow out before anyone notices. (still a problem)
9. If you tell me the truth I won’t get mad. (cue danger music)
10. You’ll understand when you’re older. (the older I get the more I know that I really don’t know anything)

Not From Around Here
It’s personal. I was born on the Bering Sea coast far from where I now live. My family was living in the village in which my parents had been married. It was home, but it wasn’t mine. Since then I have lived in many different places, always aware that the place wasn’t mine to claim. Here in Pennsylvania I was once introduced as “Bill’s wife she’s not from around here.” No name, just “Bill’s wife.” Sigh.

A Flying Leap
It was both the very worst and very best flying I’ve ever done. When a wild fire swept across the tundra near the village a high school student said he would spend the afternoon flying over the tundra to scout the fire’s path. Sure, I’d go along! We walked to the gravel landing strip edged by a few parked planes. Past a Cesna, a sturdy Beechcraft, a couple of nice Piper Cubs, and he stopped at what he insisted was a sound flying craft. It was actually a cobbled together wreck. No instruments of course, and rivets or duct tape patched together every mismatched part of the body and wing. The fuel gauge was a pencil stuck into a cork which bobbed through a hole in the open gas tank (front and center on the plane’s nose). This plane was nothing but a jumble of derelict parts.

So, since I was stupidly curious I took a leap of faith. In this case, an actual flying leap was the only way to get into the tiny, rickety, mangled cockpit. The plane rumbled and rattled down the gravel runway and with a great deal of rib-shaking agitation, took off.

With no buffers between the workings of the plane and the two makeshift seats, the noise forced sign language over speaking. I could hear the cables stretching and creaking between my feet as they moved the wing flaps. I could smell the grease, and strangely, a strong scent of tundra plants and dirt. What could that mean?

It took some time before I felt comfortable enough to look over the tundra below. We found the path of the fire and tracked it for a while. Along the river we could see which fish camps had burned and which were safe. I took notes as we searched.

After briefly showing me how to work the hand and foot controls he said. “Okay, your turn.” Welp, what else was there to do - I took the controls and flew that plane. It was exhilarating. I admit it - I was completely buzzed by the power. Eventually we had to land, the bobbing pencil had disappeared into the bottom of the gas tank. I handed back the controls, I knew my limits. On descent to land, I realized that at the end of the runway was the cemetery. hmmm

Red Geraniums
Every fall my Grandmother would bring her red geraniums inside, repot them and set them in her living room windows. She planned to set them out again the next summer. Sitting in the windows these vivid red blooms were bright spots of hope in the face of cold, dark New England winters.

Uncovered
A friend discovered an old photo album from the 1800’s while cleaning out a house she had just bought from an older couple. It was packed with sepia images of stiff, stern old men and women in dark buttoned up clothes. These were serious, hardworking faces with no spark of humor or foolishness. I leafed through the album. A photograph of an especially grim and austere old woman was loose in its cardboard frame. I slipped it out. Hidden behind her image was tucked a small photo of a young woman, lightly dressed, hand on hip, looking playful and frisky, teasing even! Had I broken open evidence of a very old secret, kept under covers, a secret that had died with its keepers? We assume we know a person - and then they are broken open.

16
The week of my 16th birthday I passed my driver’s test and asked Mom if I could borrow the car to visit the art museum. She handed me the keys. I headed for Interstate 90, east to Chicago and the Art Institute. After about an hour into the trip it occurred to me that maybe Mom thought I meant the nearby museum in our town, Rockford. I made a mental note to myself that maybe I should call when I got there. I was focused on getting to Chicago. It’s a big city and I wasn’t real sure how to get to the Art Institute so I stopped at one of the rest stops on the way, searched for a phone booth, and found one that had an intact Chicago phonebook, complete with city maps. I ripped out the downtown section - ‘the loop.’ Somehow I managed the maze of one way streets and tight parking spaces and eventually found myself in a 2nd floor gallery at the Art Institute looking at the one painting that had motivated this trip: “Girl at an Open Half Door” by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. I’d seen it in a book and knew it lived in Chicago. I was captivated by how strong and sure of herself she looked. I have visited her several times over the years and found that the artist attribution changed several times. I guess curators couldn’t make up their minds: Rembrandt van Rijn, then Samuel van Hoogstraten, student of Rembrandt, then the Workshop of Rembrandt, and back to Rembrandt van Rijn. It doesn’t matter to me, she hasn’t changed.

"Bright Morning Stars are Rising"
Every morning I wake up with some random song in my head. Today it was this hymn "Bright Morning Stars are Rising and day is breaking in my soul". I have no idea where it came from but it makes a nice image.

Invisible
Sometimes kids like to imagine having a super power. I wanted to be invisible so I could listen in on conversations, jump onto a neighbor’s bike, throw rotten apples, hurl rude gestures, you know the stuff.
Now that I’m grey I realize that in many situations I am invisible. Not actually of course, just not noticed or regarded.
It’s awesome.
Just imagine what I can get away with now…

Road Tripping
On a recent road trip to the southwest we drove, camped, and hiked through the Grand Canyon, Zion, Canyonlands, Arches & Capital Reef. To eastern eyes the rough layers of the canyons are strange, red and raw - so different than the saturated greens of the Alleghenies.
These canyons are slashes in the earth, exposing the guts like an autopsy, laid bare to the hot unfiltered sun. In the eastern U.S. we are used to our earth’s insides being much more discreet, covered, private. In the southwest there’s no place to hide.

Road Trips & Dirt Paths
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few are dirt.” (John Muir)

Decades ago we took a long road trip with some good friends through western US, Canada and Alaska. We were amazed by the Badlands (not so bad really), soaked in hot springs in northern British Columbia, tramped up the hills outside of Skagway, watched dozens of eagles flying around the cemetery in Dyea, and saw whales off the ferry on the inside passage. On any road trip the best times are when we get out and wander.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness … charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” ―Mark Twain

It Was Home But It Wasn't Mine
The dark Bering Sea winters wore on me. I just wanted to hibernate in the dim gloom and cater to my depression. It was so bad the village public health nurse came to check on me. One dark January day I went to deliver a drawing I had done and while talking with the father I mentioned that I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing next year. He then offered me a job and a place to live if I would stay. The place was a tiny cabin that had been used by the Alaskan painter Fred Machetanz. I left their home with an optimistic sense of possibilities. Could I make through these sunless days here alone? It lasted less than 5 minutes. I was followed through the village by a staggering man yelling at me: leave you no good gusuk - you don’t belong here - go back where you came from… He was obnoxiously drunk. I picked up my pace. He chased after me with slurred insults and threats. He was a known trouble maker in the village, half Inuit, half white, and neither side claimed him. Belonging is complicated. While this was home, where I was born, it wasn’t mine. I packed up.

Chasing the Sun
My ancestors all immigrated from Sweden. They crossed the Atlantic ocean with their sing-song accents, callused hands, and dressed in their Sunday-best clothes. They were ordinary people working through extraordinary changes, sometimes with grace, sometimes with fire. Some came out of desperation, some driven by ambition. And one (that I know of) was a lowdown, good-for-nothin scoundrel. Come on now, don’t we all have at least one shady person in our family tree…hmm?

What I learned From Sylvia
Sylvia was a very old feral orange cat with shrewd amber eyes. She joined me in my studio, gradually claiming the space and keeping me company. Here’s what Sylvia taught me:

Resilience is crucial - rigidity is crippling.
Sometimes you just have to disappear for a while.
It’s ok to be cranky sometimes, they’ll get over it.
Let someone bring you food, its especially good when you don’t even have to ask.
If you haven’t found it keep hunting.
Advice and other people’s plans for you are just suggestions.
If you’re confused, look profoundly pensive and no-one will notice
When you can’t see you have to feel.
Intuition/instinct beats objective tactics.
It seems I am also feral.

Ladder to the Stars

“May you build a ladder to the stars
and climb on every rung.” from “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan

Ancestry’s Black Hole
During her first year of college Mom wrote a short memoir about her tough childhood. Buried in a longer paragraph was a short comment about her estranged father’s family: “… his grandmother was murdered back in Sweden…probably by a relative” What the…?! No explanation. I had never heard this.
It made me wonder about those times I had caught a little bit of sadness behind Mom’s smile, a hesitation in her laugh. Do buried secrets continue to haunt for generations? We’re the sum of our own experiences but have we also acquired something in our nature from decades and centuries past, from ancestors we’ve never known?
Digging deeper into our ancestry has yielded some interesting and disturbing bits. In the 1600/1700’s four different ancestors were accused of witchcraft (one was acquitted, one cast out of the village, 2 burned at the stake). There was a quirky Swedish king who was dethroned and locked up as insane by his own brother. And there was more than one rogue who ran off leaving wife and children to fend for themselves.
I’m not sure how to verify any of this. Ancestors may always be a mystery. Their gravestones stand as intentional fossils that can only hint at past life.
The weight of embedded grief
is carried from generation to generation,
often without knowing
why

Buying the Ruby Ring
Grandma Myrtle grew up on a farm outside of Rockford, Illinois. When she was about 14 she was driving a horse-drawn farm wagon when the horse spooked and took off running. Still holding tight to the reins she was yanked out of the wagon which then ran her over. She spent weeks in a comma. Her hair fell out and later grew back a different color. People sometimes blamed her anxious nerves, occasional weeping spells, and silly insecurities on that accident.
Many decades later I overheard Mom and Aunt Agnes talking about the day Grandma bought the ruby ring. Aunt Agnes thought it was ridiculous, foolish, “what would people think.”
But it wasn’t done impulsively. She had bought that ring, bit by bit, walking all the way to the downtown jewelry store on her tired, swollen feet (she had never learned to drive). Every month she would pay out a few dollars until it was paid off. When I first saw the ring I thought it was stunning. There were 8 small marquise cut rubies, one for each grandchild.
A few years later we started to notice odd things Grandma was doing. One Christmas she put mixed vegetables in the red Jell-O. She walked downtown to pay a bill and forgot where she was. She left the stove burner on high and ruined the tea kettle. The landlord worried that she was going to set the apartment on fire. Grandma was convinced to move in with us and after a year or so her mind skidded down hill fast and she couldn’t remember who she was.
She had worked so hard her whole life. Ever since that no good, scoundrel of a husband had walked out on the family in the middle of the great depression she had struggled and scrambled for whatever bit of enjoyment she could find. If no one else was going to buy her some sparkle, she’d get it for herself.
Did she know she was fading when she bought that ruby ring? I like to think it was her way of saying “I’m tired but I’d like a little bit of pizzazz on my way out” like Dorothy with her ruby slippers, clicking her heels together and dazzling her way out of Oz.

Monty Python and the Mommy Fail
Our youngest daughter was in Kindergarten when her oldest sister went through a Monty Python obsession. She watched the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail over and over while her 5 year old sister quietly absorbed every scene.
I helped in the Kindergarten class during craft time and it usually went very well. Picture this: 7 or 8 kids sitting around big round tables, each in their own little world, contentedly cutting and pasting colorful shapes onto their cardboard projects and humming Disney songs to themselves. Little Mermaid tunes were the favorite around that table. Then my sweetly oblivious daughter chimed in with a favorite Monty Python line “Bring out your dead, Bring out your dead” complete with a forehead slap with her cardboard project. I looked up. Around the table I saw baffled and frightened looks on the tiny little faces. I panicked thinking I may have allowed my 5 year old to be a pariah in the eyes of her classmates. But they all just paused for that one moment, shrugged it off, and went on with their work. Kids are a resilient bunch.

Twisted Chaos
I crave order. I rarely get it. Most of the time its my own fault since I’m easily distracted and prone to procrastination. But sometimes chaos gets shoved in my face. Like when you have teenage daughters who sneak out at night or come stumbling in after midnight all woozy and red eyed. What do you do with that?
And then there are the times chaos comes blowing in….
Years ago on one particularly hot and humid afternoon in Illinois our Mom was at her night class when the unsettled weather spawned a tornado. The sky turned a ghoulish green. Grandma told us to head to the basement. As the tornado leveled a large part of the neighboring town we huddled around a small transistor radio listening to reporters trying to match descriptions of missing people with the injured in hospital or of bodies that had been found. It had struck as school was letting out and a bus had been blown off the road. There were children scattered around. People called hospitals looking for family members. It was gruesome. Because of debris and downed power lines it took Mom a long time to get home from class. Grandma paced and wrung her hands. When Mom finally got home, she said that she had pulled her old car off by the side of the road and then watched as the tornado streaked across the landscape ahead of her.

Several years later a tornado decimated our town in Pennsylvania. Gone were the garage, barn, a few sheds, apple and pear trees, and the top half of our house. Standing in the middle of the chaos with the familiar landscape blown clean away, it was hard to figure out where exactly we were.
But we only lost buildings and stuff, our neighbors lost 2 teenagers and another 5 year old neighbor was hurled through the air as she was taking a bath.
Chaos is relative.

After a few years things settled into a new normal. For my birthday my husband rented an excavator and a backhoe for me to use. Best birthday gift ever. There was a strong spring that had made a small pool for the chickens. I built a dam wall and dug out the spring to enlarge that wet spot into a decent size pond. It is now full of frogs, fish, crawdads, and salamanders. It is regularly visited by deer, dragon flies, blue herons, green herons, wood ducks, and mink. And one year a bobcat stopped by.

“Where there is ruin there is hope for a treasure.” -Rumi

Empty Hallways
1. Anchorage AK: 2nd grade
When I was in the second grade we were living in Anchorage, in an old, one room log cabin that had been swallowed and surrounded by the growing city of Anchorage. My father was sick. The doctors had told him he had to take it easy because his heart was full of holes. He worked anyway. Within months his health had gotten so bad that we had to get him back to the states where he could get help. It was a November morning when I was told to go to school while they finished packing up the huge 1960 bright red Ford station wagon. They would pick me up at school and we would start the 2 week drive down the Al-Can highway, heading east and south until we would get to Connecticut where the heart specialists at Yale medical center would patch him up. My teacher said it was time to go. I can still hear the clacking noise of my shoes echoing in the empty hall as I walked by myself down the long hall to the side door, out to the waiting red Ford station wagon, and away from our Alaska life. It would be 11 years before I returned.
2. Rockford IL: High School
In the middle of English class, after another bullying incident, with my knees shaking I walked up to Mrs. Knopp’s desk and told her I needed to see the counselor. I walked out of the classroom and down the long hall to Mr Gulotta’s office, very step echoing off the tiled walls. I said I just can’t do this anymore. That day Mr Gulotta managed to get me out of high school and gave me such a gift of peace.
3. Seattle WA: The downtown public library. Looking for the restroom I entered the stairwell. I heard the door clank shut behind me. Glancing back I saw a man with a wild, crazed look in his eyes. I started to run down the stairs. He chased, chuckling. Reaching the bottom I found myself in a long empty hallway. There was no one around. I dashed into the first door I found. In the hall, he started banging on the door, jeering and taunting and yelling that there was no way out. He eventually left and after waiting and shaking for what seemed like hours I ventured out into the empty hall. I later heard that the police had captured a man who had raped 2 victims in the area around the downtown library. I mentioned it to my brother. He sent me a switchblade.

Hot Springs
AlCan Highway, 1962: On the long trip to the ‘lower 48’ we stopped in northern BC at the Laird hot springs (now a Provincial Park). I took a walk with my dad on the wood slat covered path and he showed me how to use one of his old cameras. It was a heavy box and you had to look down into the top to see the image. You had to gauge the exposure and figure out the Fstop He told me then that he was very sick but he was going to get help and that was why we had to spend this 2 weeks driving all the way to Connecticut where the doctors would fix him up. He didn’t make it through the surgery. After he died there are two lost years where I remember very little and and for years I wondered if I knew what was real and what wasn’t. Decades later I found the photo I took - exactly as I remembered it.

Being Stardust
“We come spinning out of nothingness scattering stars like dust.”
Rumi

Story Painting

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