Finding My Way Home Project

Photo by Samuel Taylor Photography

Samuel Taylor Photography featured some photographs of one of my childhood home places back in 2014. He asked that I write a small description of those photographs and what that place represented to me at that moment. I wrote the description below. Later, when my father was dying in the hospital, I pulled these words up on my phone and I read them to him. These were the last words I spoke to my dad and I’m glad for it.

It is difficult to look at some of these images. They remind me of great times, of the end of great times. They remind me of long workdays that ended with late dinners, and even longer play days.

They remind me of eating oranges and blowing my cold, drippy nose into the sleeve of my dad’s shirt. They remind me of scalding hot showers and of icy cold showers. Of unbearably hot nights on the bus, the wood stove burning hot through the trees we sawed and split ourselves. They remind me of times I will never get back, of moments that cannot and will not be recreated. They remind me of learning to get lost and of learning to be found.

Most of all, they remind me of my dad; an impractical genius, a comedian, a hard worker, a badass, and someone whom I don’t know anymore. Someone who started to build something incredible, original, and left it behind.