When he commissioned me to do the portrait, he was explaining how we were connected. The wife of his deceased brother ended up marrying my divorced cousin and living in my grandparent’s house. Did that make us related? Probably not, but somehow there were strands. Strands enough to fill a brush, to collect the paint, to make the portrait of three brothers, fishing at a lake, a lake that I would swim in a few years to come. None of us knowing in the time that this painting captures, all that we would survive. All of the living. All of the love. Never expecting that heartache and difference would be washed clean in the common waters of Lake L’homme Dieu. 

Barefooted and fishing — maybe it’s the metaphor for how we all begin. Innocent and looking. Docked, but never tied down. Hopeful. Curious. Maybe in returning here we can find the hope we so desperately need. The simplicity. The beauty of what really connects us. 

I suppose the words I type are merely a strand on a pole, flung out to open waters, but maybe it’s enough. I pray it’s enough. So I keep writing. I keep painting. I keep hoping. I keep living. I keep loving.