This is what my life looked like in 1966. Here I am with my three biological brothers, laughing. I had a big laugh, deep, and from the belly.

During this time, my dad worked on the railroad. In fact, he worked on the railroad from the time he was seventeen or eighteen until he retired some time in his sixties. When this picture was taken my mom didn’t work outside of the home, but in a few short years, she would work as a waitress, as a dispatcher at a police station, at a radio station, much later (when I was in high school) she worked at the American Embassy in Cairo. My mom had many jobs, and lived in many cities across the world, but my dad stayed with one job and still lives in the town I grew up in.

There is something comforting about visiting my dad’s house because time is so slow there, and there have been no big changes over the past fifty years.  I can walk by our old houses. I can walk by my old schools. My best friend from grade school still lives there, and we get together every time I go “home.”