I left my hometown in the midwest when I was 18. I began planning my exit quite young. The back porch had a territorial view, not that far, mind you but over a couple of hills and a definite horizon in view I ended every long summer day watching the slow and steady sunset sitting on the step of the porch holding my transitor radio to my ear and longing for what was further away. Cleveland and even more exotic Chicago seemed so far off, but I was determined to find my way there and beyond. My travels and settlings took me to pretty much the farthest point west and north as possible and it took my mother a couple of years to forgive me. I may have left the midwest, but some things linger. Most years I have returned to visit family and have provided those connections for my own children.

Whenever I return home I walk . . . and walk. Each morning I take a new route until I have covered the town, the pieces and parts of my childhood, the good and the bad, the sweet memories and ghosts of trauma past. It is somewhat of of a pilgrimage of reconciliation. I look at the houses along the way and they have always been a source of fascination for me. So the saying goes, No one really knows what goes on in other’s houses. A house becomes a perfect metaphor for exterior versus interior, the outside display and the secrets it holds. Over the years, I have taken at least a hundred pictures and videos of house in my hometown. During this pandemic I returned to these photos and started rethinking the container of a house and how to bring the inside out so to speak. Its thinking in progress, a work in progress. More to come I’m sure. (Studies are below.)

My Grandmother’s house and my childhood home.