My Uncle Greer was always a little…different…. He used to say that he was ‘an artist’ so that meant he was ‘expected’ to be a little crazy, marching to the beat of his own drummer?  At just turned twelve, with only a year to go until I was a Teen, I didn’t have any clear idea about what I wanted to be in the real world, if I didn’t make it as an astronaut, I figured, the next best thing to be was a writer, because as much as I enjoyed watching Uncle Greer splash and dribble his paint set over canvas from the top of stepladders of varying height and then frame it when it dried and get paid thousands of dollars for each ‘unique creation’  I felt like I wanted to make sense of what was chaotic around me, you know what I mean?  If I picked up paints, it would be with a brush in hand and I’d want to create something so real you’d feel you just walk into the painting and keep on going. And I knew I wasn’t that good!

            Like my Mom I was a failed perfectionist. But unlike my Mom I was an only child, so far. I used to go out with Uncle Geer and collect driftwood. We’d loop a horsehair lariat around it and lug it up the steep cliffside until it was stacked along with his other ‘treasures’ at the side of a shack so unstable I feared to make any loud noises inside it for fear the roof would fall in! He’d take his chain saw, whittle away at the shape only he saw until he was done, lacquer it and haul it off to one of the local museums and claim it was art. I’d go along with him and just smile. I was too embarrassed to admit I was with him, and I loved him too much to leave him on his own while I was visiting, so I guess the townspeople thought I was a deaf mute or something because they’d talk about him with me standing right there like I was simply another chunk of wood he’d drug in, you know? “