Tag Archives: childhood
Mike’s Affect on My Childhood (from ‘My Brother Michael’)
As much as my book, ‘My Brother Michael’ is about my big brother Mike, it is also about how his condition (autistic, low functioning, nonverbal) affected me and our family. It is slightly embarrassing reading this, years after I wrote it, but it is also important to acknowledge autism’s role in the family environment.
Good Times Remembered…
Remembering Childhood… from ‘My Brother Michael’
Looking at this picture of me today, I believe I was dressed in a Halloween costume. For the life of me, I can’t remember what I was supposed to be. It looks like I’m sneaking off somewhere, in disguise. I wouldn’t have thought to do that (I only tried that once), since I needed to […]
I could not talk about anything… (from ‘My Brother Michael’)
Reverting
Today’s post is for Halloween. I couldn’t imagine anything else from my initial brush strokes. I don’t remember ever drawing like this, but as I am reading Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art by Ernst Kris, I suppose my memories have been repressed by some ego, id, or sublimation process (whatever that means). I must have another […]
Watching a Scary Movie
When I was a kid I had several methods of coping with scary movies on TV. The first was to hide behind the couch and peek out. The second, depicted below, was to put my hands over my face and look through my fingers. Dad offered to turn off the movie if it was so […]
Hyporeality
Play I had a nice comment the other day about an approach to painting. Susie wrote that instead of “practice, practice, practice”, as I thought I should do, it would be better to “play, play, play”. That is excellent advice. It seems to be in keeping with the efforts of some great artists who strove […]
Looking Back
I’m home from our trip to see the grandkids. The visit airlifted me directly into the arms of a fully-formed family. It was a good feeling, but I felt a hole. I did not come by grandfatherhood honestly. It so happens I skipped the entire fatherhood thing. No changing diapers, no yelling at the kids, […]
Busy People
Most people I know are busy. I think that if you are busy as a child, you will be a busy adult. My granddaughter, nine years old, is always involved in one project or another. Her mom, was the same way as a child and is a dynamo today. She is continually in motion. Ben […]
