I’m sure I have written before about how “poor” my family was when my parents built our own little cabin on the big lake they call gitchee gumee. I was six and my brother was three and until that time, we spent our summers at our grandparents’ log cabin next door with beloved aunts, uncles, and cousins. Although we have made a FEW changes (added a second story sleeping loft and installed indoor plumbing with hot water), the chitchen has remained pretty much the same and here is a peek into it from my seat on the futon aalllll the way across the living room by the front picture window 🐽

So many people tear places like this down and build McMansions and other monstrosities. At one end of our beach some neighbors built a big behemoth with a TOWER on top of it. I like the neighbors but I don’t understand their taste. A TOWER? REALLY? You can see their cabin/house from everywhere. The moomincabin is tucked into the woods, well back from the beach. We can see out over the water but it isn’t easy to see us.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this but I muse sometimes about whether/how the moomincabin might’ve morphed if my brother had lived past 2005. When we were young adults, he seemed to aspire to a more lavish life-style than I thought I could ever afford. He was an automotive engineer and I was a musician without a clue about how to make a living in that field or even about what I wanted to do when I “grew up” (and I am STILL growing up). I often found myself envious of his apparent financial/career success which, looking back through a long lens, probably wasn’t all that different than ours was. We just didn’t buy new cars every other year (but we also didn’t have the GM employee discount🐽).

Although we mostly got along well, things could get contentious. This happened exclusively when we were together with the parents at the moomincabin and I figured out PDQ that what we were actually DOING was falling into old childhood patterns. Unfortunately that didn’t STOP me from falling into those patterns. Nowadays when I catch a whiff of the beach urchins falling into that kind of pattern I TRY to just keep my DAMN MOUTH SHUT! Sometimes I am successful, sometimes not. I am human. I err.

The last couple years of my brother’s life, a chronic illness kicked into high gear and we started getting along a LOT better. And then he died before either of our parents. If he had been healthy and lived on beyond their deaths, would he have pushed to improve the moomincabin or even tear it down and rebuild? I do not know. There are definitely improvements that need to be made there. One BIG thing is that the only stairway up to the sleeping loft is a sorta ladder that is NOT UP TO CODE. The chitchen is okay with me and I THINK it works for most of the beach urchins.

This entry is probably unintelligible but my life is and has been good. I am here to say to those who are young “creative types” (like I was), you are probably a lot smarter than you think you are. Your life will be (hopefully) long and even if you don’t ever figure out what you want to do when you grow up, if you show up on time, fill boring hours by teaching yourself new skills, (and write complete sentences), you will probably be successful. Maybe not Warren Buffett successful but successful enough. Hint: you don’t need a big TOWER HOUSE to be a success.

P.S. I loved my brother (in case that wasn’t clear). He was also a musician, a highly talented jazz guy whose main instrument was the trombone. He continued to play with various groups throughout his engineering career.

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