..

I am the first perfect example of waste—extravagant, ecstatic and incapable of putting the world to any reasonable use, able to show up at the masked ball of society, or stay away like someone who has been detained, or has forgotten how to make a mask, or can no longer find his costume out of carelessness, and so one day will no longer be invited.

“When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap and leans down over the sink and tilts his head sideways to drink directly from the stream of cool water, I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone, who used to do the same thing at that age; And when he lifts his head back up and, satisfied, wipes the water dripping from his cheek with his shirtsleeve, it’s the same casual gesture my brother used to make; and I don’t tell him to use a glass, the way our father told my brother, because I like remembering my brother when he was young, decades before anything went wrong, and I like the way my son becomes a little more my brother for a moment through this small habit born of a simple need, which, natural and unprompted, ties them together across the bounds of death, and across time … as if the clear stream flowed between two worlds and entered this one through the kitchen faucet, my son and brother drinking the same water.”

sounds like someone wasn’t invited to the winter solstice festival celebrating the arrival of the longest night of the year and signaling the end of the harvest where workers can enjoy the fruits of their labor with family and friends

I have never heard of Norman Rockwell. I don’t understand anything about art. But this picture shook me and caused a storm of emotions. It is called Breaking Home Ties, 1954