Two young men had just moved from Eugene to Portland with all of their worldly possessions in the back seat of a 1962 Ford Fairlane when they arrived on the front porch of my ancestral home after dropping out of college. The reception John and I received from my father cannot be described as anything other than icy, but that was AO’s default setting whenever he received me, so nothing seemed untoward. The warm welcome we received from my mother was all the assurance John and I needed. We would be comfortably housed and fed so in we went, the irony somehow escaping me that I was moving back into my parent’s basement as the direct consequence of asserting my independence.
© 2024 Eric Stromquist
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