first round game

(7) Tori Amos, “Winter”
vs
(10) Wilco, “Via Chicago”

Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the song/essay with the most votes at the end of the game. If there is a tie, we will play a one-hour overtime (and repeat until we have a winner). Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/10/26.

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nanette donohue on tori amos’s “winter”

August 1987. I’m spending the night at my grandmother’s house, just before high school begins. I don’t do sleepovers very often–I can’t fall asleep easily if I’m not in my own bed–and that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s midnight, my grandmother has been asleep for hours, and I’m lying in the bed that used to belong to my Aunt Jennifer sobbing because I am terrified, absolutely terrified, of growing up. I’m 13 years old, a year younger than my classmates because I skipped kindergarten, and what “growing up” means to me is change.
Change felt like what happened when your best friend, a girl you grew up with, fell in with the junior high cheerleading captain and decided to try out for the squad. (She didn’t make it.) It felt like a friend you’d had for years discovering boys and deciding that you were detrimental to her newfound obsession. It felt like uncomfortable body changes and trying to figure out what to do with your life and, worst of all, not being able to depend upon the adults in your life to make things better. It felt like being on your own. I did not want to be on my own.
“I put my hand in my father’s glove”
Growing up in my family was a game of alliances. They were fixed but they were ever present. My mom and my brother were aligned; my father and I were aligned. These alliances were purportedly based on hair color; my mom and brother were the black-hairs, and my father and I were the brown-haired buddies. It wasn’t that I didn’t get along with my mom. It had just always been my father and me, and it felt special. I didn’t feel special very often in my daily life–I was a socially awkward nerd growing up in a small town that had few outlets for socially awkward nerds. I was good at spelling bees and trivia and playing the flute, not softball and flirting and doing cartwheels.
Junior high had been a minefield. Academically, I was fine—not a straight-A student because I put forth minimal effort—but I had a difficult time navigating the social elements. I had crushes on boys who were embarrassed that I had crushes on them, but I was so desperate for any crumb of attention that I was thrilled when Jason signed a birthday card for me “you’re a real b_tch but happy birthday” (redaction his). If I couldn’t have a boyfriend, I tried to insert myself into the center of junior high social life in other ways, like keeping track of who was going out with who and trading in that information. Jason liked Sandi, who I suspected was stuffing her bra. Jen and Jeff were seeing each other and their song was “Oh Sheila” by Ready for the World. Jen, a softball player, and Jeff, a burnout! Perhaps there was hope for me!
Nobody at school was telling me I was beautiful or smart or funny. But my father was. I didn’t believe these things were true, but knowing that someone out there saw me as the person I desperately wanted to be was a lifeline.
And there I was, on the brink of high school, a place I primarily knew from Sweet Valley High paperbacks and TV sitcoms, both wanting to change and terrified of change, crying alone in a bed at my grandmother’s house. What if my friends met different people and didn’t want to be saddled with a socially awkward nerd any more? What if I couldn’t find a way to fit in and spent four years in isolation? And worst of all, what if growing up meant that I was no longer special to my father?
Earlier that summer, my family took a trip to Orlando to go to Disney World. On an exhausted shuttle bus ride home from the park after the evening fireworks, I sat next to my father, who had his arm around me as I leaned against him. I heard someone near us make a snide, stage-whispered comment about how disgusting it was that this older man had such a young girlfriend, and I knew it was aimed at us. There was nothing romantic or inappropriate about how we were sitting; I was clearly a child, and if anyone looked closely at us they’d notice the family resemblance—the cleft chin, the muddy brown hair, the nose affectionately known as “the Wargo nose.” My father had always been the person I turned to when I was tired, when I needed a hug or a place to land. Growing up, if the snide commenter was to be believed, meant that this would no longer be the case. And that hurt in a way that I couldn’t describe. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it.
But Tori Amos does, and every time I hear “Winter” I’m that 13 year old. The line “I tell you that I’ll always want you near / You say that things change, my dear” never fails to make me cry, because it is the clearest distillation of my feelings during that vulnerable time in my life where the future seemed both enticing and terrifying. I know now that things do, indeed, change.
I first heard Tori Amos in February 1993, at my college roommate Robin’s parents house. It was late at night—I think we’d been at a rave in St. Louis—and we were coming down off whatever we’d taken. (Still not sure what it was, but it certainly wasn’t the ecstasy we’d paid for.) The video for “Silent All These Years” came on, and we were both decidedly uninterested. It seemed like music for pretentious English majors; nevermind that I was a pretentious English major. A few weeks later, Robin heard “Me and a Gun” in her Folk, Rock, and Pop class, and she was so deeply moved that she either bought or shoplifted the CD. Despite her efforts to convert me, I still didn’t like Little Earthquakes. I didn’t come around until Under the Pink came out, and one of my three boyfriends and the time was a huge fan. I checked the CD out from the library to see if I could figure out what Glenn liked about it, and also because Trent Reznor did the background vocals on “Past the Mission.” From there, I revisited Little Earthquakes, eventually stealing my ex-boyfriend/housemate’s copy of the CD before I moved out, ostensibly in retaliation for his stealing my copy of Joy Division’s Closer. (It turned out that Robin had borrowed it when she was catsitting over spring break; sorry not sorry, Don.)
There are so many things in that paragraph that would have been unfathomable, even shocking, to 13 year old me. I’d wanted to go to dance clubs since I was a little kid during the disco era, but the drugs? The best friend with a penchant for shoplifting? College, away from home, away from my parents? Three boyfriends? This was like a Sweet Valley High super edition, one of the ones where Elizabeth and Jessica learn important life lessons after fleeing the clutches of a masked serial killer or surviving a plane crash/motorcycle accident/death of a pretty, shy classmate who tried cocaine only once. Things are gonna change so fast.
I went from being a kid terrified to grow up to being a young adult terrified to let her father know she had grown up. When I was a freshman in college, my father found and read my diary, where I wrote about both my drinking and my various sexual exploits. It devastated him. “I hadn’t read anything you’d written in a while, so I thought I’d look” is what he said.
Every time I hear the line “skating around the truth who I am / but I know, dad, the ice is getting thin,” I think of this incident. I still can’t keep a diary, and most of my personal writing over the years was sanitized so I looked like an innocent caught up in situations beyond my control. It’s only within the last few years that I’ve started to write honestly and to correct the record, to let go of the shame that has burdened me since I was in my late teens. And that’s the push and pull of family, and of closeness–the expectations, when you can’t live up to them, are crushing.
I’m a mother now, with two daughters who are growing up so quickly that it seems impossible. So much of my parenting is focused on not making them face the unreasonable expectations that were foisted upon me: the firstborn, the golden child, the princess. I’m tempted to look at my 14 year old’s phone sometimes, curious about what she discusses with her ballet friends, but I don’t. She deserves to have her own life, to grow and change and become the person she was meant to be without my judgment or interference. I have done my parenting duties; I’ve given her what she needs to stay grounded, to stand up for herself, to handle her own problems. She knows I’m here when she needs me, but she doesn’t need me to save the day.
My relationship with my youngest is similar to my relationship with my father, with our similarities pulling us closer together. We’re both neurodivergent–I saw it in her first and recognized it in myself later. We’re both socially awkward at times, we both shy away from noise and crowds. She has my memory for events and details and she wants to be a writer because she sees me writing. She knows I love her, but she also knows that I don’t expect her to do everything perfectly. I only expect her to be herself, wherever that takes her. She is 11 and I still take her hand in crowded parking lots, guiding her around the icy spots and the potholes and the inattentive drivers. But I know that, eventually, she’s going to have to navigate this world on her own, without her hand in mine, and I can accept it. She will love herself–her true, messy self–as much as I love her. They both will.
Things are gonna change so fast.
I’m ready.

Nanette Donohue is a librarian in Champaign, IL. Her personal stories–and the music that inspired them–are chronicled at thebestthing.blog.

After everything falls away, what's left? christopher l. keller on On Wilco's "Via Chicago" and the responsibilities of mirrors

“Today, for instance, I am particularly oppressed by one memory of a distant past. It came back vividly to my mind a few days ago, and has remained haunting me like an annoying tune that one cannot get rid of. And yet I must get rid of it somehow. I have hundreds of such reminiscences; but at times some one stands out from the hundred and oppresses me. For some reason I believe that if I write it down I should get rid of it. Why not try?” —Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

*

I dreamed about killing you again last night
And it felt alright to me
Dying on the banks of Embarcadero skies
I sat and watched you bleed

As a young man, my father found his future home in a slice of pie and a cup of coffee at an airport diner in Madison. I do not doubt that even then, he had searched far and wide for reliable food and reliable service in every diner and restaurant he visited. I saw it all the time growing up. I heard his comments about the quality of the coffee and the warmth of the food. In this case, it surely didn't hurt that the cute waitress appeared to remember him, but didn't know his backstory or about the small-town roots that threatened to entangle and keep him on the farm. Dressed up in a uniform for a now-defunct airline that operated out of O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, he'd tell her a joke and leave a nickel or two as a tip. It's how small-town boys get women in the city to remember them.
It's how you stand out.
The cute waitress, my mom, saw that airport diner as just another stop in another town she had moved to after her father died. There would be more waitressing jobs, more cat calls, and more stingy tips. A college dropout, she made a living from tips in the big city, or at least cities only slightly larger than the small central Wisconsin towns she shifted between. As a middle child, she became used to a certain level of anonymity. That changed when she started to wait tables. People noticed her. 
That's the origin story my sister and I heard growing up in the same small town that our dad came from. But there's so much more we're left to guess at. There are gaps we won't be able to fill in because we never asked, and now, our parents are gone, along with that restaurant. A gift shop currently occupies the space, and I bought a couple of shirts there a couple of years ago as I was flying back to where I had arrived from.
One said, "Nah, I'm Good." The other had a screen-printed image of the state of Wisconsin.
Above it read "This is Home."

*

Buried you alive in a fireworks display
Raining down on me
Your cold, hot blood ran away from me
To the sea

An unmistakable feeling of sadness often accompanies memories of my childhood in small-town Wisconsin. It's a sadness I kept bottled up and hid behind a forced smile and a serious demeanor. It felt less like something was missing and more like something had been taken. What remained was a space that never quite filled in. In a town of 3,000 people, where everyone not only knows each other, but most everyone is related somehow, other people offer a reflection of who you are. They provide the adjectives that serve as a kind of shorthand for your identity. You're the "Athletic" one or the "Pretty" one. Or the "Smart" one. The one who causes "Trouble."
Maybe you don't have a descriptor. Or you don't like the one you have. What then? You're left at a persistent fork in the road. Down one path, you just play it safe, all day, every day. Conformity might as well be a defense mechanism handed down at birth. "Keep your head and limbs inside the moving vehicle at all times!" If nothing sticks out—if you don't stick out—nothing can hurt you. Many people travel down that path and settle in. It's an easy crutch.

But that other path, well, that's a rich and imaginative inner world that can unfurl whenever the noise from the outside becomes quiet enough to allow for dreams. It's filled with futures as rock-and-roll stars and secret admirers and authors and comedians. These possible identities feel as though they are just one bold step away from becoming reality. But even there, untethered from reality, a very real fear lingers. Fail, and the folks back home begin to whisper. They talk among themselves and agree on the adjectives they can apply to your endeavors. They seem to believe that you can either stay at home or you can find your true self; you can't do both. When you're dead and gone, when you've eventually found peace and a place to rest, they'll think back to how you carried their load a thousand times on your back. In that remembrance, they'll shout about how they knew you.
They'll never know how you subtracted them from your sense of self years ago.

*

I printed my name on the back of a leaf
And I watched it float away
The hope I had in a notebook full of white dry pages
Was all I tried to save
But the wind blew me back via Chicago
In the middle of the night
And all without a fight
At the crush of veils and starlight

Growing up, I didn’t lack for friends. In the small subdivision where we lived, by sheer proximity,  kids were everywhere—up and down the street, around the corner. You knocked on a door to invite someone outside, or you rode your bike or shot baskets in the driveway, and sooner or later someone joined you.
There was one summer, though, when they didn't.
I can't remember how old I was or how long it lasted. I just remember that the other kids stopped knocking on my door. They stopped coming over when I was outside. Suddenly, they were outside playing together, and I watched it all from our front picture window. I didn't feel invited. I didn't feel included. I felt separated and lonely, and an intense sadness. Here's where I need to be upfront. That's how I remember that summer. That's the memory I have. Is it entirely possible that I woke up one day and wondered if they'd even notice if I didn't come around anymore? Maybe I didn't like who I had to be when I was with them, so I just chose to remove myself from the group? Absolutely. 
For all the time I spent in my head, I didn't have the tools to describe how I felt to others, let alone other kids. I grew up in a time and a place where boys were expected to mirror their fathers, who were really just boys themselves. They never learned how to express their feelings, only their fears, which took the form of a hands-off approach to parenting unless discipline was required.
One kid in particular exemplifies this. He is in some of my earliest memories, rocking back and forth and banging his head against the couch cushions, shouting "I. WANT. IT. NOW." when he didn't get his way. Alone, he could be kind. But in a group, with others to show off for, he'd turn into a bully. Like the time when we were playing "pro wrestling." I thought we were pretending. This kid took every opportunity to remind me of how "weak" I was.
Anyway, sometime in between that moment we were first introduced and that summer of loneliness, that kid found a way to describe me. I might have been about my son's age now, an age where everything is real, because why would people want to hurt their friends, physically or emotionally? I'm sure he doesn't remember today, but I can recall how there in a fort we had made in my backyard, he reduced me to tears in an instant.
"You're a mama's boy," he said. "You have to have your mom fight your battles for you."
He wasn't wrong. I absolutely gravitated toward my mother more than my father. One-hundred percent. Dad was insular and reserved. He'd show me how he'd do things, but never let me try on my own; his directions were the right way to reach the end. Mom, on the other hand, made it OK to try something and move on if it doesn't work out. We all make mistakes, so why linger on them? She had a big personality and knew that humor and a little bit of silliness helped to put others at ease. Given all of the health issues she'd encountered since her teenage years, I suspect she had developed this defense mechanism. Doesn't matter. I liked the reflection of myself that she provided.

I didn't know it at the time, but mom wrote a lot when we were kids. I found one diary a few years back that somehow survived the house fire that took my dad's life. She started it when she was pregnant with me. In her perfect mom handwriting, she wrote down her hopes and dreams and fears. She commented on the changes she saw in dad and his adjustments to what was taking place. She marked the day when they settled on the name Christopher Lawrence for a boy. A couple of times a year, I pick it up and read through it. Each time I find some new detail that brings me some comfort. Most recently, I fixated on something she wrote on the first page. They aren't her words, but those of Kahlil Gibran from his poem, "On Children":
"You are the bows from which your children, as living arrows, are sent forth."

*

I know I'll make it back
One of these days and turn on your TV
To watch a man with a face like mine
Being chased down a busy street
When he gets caught I won't get up
And I won't go to sleep
I'm coming home, I'm coming home
Via Chicago

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy didn't expect to live past 2004's "A Ghost is Born," which, save for a few key musicians, was the first album of the band's current—and longest running—lineup. 
In New York City, in the throes of an addiction to the painkillers he used to combat the migraines that had afflicted him since elementary school, Tweedy said he was consumed with a "looming sense of imminent demise."
"[I]t felt like a big flood was coming, something no one could survive. So I was saving anything I could, piling it all onto this ark as a way to salvage whatever I could of myself," Tweedy writes in his 2018 book "Let's Go (So We Can Get Back). "...A Ghost Is Born would be a gift to my kids, who could turn to it when they were older and put together pieces of me a little bit more than I'd been able to put myself together for them in real life." 
What he was doing, then, was removing anything that would dull the mirror he wanted his children to return to one day and see something of themselves in.
Tweedy grew up in Belleville, Illinois, a town of around 40,000 people that sits some 15 miles from the Missouri state line. Parents JoAnn Tweedy worked as an interior designer while Bob Tweedy worked at all hours for the local railroad company.
"Most nights I'd stay close to my mother…as she watched TV and smoked cigarettes on the couch. It was the best she could do," Tweedy writes in his 2018 book. "She'd been a mother for so much of her life that by the time I came around, she'd kind of given up on parenting."
Belleville and its residents are obvious characters in the music created by Tweedy's second-most well-known band that he formed in high school with classmate Jay Farrar. Uncle Tupelo helped create the alternative country/No Depression movement (named after the song on its 1990 album of the same name). A well-documented falling out with Farrar a few years later led to Wilco.
"Via Chicago" appears on Wilco's third album, 1999's "Summerteeth," which Pitchfork gave a score of 9.4 in its review, calling it "a loose song cycle considering the intermingling of perception, communication, and reality, and its [effect] on our relationships." The initial recording sessions took place about two years prior in Texas in Willie Nelson's studio, according to the 2004 book "Learning How to Die" by Chicago music critic Greg Kot.
"Tweedy was particularly emotional during the sessions because he was upset that he was unable to spend time with his wife and son because of the constant touring schedule," Kot wrote. 
Inspired by Henry Miller and written in the style of a murder ballad—think "Long Black Veil"—the near co-dependent nature of Tweedy's relationship with another Jay, Jay Bennett, no doubt also influenced "Via Chicago." In his book, Kot relays this from then-Wilco drummer Ken Coomer:
"It was Jeff and Jay feeding off each other, not just musically, but other vices. There was a bonding going on, and it didn't just involve music. Jeff didn't go into rehab [for an addiction to painkillers], but he should've, [sic] in my opinion. Jay was taking painkillers, antidepressants, and wasn't in much better shape."
Bennett, who passed in 2009, lays a thick dirge over "Via Chicago" that seems to mask and rob the studio track of the immediacy and stakes of the modern-day live version. While both ask for your attention, the studio version feels lilting and morose. The live version feels necessary and haunting. Reducing a song to one moment feels foolish, but for me, it's the fourth time we hear the arpeggiated D major riff that serves as a kind of chorus. It's not the climax, but the first time we hear current guitarist Nels Cline make his instrument cry in a way that shows us what pain sounds like when it's left alone long enough to finally earn its release.

Maybe the song can reach these heights because the people now around Tweedy have helped him to see something in himself that past bandmates couldn't or wouldn’t. Especially the Jays, who chose competition instead of a complementary role. Perhaps it was the other way around. You never know until you run the equation.
But perhaps we're given a hint in Kot's book and his description of what took place after the last Uncle Tupelo show.
“Tweedy drove to his parents' house on 40th St. in Belleville, sat down on the footstool in his living room, and sobbed."

*

Where the cups are cracked and hooked
Above the sink, they make me think
Crumbling ladder tears don't fall
They shine down your shoulders
Crawling is screw faster lash, I blow it with kisses
Rest my head on a pillowy star
And a cracked door moon
Says I haven't gone too far

It would be easy to dismiss the lyrics to “Via Chicago” as nothing more than an ode to coming home. Tweedy has said he doesn't put too much into the meaning of songs—his or others. As for me, the song’s power lies in the implied changes that take place while traveling a path.
The song isn’t so much about arrival as it is about metamorphosis and what happens when someone passes through different places, among different people, long enough to be changed. What once felt fixed becomes malleable, negotiable even. The experience not only alters who you are, but also your very definition of identity. It isn't a destination, but a continuum that stretches over time. 
On one end, you have the stories about yourself that you inherited from others. The routines and expectations you didn't have a say in, but took part in nonetheless. On the other end, you find comfort. A place to rest as yourself, if only for a little while. Somewhere in between, you find "Chicago." Filled with potential energy, it's a place of beginning and becoming, where the roles you were assigned loosen just enough so you can imagine something else entirely.

In some ways, Chicago is home. In others, it’s a mess. Because when the door slams shut on the version of yourself, and you have to face what comes next, home is where you go to cry. It's where you go to face who you've become and begin to calculate the equation anew.

*

I'm coming home
I'm coming home
I'm coming home
Via Chicago
I'm coming home
I'm coming home
I'm coming home

The last time I heard my mom's voice, I found myself in a familiar spot, wrapped up in blankets in my childhood bedroom, alone and crying. A week earlier, I had traveled a thousand miles to check in on her and my dad. Both were in an assisted living facility. Dad had suffered a stroke. Mom had aspirated a morphine tablet she was taking for pain. Doctors said we should consider hospice.
The uncertainty of that week could have lasted ten lifetimes. The day before, my sister and I told our parents they couldn’t stay in the house alone anymore. That conversation went poorly. Later, as we tried to eat together as a family, I had nothing to offer. My tank was empty. My outlook was poor. Mom looked my way and tried to coax a smile. Instead, I think she saw the fear.
Afterward, in an attempt to stop time for just a moment, I retreated to the house they hadn’t lived in for weeks. There, among the clutter and chaos, I carved out a small space so I could rest before going to see mom. Instead, I wallowed. I called and told her I’d be by in the morning.
I had traveled clear across the country, and all I had to do was get up, drive four minutes up the street, and sit with her for a while. Instead, I stayed there under the blankets in the first bedroom I remember and wept. I thought I was safe at home. I wasn't.
I never heard mom's voice again. She never spent another night in the home she helped make. Some time after we spoke on the phone, she fell trying to leave her bed. The fall seemed like the last thing her body and mind could take. When I arrived on Monday morning, doctors had sedated her. All that was left to do was wait for her to decide it was time to be done.
On the day of the funeral, I spent some time lurking around the basement of the Catholic church, remembering the weekly after—school Catechism we'd attend there. Of how attending Catholic Mass was a regular part of my childhood. As I made my way upstairs to await the beginning of the service, I saw a longtime village resident who had volunteered as a Girl Scout leader with my mom decades ago. This is someone who knew my mom. Someone who had learned from her. I flashed a smile and said hello, and she offered condolences. But in that Midwestern way of just not being able to help themselves, she gave me a leftover sentiment to take with me.
"It sure is nice that they opened the church up for someone who hasn't attended Mass in so long."
More than seven years later, those words still bounce around my head from time to time. Thankfully, they're quickly drowned out by this second chance I still chase. All my life, I knew that at some point I would be there next to mom at the end, to be the one to comfort her. To offer her something familiar. To remind her not of who she had become, but of who she had been. A waitress. A mom. A retail clerk. A preschool teacher. A 50-year-old college graduate. A tutor for inmates. But when faced with that moment that had dominated my thoughts since I was a child, I didn't know what to do. I had no one to mimic. My role model couldn't talk to me, and without that mirror to offer me a reflection, I became the person I'd always been: a frightened child who wanted his mom.
Turns out, after balancing the equation, responsibility remains.

*

I'm searching for a home
Searching for a home
Searching for a home
Via Chicago
I'm coming home
I'm coming home

Since my mom passed away, I’ve returned to my hometown a handful of times, usually for funerals or to clean up my messes. My most recent trip, in September, was for my cousin’s funeral—someone who became a touchpoint for my dad after mom’s death, and a kind of surrogate father to me after dad passed away.
The visit carried the trappings of home. My sister was there. We ran into cousins. When we stopped at the property where the house we grew up in once stood, our old high school guidance counselor happened to be walking by, and we talked for nearly an hour. People I ran into remarked on how much I’d grown up. They asked about the stories I'd worked on for The Associated Press and told me how much I reminded them of my dad…of how much they missed my dad.
And then it was done. I managed to resist the urge to linger as the version of myself I’d been for those few days. I had a flight to Chicago to catch. My sister dropped me off at the Dane County Regional Airport. On my way to the security checkpoint, I passed the spot where the restaurant used to be—the one where my parents met so many years ago. As we began our descent into Chicago, I thought about all the versions of myself that have passed from this world. I’ve started over so many times I’ve lost count, but I have a clear sense that the time in front of me is shorter than what I've left behind me; starting over now would be a waste.
Later, after scrambling through O'Hare to reach my connecting flight, my mind turned toward who I was returning to and where I would land. It’s the place where my kids go to school and dream big dreams. Where I’ve shared years of school rituals and milestones with other parents. Where I play basketball four times a week, play guitar and drums (like this cover of Via Chicago), record tiny songs, and spend time with people who push me to be a better version of myself. And it’s where the love of my life—a girl who once took me along on her own adventure to Chicago—waited for me.
If you asked her how I’ve changed, she might say I haven’t, not at my core. But I hope she’d also say I no longer mistake motion for progress. That I’m willing to account for my actions, the successes and the failures, even if she needs to remind me what those are.
Still, something feels unfinished. In a group text message recently, a friend said he needed to start sharing wisdom with his kids so that after he’s gone, they'll have something to remember him for. I knew exactly what he meant. Like my mom, I used to write solely for myself. There's a box under my desk filled with notebooks containing observations, poetry, short stories, and essays. It's been my intention to return to them and attempt to remember who I had hoped to be by now. Maybe even jumpstart the muse. But, to me, the solitude required to explore one's mind and create what it sees feels too much like isolation.
My children deserve more than my bylines and stories I've told about the news. They deserve to read stories about me and about their mom and all the people in our lives who shaped us. They should know about the places they used to know as home, and the stories of their past selves from times that they will never remember. 
They deserve a mirror held in place not by a guide, but by the court jester.

Christopher L. Keller is on track to join his mom as a college graduate at the age of 50. He's planning to receive his bachelor's degree in Liberal Studies in May from the University of New Mexico. He is also an award-winning journalist with The Associated Press based in the Southwest. He believes that telling stories helps people understand the world around them and their place in it. Most importantly, it helps him understand his place in it.