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A few words on Prince.

In 2011 I was living in Minnesota, in school and working as a Direct Care Provider. None of this seems relevant to Prince, except the presence of one very special person.

My clients were two women in their mid-30s with the mental and emotional capacities of third graders, respectively. I arrived at their apartment on Saturday afternoons at 4pm and left at 4pm the next day, sleeping on their couch through the night and preparing meals, administering medications and keeping peace between. Each day revolved entirely around their mood; there were extremes of good and bad days, some good where they’d feel stable, rich, happy — and more often, sadness, confusion, resorting to their private spaces.

I mostly looked after T. A 35-year-old woman from rural Minnesota, T was adopted at a young age after her substance-abusing parents could no longer care for her. She’d been developmentally delayed from the start and in adulthood was a brittle diabetic and schizophrenic. T’s sweetness and soft temperament were sharply countered by her dark side, and she spent days engaging with imaginary visions and some nights, attempting to run.

I spent a lot of time trying to read and understand T. Because there were many things going through her mind that I couldn’t comprehend—places, people and scenarios of her dreams (sometimes nightmares), awake and asleep—she was difficult to grasp. When she felt sadness, it was deep; missing the family she seldom saw, or a feeling of betrayal from humankind at large, in a world that was bigger and more complicated than she could understand. One evening, in the common haze of confusion about her condition, I explained: our bodies are complex systems, and something is bound to go wrong. She agreed.

T and I would go for drives. Sometimes we’d drive to the grocery store, or to pick up medication. Sometimes we’d make up reasons to get in the car, just to get out of their tiny apartment, which always carried a certain sickness. And when we’d drive, T picked the music—it was a liberty that made her feel she had some control, in a life where other people made most of her decisions.

T always picked Prince. T, lover of boxed macaroni and cheese, cigarettes, naps, perpetual wearer of fuzzy socks—T loved Prince. She loved Prince. She knew the melodies and the words, and she showed me well.

And we’d drive, return back to the apartment, sit in the parking lot and stay in the car the extra minutes to listen to more Prince.

I am sad for T, who I haven’t spoken to in four years—because anyone like Prince that can have such an impact on her world , confusing as it was—has added impact on mine.

Happy thoughts of hearing him in her room, through the car stereo, and fixes in parking lots with T, forever.

This chair belonged to my great aunt and uncle. It’s one of a pair, though at this point I have just one with me in New York. Years ago my great aunt and uncle, Lucille and John Decker, had the chairs in their lake cabin at Rice Lake, a small lake outside of Douglas, ND. During the summers in the mid-90s-early 2000s my parents took my siblings and I to visit the Decker’s cabin – storied as one of the oldest on the lake – and we’d spend the afternoon running along their thin, rickety dock, swimming in murky waters, then running up a thick grassy hill to the chipped white lodge.

Their cabin was a time capsule; a perfect 1950s table with matching chairs, 70s linens and these funky midcentury chairs. Perched in the corner was John Decker’s retro bucket cap and bathing shorts, sun-faded from years of basking in lawn furniture.

And I could never appreciate it all until now. My parents made a tremendous effort to share John and Lucille’s space with us, if only for a quick summer afternoon, and even when we didn’t find it glamorous. Sometimes we’d pick up a bucket of KFC chicken, drive the half hour to eat and take a dip, then drive home. One year for Father’s Day, all seven of us piled into the old cabin for our first and only overnight. At the time the home was divided into a kitchen in one room, and a multi-functioning living, dining and sleeping room were in another. There was one full bed, and that night it rained. I will never forget in the pitch dark, hearing the sound of mice scurry in the night.

My parents eventually made it their own, purchasing the cabin for our family and leveling it in due time to make way for the next generation. My late grandfather, Edmond Leonard, was the chief architect for our new cabin, contructed on the same ground as the first; together with my dad, brothers, family and friends, we built a new lake home from the thick grass up. It was Grandpa Leonard’s last project before he passed away in 2003, and it is both beautiful and emotional that his spirit encompasses the new cabin.

These chairs made the move, and old met new (one of them is still at the new cabin). But so many things I won’t forget about those past days, and that small, musty cabin: the smell, the wooden spring-loaded door, the white siding and burgundy trim; the abundance of windows and equally abundant, wonky shades. I remember the cobwebbed sailboat snug by the shore, the lawn chairs, the light. The feeling of being there, of reluctantly jumping off a dock once, then joyously the next. And after all, drying off, wrapping in a retro towel, coming through the screen door and sitting…in this chair.

I am so happy to have this in my home, and to restore and take care of it going forward.

Be on my side,
I’ll be on your side