Yesterday Iain and I returned to the Acton-Boxborough community where we previously lived in our converted barn and raised Dylan for the first eleven years of her life. We had been invited to create an exhibit at Sargent Memorial Library in Boxborough (our sixth library) for the month of September, but first we had to make a side trip to Cape Cod.

We are back from another 12-hour exhibit-moving day! This time Iain and I made the journey from Salem, New Hampshire to Hyannis, Massachusetts with the added challenge of Sunday night Cape Cod traffic, but it’s up and we’re done for another month.

I feel bad about my husband’s holiday weekend. We have exhibit moves once a month, but this one was a doozy.

I once had the honor of being called “the least pretentious person” a friend had ever met, but I am now handing over the crown to Autumn. When you meet her it’s like hanging out with an old friend, she immediately puts you at ease, as does her writing. Neither of us planned to create a Pride portrait during Pride Month, we both just sort of fell into it, and I’m so proud to share her story:

There was a very strange moment recently when Dylan texted the family group chat and said “Your news story was excellent!!! So proud of you!!!” Iain texted, “Cool, thanks for watching it.” She replied, “Was talking to Mummy.”

Jared happened upon the I Am More exhibit earlier this year at NorthShore Mall, and after recognizing our former mayor of Gloucester, stopped to read the essays. He sent me a quick note, saying it was “quite wonderful,” and after looking him up I was embarrassed to see he was a professional portrait photographer who regularly contributes to The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. He asked if he could pitch a story to NorthShore Magazine about the project and soon enough he was in our yard taking photos of me for the April article. I noticed a black shiny object on the side of his head, and he admitted that the reason he connected so much with the exhibit was because of the struggles he had gone through with hearing loss. I immediately wanted to learn more and soon enough the tables were turned and I was in his studio hearing his story:

On Sunday Iain and I got in our second home, the UHaul van, and traveled to South Shore Plaza to pick up the I Am More exhibit, brought it back to the Paint Factory, unloaded, re-loaded a different I Am More exhibit and drove it to Burlington Mall, where we unloaded after closing and set up a new exhibit! Then we got stuck in road construction on the way home and staggered to bed.

Today we recover from a 12-hour day of moving the exhibit across the state. It began at 7:30 am with the key lockbox at UHaul frozen shut. My husband had just been on an 18-day expedition in the Sea of Cortez, working from dawn to dusk on the water, flew home to a three-hour time difference PLUS Daylight Savings Time, loaded up new portraits at the Paint Factory in howling cold winds, and now we stood at a frozen lockbox.

When I was in my twenties I learned that hair could be donated to make wigs for children with alopecia. I didn’t know anything about the disease but it seemed like an easy enough thing to do, so I did it multiple times. If I had bothered to learn about alopecia I might have understood that a wig was not the easy bandaid I thought was. Erin taught me about the challenges and complexity of living without hair and the impacts we couldn’t even imagine:

It’s been too long since a certain little face has been in my life and I needed to change that.