“He travels fastest who travels alone.”
From Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The Winners

This is an homage to Alone.  She has travelled with me from Chicago to my home in Seattle.

An ancestor painted Alone based on a copy from an original illustration.  I know nothing about the ancestor.  The painting has been in the family for approximately 100 years.

It seems fitting that I inherited Alone.  She was a formidable presence in the home of my childhood.   My sisters were not in my play arena.  They are 15 and 11 years older than me.  I joke with the eldest one that when I was growing up, I was an “only child.”

“No you weren’t,” she says.

But it felt that way.  And so while my sisters hung out at the Sugar Bowl with pals, I made up imaginary friends.  One of them was Frosty, pictured here with me, Mother, and sisters:

Later, in the basement of our house, I constructed my own wooly home made from blankets draped over cabinet doors where I snuggled inside to make believe this was my fortress which no one in the family could storm.
Eventually I re-potted myself and moved to Seattle and married.

But Alone is still with me.  She helped me locate my imagination and realize that “home” — even if attached — is the domain of each individual to seek in his or her heart.