This episode is made possible through the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation.
My father has dementia and I'm his only caretaker.
And there's something about that always being in the background.
My father has no living family apart from essentially me and my son.
He's at a place where we need to be visiting him every day or every other day.
Otherwise, it's unsustainable, you know?
And so that's the level of caretaking that's happening.
The way that we kind of nourish him and keep him buoyant is by visiting him,
and my son does that with me.
This is sort of the lifeline for him right now.
It's almost like his purpose is seeing my son, seeing his grandson.
What nourishes him the most is just having loving interactions with us, you know?
He was a poet and really encouraged me to be creative and create all the time.
been in my life since I was born.
And so a couple days ago, my son and I packed some paper and some pencils,
and we went to my dad's apartment that I've gotten for him.
He lives by himself.
And I was thinking about what's the art that we could do together that would be the most collaborative.
You know, thinking about art making as a way of being, as a way that you move through the world,
rather than it's sort of like a start and end time practice.