Life is a series of additions.
When I was young, we lived in a two-bedroom trailer in a little trailer park in Southeastern Wisconsin.
My mom, my stepdad, my two brothers and me.
As my baby brother grew, we knew the trailer wouldn't be big enough for all of us.
So my stepdad decided to build an addition.
I wish I had a picture of it at that exact time, but I couldn't find one.
I don't have many pictures from that time in my life.
This is one of the few I have of us in the trailer.
Me and my older brother, Chris, hanging out in the kitchen.
Circa 1983 maybe?
I remember the addition going up, with the walls framed in and the exposed insulation.
And the one night when we were playing hide and seek when Chris decided to tuck himself into a corner of the addition, hoping we wouldn't see him.
He must have pressed too hard against it because he pushed right through the insulation and ended up outside of the trailer!
I still remember the look on my mom's face when he came in through the front door.
There were some really fun times when we lived there.
Simpler times, without social media to tell the world what was going on in our lives.
And just our memories to preserve them.
That addition became my bedroom and served us well during that period of our lives.
In life, we experience a near-constant flow of additions.
We graduate high school and add a college dorm or a new apartment.
Then maybe we add a spouse or a partner.
And then maybe a kid or two.
As we grow older, there are more additions.
A new career.
A new friend or a new neighborhood.
A new goal or accomplishment.
The vast majority of the time they are good.
They add to our lives and expand us so we can continue to grow.
But there are also times when the additions aren't quite strong enough to hold us up.
Sometimes in the process of adding them, we end up falling through and land on the outside, looking in.
When that happens, I think we need to just sit for a minute.
Like I imagine my brother did. On the lawn, next to the addition to our little trailer.
Wondering how we got there and what to do next.
And then...
Get up off the ground.
Brush ourselves off.
Walk back in through the front door like nothing happened.
Put the insulation back where it belongs.
And finish building that addition.
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