Adapting to life in Beverly Hills challenged everything I thought I knew about people and places. Academics and social skills got tested. Unable to become invisible, I tried harder to earn recognition and respect.

Going through pictures with my son and daughter-in-law, I came across a picture with a hole.

“Look at this. My dad is cut out of the picture,” I said.

Like a favorite video, I retrieve, replay, and unwind memories of a happy time when the four of us lived in the same house as a family. In Ventura, California, I went to first grade at Sheridan Way Elementary.

Less than three months after Renée died, a loud knock in the middle of the night woke Mom and me, and I jumped to the floor from the top bunk, following her to peer from the corner. Two Las Vegas police officers stood at the door.

When I walk my dog Kona, we go up to the roads above our cabin that intersect with the main road. I always stop at the same spot to take a picture of the West Peak, one of the two “Spanish Peaks” in southeastern Colorado.

My mother attracted oddballs, creeps, and weirdoes. While we lived in Henderson, Nevada, she had a few boyfriends. One of them, a skydiver, Mom loved him, and I liked him too, but he turned out to be married with a family in Utah.