The Best Place in the World

“Iowa is the best place in the world…to be from.”

That’s how I described my home state when I moved to Dallas five years ago. It was a passive-aggressive statement meaning, “I had a nice upbringing, but man am I glad to be out of there!”

Everyone is from somewhere. Our relationships with our hometowns can be as complicated as any in our lives. The more you embarrass yourself in one town, the smaller that town feels. My already small town kept shrinking as I fumbled my way through the front half of my twenties.

At 26, I received the kind of grace boys without direction or confidence should be so lucky to receive. I met a girl who believed I was worth loving. I didn’t know why she wanted to be with me, but I did everything in my power to be the kind of person who deserved to be with her. And things turned around.

A year into our relationship, we left Iowa to seek opportunities a big market could provide. I never stopped to consider whether I was running toward my ambitions or away from the places and people who knew my failures. It was a both. I left Iowa fueled by equal parts ambition and shame.

In Dallas, we established a life together. We made great friends, grew our careers, and finally our family. I had grown as a person, but was still insecure and felt like a fraud. In my mind, people from my hometown knew what a screw-up I really was.

So I distanced myself, first with miles of physical distance then miles of emotional distance. I buried the earliest pieces of my personal journey out of fear.

In April, I decided to take a giant leap out of my comfort zone and read a personal essay about a key piece of that journey in a Dallas storytelling showcase called Oral Fixation. Standing in front of more than 300 people and delivering a personal story was cathartic, even a little fun. It helped that all but four of those audience members were total strangers.

Last week, the video of my reading was posted online. I shared it with friends and family, hoping a few family members would watch it and enjoy what they saw. I was blown away when, almost immediately, my old friends and classmates started sharing the video with incredible words of encouragement and praise. I practically walked on air as people I hadn’t spoken to in years told me they were proud of me.

This isn’t a story about my journey or the man I’ve become. It’s about the power of owning your personal story and sharing it with others. Our stories connect us to the places we’re from. No matter where this life takes me, I am always going to be Blake Friis from West Branch, Iowa.

And, for me, that’s the best place in the world to be from.

My Son The Bridge Builder

I am flying directly over the Grand Canyon on my way to Los Angeles, which is uniquely appropriate.

My one and only trip to the Grand Canyon was as a kid, with my little brother, Ben. Some time later, Ben would travel down an assortment of paths that would ultimately lead him to LA, estranged from our family, under the name Tye Mohawk.

Our intention is to meet up in LA, if only briefly, before our chosen lifestyles send us in typically opposite directions. Full disclosure - despite our diametrically opposed dispositions, I never stopped loving Ben...but I fucking hate Tye Mohawk.

The emotional distance we've had to traverse for this potential meeting to occur makes the historic natural void under my plane look like a pothole. By the age of 26 I had grown perfectly comfortable with the idea that I may never see my brother again. Some bridges burn too damn well, and with enough erosion, opposite sides of a canyon can seem unworthy of bridging.

I take responsibility for our relationship flatlining. I quit trying. He did too, but that's not the point. I'm the pragmatic, stable brother, and he's the needy emotional vagabond. I always knew that, but I guess at a certain point I got tired of doing the work for which I was better suited.

What ensued has essentially been a four year staring contest. No winner, no loser, no contact, nothing even slightly resembling a blink.

If not an outright bridge builder, my son has certainly provided a constructive environment in which a bridge could exist.

The day my son was born, I received an unexpected Facebook message. The name attached to it was Tye Mohawk, but the message was from Ben. I communicate with each of them largely through the exchange of specifically targeted four letter words, with distinctly different emotions conveyed. When a message contains the word "love" I know exactly which of his personas is behind it.

Given the distance between us over the past several years, I've never been less qualified to analyze my brother's motives. Maybe he recognizes some degree of wrongdoing and wishes to rectify past mistakes. Maybe he accepts no responsibility whatsoever, and simply feels the birth of my son is worthy of acknowledgment regardless of our personal differences. I don't know.

I do know that being a father supersedes everything else in my life. If I am going to pass on the best parts of myself to my son, I need to exercise those qualities at every turn. I need to be the big brother my parents taught me to be. I need to end the ridiculous staring contest. I need to blink and pick up the phone. After that we'll see.

Who knows? Maybe one day Gabe's uncle and I will take him to the Grand Canyon, and explain how he is the reason we can stand on the same side.