Over fifty years or so ago I discovered the art of Carl Larsson. His paintings of his family in their daily life from their home in Sundborn, Sweden, enchanted me. I hung prints of favorite paintings framed in blue, bought a piece of furniture I called my “Carl Larsson table,” and had a pair of red clogs from the Swedish shop in the Rice Village.

I’d always wanted to visit the house and gardens that I’d loved from his paintings, but never expected that I would.

Until I imagined what outrageous thing I’d love to do to celebrate my 75th birthday.

So here I am. In Sweden. And I still can’t believe I’m really here.

I’ve called this, however, the Karin Larsson tour because it turns out that the beauty I had admired was actually the work of Karin, Carl’s wife. Yes, Carl did the canvas, but Karin created the home with beautiful textiles, furniture she designed and built, the colorful gardens, and, of course, their children who were at the center of the paintings.

My dearest traveling friend and I first spent two nights in Stockholm which included nearly a day long visit to Artipelag, a museum nestled in green space in the Stockholm archipelago.

Carefully designed beauty everywhere. Even the bathrooms.

We spent a whole day driving the three hour journey from Stockholm to Lake Siljan. We are slow travelers because we keep taking pauses for surprises along the way.

This included an art walk in Örebro

and what the guides say is the best ice cream in Sweden.

We arrived at our hotel where I had booked the Carl Larsson suite in time for a glorious sunset.

Such beauty and I hadn’t even reached the destination of my pilgrimage.

My dearest friend Ginny turned 85 in July, or as she likes to call it, 8.5 decades.

I turn 75 in September, or as I like to call it, 3/4 of a century.

In July, we began the 160 year celebration tour.

Almost a year ago, we began talking about how we’d like to celebrate our milestone birthdays.

For Ginny, it was to go to the Santa Fe Opera. For me, it was to go to Sweden to visit Carl Larsson’s home.

Plans made and edited and changed, it has begun.

At the very end of July we went to Bentonville, Arkansas. It was a bonus celebration at the Momentary at Crystal Bridges to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter and others in concert.

Now we are in Taos, New Mexico, for the Opera part of the tour.

Next week we fly to Sweden and then to Germany. The Berlin trip is a bonus celebration to go to the Women’s FIBA World Cup where we will see 16 of the best women’s basketball teams in the world—with the culminating activity to cheer on Team USA.

Birthday blessings to both of us.

My family, like so many others, has a great history of getting together on the 4th of July. One of my favorite places to gather is on land where our family first settled in Texas in 1851.

My brothers and I are stewards of the remaining acreage. One brother built a solar powered home on one portion, and the other brother lives in the home my parents built nearly 50 years ago.

Having a place to call home is a deep American value. I feel so privileged to have a place to rest my feet where my ancestors have walked and farmed and harvested and shared meals and prayed and laughed and argued and lived and died for nearly 200 years.

My brothers and sister in law are marching in the local (McKinney) parade. I declined to join them, sadly, because of the heat. However, their church, First Methodist McKinney, has a huge welcome ministry each year for the parade with hot dogs and snow cones and an air conditioned prime viewing area, and I’m in my comfy chair waiting for the parade to begin.

As I watch the pre-parade gather of red, white, and blue, and brown and black and pink and tan, mostly hatted, pulling carts with children, and carrying tarps and flags and blankets and water bottles, for me, this is America.

Everyone who is here has come from somewhere else. Whether their people walked across the Bering Land Bridge 15,000 years ago or came across the southern border five years ago, all of us are from away.

Seeing this parade of color and joy is the best reminder of the America I love. Oh. And the hot dogs and snow cones, too.

Atlanta knows how to celebrate Juneteenth. As God would have it, I am here in the midst of it.

It started with my best friend wanting to see the Amy Sherald exhibit at the High Museum. And since we were here, why not add a WNBA game on the next day? And somehow missing in the midst of the planning the significance of our travel dates.

So here we are. In these days of America pausing to reexamine the truth of who we are in our 250th year.

It may be fighting cages on the lawn of the White House. It may be corporate sponsors of national events. It may be about starting a war costing billions of dollars and with more lives lost than we can count instead of funding health care.

In Atlanta, I was reminded of what else the truth of America is.

It’s a city full of people wearing a diversity of shirts celebrating the sin of “owning” people finally being abolished when all had been informed of the law’s enactment two and one half years before.

It’s a museum offering free admission for all and filled with people in colorful dress. My very best friend and I were almost the only pale skins in a rainbow sea.

It’s viewing an exhibit of art created by a woman from a small Georgia town honoring the people too often overlooked.

It’s people pausing with deep emotion to view portraits of our former First Lady juxtaposed with one of a woman murdered by police when they entered the wrong house.

It’s going to a women’s basketball game where the players have epitomized what it means to be strong women and who have worked to make sure those opportunities are available to all, particularly through voting.

It’s singing Lift Every Voice And Sing after the National Anthem.

America. The Beautiful.