I parked my car on the dirt road, slipped through the handmade twig gate, and followed a winding path through the frozen garden just as the first snowflakes began to fall. Thirty years ago, the owners of this remote bit of countryside had two young sons, no money, and a dream. They wanted a good life, a house of their own, a piece of land on which to grow food for their family. When I met Bill and Eileen for the first time last summer, I was struck most of all by their joy. And then by the…
When my boys were small we had a favorite winter book called “Something is Going to Happen.” As the family wakes up on a cold winter day, each of them senses that “something is going to happen.” A young child gets dressed in silence, the baby lies still, listening from his crib, the mother and father look at one another knowingly, the dog sniffs the air. One by one, the family members gather in hushed early morning stillness, and then open the door to gaze out upon the first snow of winter. We loved reading that book aloud, loved…
I thought I “got” the internet. Need a movie time? Google the theatre. Want a book? One-click service at amazon. Can’t get the New York Times delivered in rural New Hampshire? Read it on-line. Need to get a message out to the members of your book club? Send a group e-mail. Wondering what your college sophomore son is up to tonight? Check his status on Facebook. All of that still seems pretty amazing to me. My kids can’t believe it when I tell them that, in my first job out of college, I typed letters on an electric typewriter, meticulously…
One after the other, my aunt’s husband of fifty-nine years and her three grown children spoke — about what they remembered, what they would miss. It was bitterly cold in Florida on Saturday, all rain and bluster. My dad had gone to the house early, to staple plastic sheeting around the screened lanai and install a rented space heater to keep the guests warm. ”I want music,” my aunt had told my mother some months ago, and so my mom found a singer, and we had “Amazing Grace.” Also at my aunt’s request, the portrait she had painted of her…
The house is so quiet. I had planned to spend the afternoon putting Christmas decorations away, vacuuming the dog hair and grit from the floor, stripping sheets off the kids’ beds, the guest-room bed, the pull-out couch. (We had a full house here last night.) But I know that when I get up from my spot at the kichen table and begin all those tasks, it will mean that the holiday we’ve had together really is over. When I went to bed last night, around 11:30, Henry and a couple of high school classmates were sprawled on the couch with…
