We were looking at houses in Front Royal, a small Virginia town sixty miles west of Washington DC at the confluence of the North and South forks of the Shenandoah River and tucked at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This sounds lovely, but it used to be
Midday at the cabin was spent down at the lake among the willows and waves. Afternoons were sun-rich and silent. Quiet in order to let sleeping toddlers rest, each of us found peaceful employments—reading, sketching, daydreaming. Below a dreadful, menacing black sword and shield crossed by the heavy chain
If the alcove window had announced no cousins yet, I’d slip down the hall to visit the only other upstairs room, the playroom—bright and sunny, with a low-sloping ceiling and turreted punch-out whose latticed bay windows also overlooked the front lawn. Grandma had painted the space to suggest we
Morning dawns at the cabin in slanting rays of dappled sunlight and with the rush and roar of the lakeshore breeze through the host of hostas, the cabin’s perpetual sentinels, and through their attendants, the old maples and firs. Called into wakefulness by these familiar friends, I’d breathe in
The grapes weren’t ready for us. The mosquitos always were. Leaving my grandparents’ house, we’d pile into the van for the twenty-minute drive to their lakeside cabin where we stayed during our annual Minnesota pilgrimage. Anticipation would grow as we heard the crunch of the gravel lane and swung