March 3 of 12

One Saturday the week before Easter we visited my grandmother who had been in the hospital. I hadn’t seen her since August because she’d been in California when she’d been admitted to the hospital and only recently had come back home.

After our visit we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to find the house I’d grown up in until the age of 6 years old. This is the place where my earliest memories are set and the house we called “Woodrows.”  I’d not been back since that time and was eager to see it and show it to the kids.

It turned out to be the perfect place to take our March family picture. We set the camera on the hood of the car and propped it up with the lens cap. I also processed this picture differently than usual, deciding a gentle vintage wash complemented it.

The old driveway was overgrown. There are many pictures of me playing in mud puddles in this driveway!

I remember this birch tree very well. I liked to peel the bark from it.

The house now sits behind a development. When I was growing up it was just fields. The Susquehanna river can be seen glinting through trees. Some of the beautiful plants and flower remain, running riot: ferns, daffodils, dogwoods, bleeding hearts, and others I couldn’t identify.

The pump house was my play house and I had a little kitchen set inside of it. There are also lots of pictures of me playing in it, so it was appropriate to get a picture of me peeking out of one of the windows.

I told the boys stories of my time there, and they enjoyed them, asking for more. As we left Owen said, “Good-bye, sad house.” And Duncan assured me that “worker men” would come and fix it up for me.

Sadly, I don’t think so.