I returned to a familiar place, a place I used to spend a
lot of...
I returned to a familiar place, a place I used to spend a
lot of time. I returned to the place where my grandmother lived, but she no
longer lives, and the house where she lived belongs now to someone else and is
changed beyond recognition. The familiar story: returning to a hometown, a
childhood place, and finding it altered, othered, gone. A familiar story,
usually sad. But this was not all sad. The light was as good as it always is in
this place at this time of year, as summer begins to collapse and the winds
move the clouds. The water was warm enough to swim and seals slicked their
heads up, bobbing in the waves like dogs made of shine. The pleasures were
simple and real: a roast chicken taken to a beach and eaten with fingers as it
got dark; beers pulled from a bicycle basket and had in the wind by a
lighthouse; smell of hedge, beach plum, clematis, sea. In an unfamiliar house,
there was something familiar in the slant of roof, the atmosphere of attic. I
missed what was gone and loved what was there as the season made an unofficial
shift. Summer gave way under fall’s press and the house made noise in the night
as the wind pushed at all the boards and doors, a beam of light from the
lighthouse sweeping through in silence, again again, passing through the glass of a window
facing north.
