Porches

Dear You,

The rain this early afternoon came while I was sitting on my porch reading a novel my guest left behind. The lanai, as it is known here, has a metal covering, and the sound drew me away from the scene of the crime in my story and, within a moment, transported me up the Atlantic coast 1,403 miles to another porch and another time.

I spent only a short time each Summer on the porch in Manomet, MA. Those days, like the house itself, no longer exist -- the house, unlike my memories of it, have been bulldozed and carted to a landfill.

Memories, I think, are a sort of landfill, too. More easily mined, sometimes, for the treasures we bury there. In the case today, I closed my eyes and back I went, lying on one of the spare beds, a book nearby, listening to the rain strike the rubber roof and watching the reflection of myself in the windows that had been swung open and hooked to the rafters.

I was transported, and with a great sense of longing had to pull myself back here to March 22 in Florida. Back to the scene of the crime.

Those walls can no longer talk

Dear You,

For over twenty years I owned a cottage in New England. Ahh, the memories! At one point I even dreamed of retiring to live there -- a sort of poet's life. Very romantic, you know?

Dreams, however, are just that, and when the reality of My Current Situation sank in, the For Sale sign went up. The buyer seemed little interested in the story of the house, which was (to me) a very good one. The structure was nearing its second century. Built in 1910 from wood recycled from the old Harvard University football stadium, it had been the summer place for its builder and family for many years. Then a young couple bought it, winterized it, and added a dog and two children before out-growing the confines. I was the third owner.

I drove past it a year after the sale and found the house in a pile. Sticking out of one side was the vacuum cleaner I'd left behind; out of the other, the propane grill that I'd left on the porch. And nearby was rising the house that would replace the little cottage -- 4br/2.5b/2-car garage with pool in the back.

It's vanity to think we build monuments to ourselves. It is not, however, too vain to think that tangible evidence of our memories might last at least as long as we do. But not in this case, and not for me.