Make Do & Mend

Since my grandpa has become ill, we spent part of August in New Jersey at the house he built when my dad was a boy. Its east facing windows look out on a backyard that saw the childhoods of eight children. At night the calls of crickets and katydids cut through humid air. It's a place that seems so little touched by change since I've known it. Our visits there have always been years apart, but somehow the details stayed with me better that way. My grandma's sewing room under the sloping gables, the smell of Pa's basement, the chestnut tree by the fence and the way the light in the kitchen feels golden.