It had adventure and derring-do. It stirred our stodgy midlife souls and suited the adolescent restlessness of our two youngest children. But the doing of it, now that was a different story. Its execution required the physical stamina of a draft horse and the emotional endurance of flint. It demanded more of us than we had ever anticipated.
Loons nest there, and it is where our children learned to swim.
It had enfolded all eight of us within its ample rooms and had weathered the rambunctious activity of toddlers and the manic energy of teenagers with a grandmother's benevolent grace. Its yard and the surrounding fields yielded asparagus, rhubarb, currants, cherries, red and black raspberries, blackberries and Concord grapes. That still covered a lot of ground, so we rented space in a friend's barn for the beautiful and useful things we could not part with. In the end, our dog was one of them. After heated discussion and casting about for options, we decided to take her with us and deal with the consequences.