sketchbook stories: the fireplace

...buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Amesbury, Massachusetts. My parents’ first house. A place I’ve never seen.

My parents are gone, the house is gone and yet I know it well.

The objects tell the story.

The basket, hand-woven, where the first gray cat slept—they were always gray, my mother’s cats; they were always named Perky. The andirons, soldiers of the Revolution, now occupying my own hearth. The wooden chest, hand-carved from Sherwood Forest where my ancestors once lived. The antique clock that struck thirty-seven at midnight.

They follow us from place to place, these artifacts. Past mementos, future legacies. Transported everywhere I’ve never been.

Illustration by my mother (c. 1959)

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