For six years of my early childhood, right up until the 3rd grade, I spent every single weekend at my grandparents' home by the sea. My father would come striding through the door after work singing; "It's the weekend!" and off we would bundle into the old Chevy station wagon and the two hour drive from Worcester to Wareham. In warm weather, my little sister and I would lean out the window at the head of the mile-long driveway through the woods to "watch the tracks ahead." In winter we would play hide and seek by tracking each other through the snow.
Even on a gray day like today, when cold rain lashes the picture windows and clouds scud across the bay, being here is like coming home. The only vessel out on 
the water is a coast guard cutter heading for the west end of the Cape Cod Canal. A winter stick marks a mooring inside the breakwater. There is no snow, but in my time I have seen the bay frozen over and walked (and skated) far out from shore.
I got my love of splitting logs and stacking firewood from weekends with my Dad in the woods. I learned the names of the birds from the feeders outside the Kitchen window. I remember the winter when these pictures were taken, back in 1973, when I was not quite 5 years old: my son Elias's age today.
The house is different without Gran. It is less cluttered, less lived in. I can remember when the sunny southern windows in the living room were obscured in winter by her beloved flowers: ranks of leggy Geraniums, resplendent Amaryllis and heavy scented Narcissus. My children still know it at "Great Gran's", but now they say "the house where Great Gran used to live." Soon it may become "Windrock" to them, as they continue to make their own associations.
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