I hadn’t been there in decades and planned to speak to the people who lived in it now. A neighbor said it was vacant, sale pending. A peaceful home full of the past, set back from the road several hundred feet behind a serene lake. I drove in beyond the tall trees, ones I helped plant as tiny seedlings, parked, and walked around the outside. My window was unlocked, close to the ground. I climbed in. Inside, memories crowded around me. Long ago, seated comfortably on a deep, red, sectional sofa in front of a window, as an only child, I read about a world in magazines and books, shocked and delighted by photographs as I eagerly absorbed places and people far away who often had little children like me, but with different clothes, parents, and homes. Later, I read literature of other cultures and my own, discovering more about a world outside my sheltered one, researched the natural world and read biographies of people from the past. The room seems different now, the four large windows in the room shuttered, darkening light-filled rooms. I felt no nostalgia, only sadness, for a child lost in imagination, aware of my real continue...