I have a "Country House", my Dear

The photo is old, a Poloroid, and was recently given to my along with about a million others by my Father. I am standing with Mike, his arm around me (I am wearing my favorite white swing coat that I still miss)and my Mother is kneeling down holding onto a very young blond haired Shane in front of an open field of browning corn stalks with a backdrop of the sky, a beautiful springtime blue. March 2,1985 is clearly written in my Father's handwriting on the bottom of the picture.
On the back is the surprise. This is written in my Mother's handwriting: "Little House on the Cornfield". Nice joke! but to her a reality.

Since both of them grew up in Brooklyn this vast openness must have seemed so strange. I can remember the drive out to the lot with them. From the north side of State College to our new address-to-be in Pennsylvania Furnace was really not that far (13 miles)but as we drove down Circleville to Whitehall my mother got quieter and quieter. We passed Harner Farm, the apple orchard, and a dairy farm and finally the pig farm (Campbells'). The town was far behind us. She finally spoke up with this classic piece of advice, "Diane, if you ever get a dog you will have to name him Toto!".

The home I grew up in is a lovely post WWII split level. The house my mother grew up in was a even lovelier four story Brownstone. My Father grew up in a Brooklyn row house not far from my Mother. My children grew up in the "little house in the cornfield", or, as I like to think of it, our Country House.

I know that when you say you are in your Country House you are usually a person who may also have a City House or a Beach House. I have only this house and it really is ok with me. It is the house where we could have our children play for hours with the other neighborhood kids in safety. Where we can sit on the deck and for the longest time not hear a sound except birds and crickets. Here is where we can see millions of stars at night without any streetlights and watched both the Northern Lights and Haley's Comet from our front step. Where the sunsets are brilliant. It is in the neighborhood where the Dad's trick or treated with the kids while pulling a little red beer wagon and where we had the best block parties. It is nice and safe and warm.

My Country House is not magazine perfect (not even close) nor is it a rambling estate. It is a little house on a former cornfield. In a development called "The Meadows". No, my State College friends, not THAT Meadows*.


*The Meadows is also a psychiatric hospital not too far out of town the other direction.