from Welcome Home by Lucia Berlin

"We got to Race’s house on Sunday afternoon. This is the thing I would so love to express, my awe, my complete incomprehension of a real house where birches grow that were planted when each child was born with attics and cellars and summerhouses and all the people in the town have known everyone all their lives and all their relatives and they see each other all the time and like it and speak of birth and death with this fantastic War and Peace acceptance. Aunt Fan, showing us her (lovely) house—took us into the study—a real New England paneled study and said “We don’t use it much, except for funerals, to put the coats in.”

"How lovely it was that Race brought me home—that “Sandy” came home. We are having a vacation and a rest and a honeymoon. Walk down Main St. and through these crazy flowers and grass all over—look thru boxes in the attic—with books and photos and poems by Race and have dinner in dining room with flowers and candles and butter plates and Mark picked corn from a corn field and washed it and ate it. (He is out of his HEAD!) Went to see cousin Andy and his wife Esther and Dorns, these people are TOO much— they work so hard and so easily and mulch (I love that word) and sow and reap and can and prune and graft and darn and bake and plant all their food and everything is so cyclical and ORDERED and NICE—they are all nice—with this crazy wit and an INTEREST in things, everything, and a joy from the views they see every day. I am meeting everyone. They take me in. I don’t mean they approve or accept or like me, altho they do, I think, but they take me into their War and Peace scene, to their cradles in the attic, and Jeff sleeping in Grandma Proctor’s crib that was Bobby’s crib too and it’s so nice and terrifying. I’ve never known a family." --1959 [September]Little Falls, New York