SAXTONS RIVER — It was a house of love and a safe haven where laughter was frequent, anxiety had no place, affection reigned. It was a Cape Cod bungalow with a white picket fence that made me feel warm and happy. In short, it was 1950s perfect, and I wished it were mine.
I lived across the street in a house that became a place of illness, loneliness, and quiet despair. My mother's chronic depression began there as my father's tense nature worsened when business failures mounted.
So I began to virtually reside in the perfect Cape Cod cottage and to make of myself a part of that Dick-and-Jane family, to internalize their traditions, to survive my childhood pain.
I was 10 and their first child was 2 when I started my after-school visits. I played with the petite redheaded toddler, and when she tired, I sat at the kitchen table as her mother peeled potatoes for dinner. Watching her, I imagined having a house of my own, one with children and a husband who, each evening when he returned from work, kissed his wife in a lingering embrace.
Soon I became the regular babysitter. I loved playing grown-up on those weekends as I transformed crumpled sheets from the laundry basket into neatly folded piles or as I emptied the dishwasher.
This is what it would be like, I thought, to have my child asleep in a talcum-scented room decorated with decals on the crib and a balloon lamp on the tiny dresser.
This is what it would be like being the anchor in a happy family.
* * *
I learned many things in my adopted home, especially from the mother.
I learned unreserved trust - not only because she gave her children into my care, but because she laughed heartily while teaching me to drive a stick shift as I lurched with each gear change. That taught me to laugh at myself and at others who teased me affectionately.
There were lessons about generosity exemplified by weekly encounters with Dan, the vegetable man. Every Wednesday, Dan arrived in his truck, singing out, “Anything today?”
“Not today, Dan!”
“Nice broccoli? Fresh green beans?”
Soon the kitchen was full of produce.
“He's nice,” she'd say of her former classmate. “I can't say no to him.”
* * *
But perhaps the lesson I learned best at the kitchen table is that there is value in ritual and remembrance, and that the stuff of tradition - the practices repeated year after year to honor those we love - define who we are, individually and as members of a family, a community, a place in the world.
That's why every Thanksgiving you will find on my table a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top. There too the green bean casserole, the roasted turkey, the orange candles on either side of dried autumnal flowers.
At Christmas, there are cookies rolled in confectioner's sugar and cookies in the shape of bells and stars. Carols play in the background, and a small tree is laden with ornaments (even though my Jewish father would disapprove). Across the mantle march nutcrackers and under it hang colorful stockings. And I still wear the silver bracelet that was under the tree for me one Christmas all those years ago.
These winter rituals are followed by those of spring and summer - Memorial Day barbecues, fireworks on the fourth of July - while new traditions are added to foster our children's memories and rituals to be repeated in their own homes one day.
* * *
Other people live now in the house where I grew up. Once I drove there to see the street and the Cape Cod cottage, also inhabited by others and devoid of its former character.
I felt a sad relief mixed with longing. Everything seemed so different, so small, and yet so much the same.
I was simultaneously the lonely child fleeing the pain of one house to the comfort of another, and I was the adult who reclaims the best in our lives, no matter what.
The perfect family is still in my life. The children are married and grown. The grandchildren know that I was their parents' much-loved babysitter. And while the father and mother are gone now, we still gather at holidays and moments of ritual to share the love and laughter of the old days.
It is that past which makes me whole now, that past which defines me and reminds me continually that family is whoever we love, home is wherever they are, and tradition is what we make it once it has shaped us. That is why the Cape Cod cottage is where I go in my mind when I think of home.
For that is where the hearth was for me - there, the warm haven that reclaimed me when I was “adrift in a rudderless ship,” as my horoscope once read. There, the anchor, and there, the nourishment.
From there, rested and restored, I more than once set forth on my journey. There were the maps that charted my course. There and only there, was the lighthouse beacon, guiding me home.
Always home.