It needed time to become itself again—with me living inside it.
In April, Derek and Maya came for Sunday dinner.
I cooked Dad’s famous chili using the handwritten recipe card I’d found in a kitchen drawer. The instructions were wonderfully vague, measuring ingredients with phrases like enough and a good bit, forcing me to guess more than once.
Apparently, I guessed correctly.
Derek had two bowls.
“It tastes like I remember,” he said.
I couldn’t have received a better compliment.
Amber visited in May with two friends who knew nothing about the house’s history. They sat on the back porch admiring the creek without realizing it had once become the imaginary villain in one of my favorite childhood stories.
I told them how, at eight years old, I’d insisted the creek had swallowed my shoe.
They laughed.
I pictured Dad hearing that story all those years ago, knowing perfectly well I’d made it up, yet laughing anyway because he loved the imagination behind it.
