Scenes from a Reunion: 5

My sister and her family live just outside a very small town. To get to their house you turn off the highway between a real estate office and a couple of projects-like houses that kinda make you think, "Hmmm" and drive through a gate and then, viola!, you are at their house, which is charming, tucked into a little enclave of trees and sky. It is private and calm and lovely. They have, as has been mentioned, a creek running on one side of their estate.



Most people in America don't name their houses. More's the pity. I think we should because it is a very charming custom. I have suggested to Audrey Hepburn that they formally call their place "Creekside" because, well, it is, but also because their place is sorta evolving into the location for family get-togethers because it is more or less central to everyone else. A lot of group memories are being made there.

When I was growing up my mom's sister & BIL had a place maybe 5 miles from ours. They named it "Glad Tidings" and it was a place of glad tidings and mirth and peacefulness. My uncle, God rest him, used to tell me how much he loved sitting on his back deck, looking out over the fields and soaking in the peace of it all. My BIL, Mr. Audrey Hepburn, said something very similar to me about his creek. Anywho, I just think "Creekside" should become family shorthand:

Q: "Where are we having Thanksgiving this year?"
A: "Creekside".

I hope to name our house, too, but it has to evolve. Nothing has emerged yet but I'm still looking. It'll come to me.