Precocious girl that I was, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the grandparents waiting at Union Terminal were not the smooth-skinned, sparkly-eyed specimens from the photograph, but older, cautious-looking types with sagging faces. This, however, did not slow the stampede of my love for the tidy house on Fernvale and those tidy people, especially Grandpa Walt, whose maleness in my maleless world trumped even Grandma Dot’s sit-down meals with folded napkins.

When Lillian gave them a copy of the notice for the Lacuna show, my grandparents eyed it like food they weren’t sure was safe to eat. Well, isn’t this something, Grandma said. Grandpa nodded and added that it was good to have a hobby. I told them they should come, that there were going to be pictures of me. To which Grandma smiled and remarked, How nice, and Lillian said nothing, and that was that.

Not that I was paying much attention: I’d just ridden a train. I was staying in a house with a staircase that led to more of the same house instead of connecting downstairs and upstairs apartments. When Grandma took me grocery shopping—in her car—she filled a shopping cart with three times as much food as Lillian and I ever bought at one time. Grandpa taught me how to ride Lillian’s old bike, which I was allowed to do in the street, which was wide and quiet. When I was done, I could leave the bike on the lawn, and no one would take it. Every afternoon at three-thirty, Grandma and I sat at the kitchen table with a piece of homemade apple spice cake to look for birds in the many trees outside her kitchen window. At five, Grandma would start cooking. At six, Grandpa would come home from work. Dinner was at six-fifteen. There was always a tablecloth, meat, and dessert.

We were supposed to stay a week. The morning before the date on our return tickets, Grandma asked if we wanted to stay longer. Lillian said she had to get back to work; plus there was the show to get ready for. Grandma said that even if Lillian had to go, I was welcome to stay if it was all right with her and if I wanted to. My mother said I was too little to ride the train by myself. Grandpa agreed and explained that was why they’d send me home by plane, at which point I was smiling so wide that my face muscles hurt the next day. And that was how I spent my first summer in Ohio.