In short, I am homesick and I am timesick. I would be lying not to say that. It is possible to feel content and resolved and still be homesick. I miss all that no longer is, which is why I paste and piece all these scraps together. Sometimes, I hold a ticket or photo, a piece of paper, while willing myself back to where I first held it. I know that might sound silly, but it’s what I do. I want to hear your young voices, the dog scratching to come in; I want to call my father on the telephone, finger in that rotary dial one number at a time—TW3-3642. Let me take this Playbill and arrive at the theater, or this receipt and find myself there in the produce aisle of Star Market. Then, after the show, after I check out, after I sit and let the car warm up, I drive those familiar streets home and find everything just as I left it, the kitchen door creaking behind me.

The cornerstone always goes in the northeast corner, something my father told me about years ago. I don’t recall why we were talking about it; perhaps it came up because of that popular cartoon of the singing and dancing frog trapped there—you know the one, “Hello, my baby, hello, my honey”—only the frog refuses to perform for the greedy man who hopes to make a fortune, except when it is just the two of them. What I recall is my father telling me it all had to do with the Masons, and something about coming out of the cold darkness of the north into the dawning light of the sunrise, and something to do with the summer solstice and the longest day, but now for me, the memory is all about my parents at a time when there seemed to be no threats whatsoever to our life.