It started out that way, as a cottage. My great-great-great grandfather built it by hand. No more than a one-bedroom house with a dock, a place he and his wife escaped to on weekends so he could tune out the noise that came with being the state treasurer. When it came time for him to run for governor, his wife apparently begged and pleaded him to upgrade the home. What would people think of the modest house? Of the dingy dock and patchy grass? He refused.

The original home burned to the ground. According to my grandmother, Honey, his concerned wife set it on fire. But the Montgomery name lived on. The rebuild made the cottage grander than ever. The obsession with how things look is ingrained in my family like a generational curse.

“Get some rest tonight,” Joe says. “Don’t go too wild.”

“The only thing wild will be me eating ice cream with freezer burn while I watch Golden Girls.”

Joe probably thinks I’m joking, but I’m not. And I’m eager to have a few old ladies keep me company. That’s enough for me. I’ve never made it through an episode—even the series finale—without a smile on my face. Those ladies, well, they make me think of Honey.

We never called my grandmother anything else. We called her Honey because that’s what she called us.

“Oh, honey, be a doll and fetch my lipstick.”

“Did I ever tell you the time I went on a date with Mr. Kennedy, honey? The father, not the president. I never had a chance to rob the cradle.”

“Honey, good women aren’t fragile like flowers. They’re delicate,” she’d whisper, bopping my nose. “Like bombs. And a good man will protect you only to keep the fuse dry.”

Lung cancer took her quickly. She smoked Virginia Slims until the day before she died when I was sixteen.

“What?” she’d ask with a cough. “Is one cigarette really going to kill me? I’m ready to go anyway. My life, it’s exhausting, honey.”

What Honey meant was her kind of life was full. Full of adventure, like meeting the queen of England when her husband was the US ambassador to the United Kingdom or traveling to Saudi Arabia, India, and Pakistan. But her favorite time, she’d always say, was at home with us in Manhasset, where my sister and I lived while my father and mother were often in Washington, DC while he worked as a congressman and later, as a senator.

While most kids crave their mother’s hug after a nightmare, I always longed for the familiar scent of Chanel Number Five with the slightest hint of smoke cutting through.