After moving the furniture around in my study on Sunday, I spent most of yesterday working and reading and loafing there. It is a beautiful space for my purposes: quite small but with two big windows and room for shelves and two simple tables and a plant and an old yellow reading chair (though you can't see it in the photo). There are still no pictures on the walls, no doors on the hinges. I have no drawers or cupboards, and the tiny closet is given over to clothes (we are very short of storage space).

But this morning, when I walked in and turned on the lamp, I saw that I had laid out two poetry books on the desk: collections by Berryman and Akhmatova. I saw the stack of student essays in the basket beside the yellow chair. I saw dim morning light shadowing the blue walls and polished floor. I saw the violin case waiting under the standing desk (which Tom made for me out of an old piano); the old round stool tucked under the child's desk (which Tom made for a son who has since flown into world). I see the stones on the windowsill (collected on icy Maine coves, among the tree roots and boulders of my erstwhile 40 acres, along the weedy paths of the Roman forum); the cobalt blue cup with Shirley Temple's picture printed on it (given to me four decades ago by my Great-Aunt Wanda who was married to grumpy Uncle Oscar who owned a jewelry store in Wauwatosa); the junk-shop bookend in the shape of a black poodle (purchased with birthday money by a small boy who loved his dog); the chunk of green sea glass (unearthed from the Cape May sand by a long-dead friend of my heart). I see the beloved books.

I am sorry if I have wearied you with my house, but I know am still convalescing from the pain of leaving Harmony. I grip onto small comforts--a space, a lamp, a clean window, a bright floor. I was talking to a friend last week about the tremendous physical peace I feel when I look at stacks of towels and sheets, crisp and well folded, the colors aligned, the lines square, the odor of sunshine rising from their threads. I am, it seems, a creature of home, a snail in need of a shell. This funny little awkward cottage has turned out to be one.