"Small towns always remember you when you were young; they seldom believe all the good things they hear you have done later, since you went off somewhere else." This is Elizabeth Hardwick's commentary, in an essay on Ibsen's A Doll's House. When I read it aloud to my son, he shivered, as if he believed it all too well. And it does feel real, though it's not totally. Plenty of people in Harmony and Wellington wish our family well, and believe in us. Still, there is the sensation of truth in Hardwick's statement.

I'm lying here in bed in Monson, listening to wind. Yesterday P did all of the driving, up the highway and then winding north on the secondary roads, the familiar route of his childhood. From the car window, central Maine looked exactly like its spirit self: snowy and grim, desolate and derelict, its beauty hidden in a box in the attic. The question is: why do P and I love it so much?