After a few summer-dress days, the temperature has dropped and the humidity has lifted; and when I stepped out onto the stoop with the cat this morning, the cool washed over me like lake water. Yesterday, as I was vacuuming the living room, I considered carrying the wood boxes into the cellar and declaring the heating season over. But I decided not to, and now I'm glad. Summer is slow to stake its claim around here. On a dank June day, when the air is drenched in mist and Maine feels like a Scottish island. I'll be glad to strike a match.

It's almost 6 a.m. and I am drinking my half-pot of coffee in a quiet house. Early light streaks the windows. Outside the robins and cardinals shrill urgently; there is desperation in their song . . . time is short, time is short, time is short.

I spent Friday morning at my desk, editing a short-story collection, then working on the details of a presentation I'll be giving at the teaching conference. In the afternoon I cleaned the downstairs rooms; I polished the dining-room table, scrubbed the fireplace bricks; I made up the bed with fresh air-dried sheets and pillowcases. I picked greens and herbs from the garden, and for dinner I concocted a rice bowl using a dab of leftover hot and sour Thai soup broth, a dab of leftover chicken broth, freshly cooked arborio, a soy-marinated egg, and a fistful of chopped herbs and green: spinach, arugula, kale, garlic chives, green onion, mint. It was gorgeous and it was stunningly delicious and I was extremely pleased with myself.

This morning I may wander out to the fish market to see what looks good for a one-person meal project. I am always on a mission to do real cooking, even when I'm by myself. I may go for a bike ride soon. I may heat up leftover rice and try to concoct a breakfast version of last night's success. For the moment I am pleasantly undecided about everything.

I did a lot of reading yesterday, in and among my chores. I'm still immersed in the massive Bronte biography--which is a study of the entire family, not just the three sisters. So I'm learning a lot about their father Patrick, a lot about their brother Branwell--my vision of the family dynamic has become far more nuanced, which pleases and interests me. I weary of the Romance of the Doomed Woman stereotype.

And yet when Charlotte writes this to her friend Ellen: "Human feelings are queer things--I am much happier--black-leading the stoves--making the beds and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else" . . . When I read those words, I recognize how bound I am, also, as a imaginer, as a compiler of words, to the work of my hands, to the bonds of my place.

Home, amid its obligations and isolations, was the root of the Brontes' creative life. Some of us understand this.