Homes I've Had: Haskell Lane

Haskell Lane: 1995-2001

The house is large and green and in Connecticut. The first time I see it, pitch black, it's covered in snow. My brother and I have flown in from boarding school in England a week before Christmas; welcome home, says my mother, to a home we've never seen before. My room is up a back staircase, three blank windows looking out onto the frosty yard. Across the hall: a bathroom with an astronomy-themed shower curtain. A cozy nook of a closet. A door of my own to close. 

Haskell Lane has a wood-paneled TV room with green and white striped sofas, a flagstone-floored kitchen, a banister perfect for stringing up beribboned Christmas cards. We eat in the dining room only on special occasions and we never use the front door. The driveway is studded with gravel that crunches pleasingly when you pull in after being away for a while; yellow mailbox, basketball hoop, home again home again jiggety jig.

Haskell Lane is where I learn to drive, where I throw parent-free parties, where Sean picks me up for our first date. In the study, my dad's desk drawers are filled, unfailingly, with quarters and Doublemint gum. When winter comes, we roast marshmallows in the fireplace if the power goes out; in the summer, we watch fireflies snap and crackle from the screened-in porch. Life is happy and easy and endless. I sit on the kitchen counter while my mother cooks, swinging my legs like I've got all the time in the world.