“Where Do You Keep Your Guns?” the Boy Was Asking Me

On the downstairs porch of our very own house.

With two and a half years of sobriety under my belt, and after two rejections from the bank, 1992 brought a “yes” to a mortgage application, and the boys and I moved across the road from the rented lake house (a grand old structure where the porch hung over the water) into our very own house. Clumsily built, with an extremely narrow and steep staircase to the compact second floor, it felt like housing built long ago for a “hired man” — functional but without beauty. At least, on the inside.

But oh, the location! Just across the road from the public beach, and with a two-story front porch. From the upper porch, if you sat at the right angle, you could watch summer fireworks over the water. The lower porch held bicycles, sleds, abundant plants. There wasn’t really a back yard at all, so I dug a vegetable bed in the center of the front yard, and planted apple trees (won at a school auction) to either side.

Our move across the road happened the day before I turned 40, and I took the timing as significant. Happy birthday to me! (Now adjust to mortgage payments …) A huge sofa with fold-out bed remained from the house’s earlier tenants. We added a mattress on the floor for each of us, a hand-me-down table from an elderly neighbor, a couple of chairs from a departing minister, my writing and editing desk, and abundant books and colored…