Sunday, July 8, 2018

My Heart Place

JENN McKINLAYThe summers of my childhood were magical. There were no cell phones or Internet, and video games were mostly still found in arcades. My parents kicked us out the door after breakfast and we were not to be seen again until we heard my dad’s piercing whistle sound off the back porch at supper time. My brother and I ran wild, eating blueberries and raspberries from wherever we found them, jumping feet first into swimming holes, making daisy chains, trying to ride the neighbor's horses bareback and, yes, starting some illicit fires on the banks of the river with a lighter we found who knows where. We were dirty and sweaty, covered in scabs and bug bites, and spent our evenings sucking on popsicles which melted down our hands and arms while we caught fireflies in old pickle jars before taking our baths and passing out.  

The Hooligans 4: aka my sons and nephews




Summer was our time for mischief and shenanigans, you know, like climbing hand over hand on the underbelly of the steel bridge that spans the third largest river in Connecticut. Yeah, that story still makes my mom’s hair turn gray. You can watch it happening while telling the story. Heh heh. Or the time we threw all of the squash blossoms in my dad’s garden into the river because we were so over the deluge of zucchini from the year before. Turns out Dad had planted melon the next year. Oops!

We got into loads of trouble, sure, but we also learned how to get ourselves out of it -- because having Mom find out we were climbing under the bridge was way scarier than falling to our deaths!

The Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia
Because I loved my childhood summers so much, I always wanted my hooligans to have the same. One problem, we live in Arizona. It’s 115 at the peak of summer so the free range thing, throwing them out the door and I’ll see you at supper is mostly a winter thing here and, yes, I did do that and, oh, the stories I could tell of their mischief but that's another post. Luckily, my family has a small cabin on the shore of the Bay of Fundy in Canada with a trout stream running through the property and a beach just beyond the cabin door that goes as far as the eye can see. It's so rural you can’t even get a cell phone signal. This place has been my mother's sanctuary for thirty-two years and this is where the hooligans learned how to summer properly.

Wowa and her boys!

When we're there, our time is spent hiking, fishing, reading, building bonfires, experimenting by making rockets out of toilet paper tubes, vinegar, and baking soda, or baking chocolate cakes cooked in orange rinds on the grill (really, really good)!   

At the cabin, the entire world falls away and I get to watch the hooligans and their cousins run free, causing mayhem and shenanigans just like my brother and I did. It’s still pretty magical!


I love everything about this place from the red clay of the ground to the overgrown bushes of pink summer roses to the bald eagles who live in the surrounding pines. When I am in this space, I find the better version of myself, as if I arrive a jagged piece of glass to be rolled over and over by the waves, polished against the sand, and spit out onto the shore with smoother edges. It heals me, which I suppose is the whole point of heart places, isn't it?

As you read this, I am likely walking that beach right now. So, I send you warm greetings from Canada!



So, tell me, Reds and Readers, what is your heart place?


Cape Split, N.S.



35 comments:

  1. It’s lovely to have such wonderful memories, Jenn . . . thanks for sharing them. [And the pictures are gorgeous.]

    Wherever family happens to be is my heart place . . . .

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  2. So many lovely memories, Jenn! What a gorgeous place. My heart place is on Peaks Island off the coast of Portland, Maine with my family... my daughter and her husband have a cottage there that belonged to his grandmother. Being there with them & my grandkids and my other daughter--bliss.

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  3. CHOCOLATE CAKES COOKED IN ORANGE GRINDS ON THE GRILL???? I need to know about these.

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    1. Please Hallie, for the cookbook, right? I have not forgotten.

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  4. I think I am still looking for a place like that, Jenn, where I can just let go of everything and restore my soul. Maybe if I ever get to retire . . . At the same time, I suspect that backstage, at my stage manager's desk, right at the start of the concert, is my heart place. Everybody is here. We've gotten through sound check without disaster. The audience is filling the hall and the audio guy tells me they're ready out front. I get the band lined up, and then it's Go Time. The band goes onstage, I announce the conductor, and magic begins to unfold. For the next two hours it's mine to enjoy, surrounded by people I love in a place I've loved for more than 20 years, listening to the most amazing music ever written. That's a happy place for me.

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  5. Your Hooligans are living the life, Jenn, that's for sure. What a charmed childhood they are having with their cousins.

    Our farm, especially down along the sycamore-shaded creek, is my happy place, where I go to restore my soul. It's utterly peaceful and private, and filled with an ever-changing inventory of flora and fauna. The other day I jumped no fewer than seven deer as I made my way to one of the blackberry fields. The previous owner had a son and a grandson, both under twelve, and they made riding trails, complete with wooden plaques with whimsical signs: Coyote Path, Turtle Trail, Cheyenne 1234 Miles -->, Cemetery Path, Blanket Creek Crossing. The boys had a real teepee, and a tree fort a half-mile away, too, and they would roam the farm, staying overnight in one of those places. The teepee left with the sellers, but the tree fort is still there.

    Yes, please share instructions on the cakes! In honor of World Chocolate Day yesterday, of course!

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  6. Perfect! Sad to say but wonderful to say—our back yard is amazing. It’s completely invisible from the street —and completely secluded, with 2 150 (!!) year old huge sugar maples and a swimming pool surrounded by flowers and it’s simply wonderful. Last night we had grilled chicken and corn and salad and rose wine with the kids and grandchildren and we all stayed up late with fresh peaches on angel food cake and laughed until midnight. Stars and gorgeous evening—I ask you —it was perfect .

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  7. But—cakes in orange rind????? We are waiting!

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  8. We spent summer vacations at my grandparents' beach cottage on a warm-water Cape Cod Nantucket Sound beach, as did my kids, living a free-range life. In college, I worked in a nearby restaurant. Good times.

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  9. I am still looking for my heart place. I believe that it will be by the ocean, because this is the only place I feel completely me. I need sunsets and a garden and french doors that open wide, with a town near by, please. I am taking suggestions.

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  10. Loved this bonus Sunday essay! I read somewhere that in our summer memories, we are always ten -- such a glorious time. I don't know if today's kids will have such nostalgia. Jenn -- yours are so lucky! One of my grandkids is spending the summer in community theater -- she is only ten, but she is now in a day camp ("Little Mermaid") and a performance ("Wizard of Oz") - after twelve hour days, she is floating on air. Her sister, seven, spent this week in an art studio -- discovered clay. They are happy, but certainly not running free outdoors. Which is what I did.

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  11. Love this, Jenn--photos of the kids being kids, the gorgeous scenery! Enjoy!!

    My heart place is now only a memory--my Thompson grandparents' farm in Kentucky. The huge wrap-around porch filled with rockers and porch swings (where my grandmother always had room for one more tucked against her side), the stone warmed by the morning sun and a chill still in the air, my grandpa's hounds lazing under the chairs; a creek across the lane, hillsides, eggs to gather, tables groaning with food set out on the porch to accommodate all the adults, the cousins, whoever. Featherbeds in the upstairs summer bedrooms; like Jenn and her brother and her hooligans, we ran wild there--always under the watchful eyes of a grandfather who seemed to know where you were at any given moment (especially when you were somewhere you weren't supposed to be--like the hillside pasture with his bull) and a grandmother who let you take your bruises and scrapes without smothering you with too much concern. We ran wild summers at home, too--but the farm was magical.

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  12. Hmmm, I think my happiest childhood summer memory revolves around fish.

    A couple of nights ago we had swordfish off the grill and a conversation about how much fish we eat, how much we love fish and how Julie rarely to never had fish growing up. Neither did I. Except in the summertime.

    It was always fish that my grandfather and uncle caught, bream and catfish and sun perch from Joe's pond. No idea who Joe was, but he also had a spring house where he stored ice all summer that he'd cut from the pond in the winter. Anyway, my memory of fish is always that it was fresh and rolled in cornmeal and fried. In the middle of Kansas, this is what was available, long before there was a plethora of fresh and frozen fish in the markets.

    My aunts also owned a beach house on the Gulf. When I was a little older, I went there in the summer and discovered the delights of salt water seafood: crabs, shrimp, oysters, red fish flounder, sea bass, all of it, caught that day, often by me.

    I envy all of you who grew up on the coast, right or left. If I never ate meat again, and this from a girl from Kansas who grew up eating corn-fed beef, I'd be content.

    I think we'll have fish for dinner tonight.

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  13. I recently found your books and I have fallen in love with them. My job keeps me busy reading research papers and other biology related material most of the day. It is nice to unwind at night with one of your books!

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    1. Thank you so much, Dawn. You’re lovely to be so kind.

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  14. Jenn, what a fabulous image... Arriving jagged and being smoothed by the waves. That always happens to me at my sister in law's manor house in Cornwall. It's like stepping out of the world. Now I'm yearning for my own little cabin somewhere...

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  15. Growing up, my happy place was my maternal grandparents' home. They had a tiny house on a tiny lot, but to my siblings and me, it was a huge paradise, as we lived in an apartment complex. Grandma had been trained as a teacher, and had all sorts of kids' books and magazines, and educational toys as well. We could draw, color in coloring books, create whatever we wanted out of clay, use water colors. We could take her entire pantry apart, bring everything out to the living room and play "Store". We also played School. And oh, yes, she also had comic books! Outdoors, we could climb trees, pick berries and cherries and apples. There were swings, a wading pool, a picnic table. They lived near the beach. Sometimes we would take a walk down to the beach with Grandpa, eating nonpareil candy with him on the way. He always had a bag in his pocket. As adults, when we've been in our hometown, usually for a funeral, we've driven over to see their old house and what seemed to us like acres and acres of property when we were kids. It's actually a very tiny lot, barely large enough for their house, which was a tiny bungalow that they built after all their kids were grown and married. And if the cousins were around, the fun was magnified!

    For the past 27 years, my Happy Place has been Chincoteague Island in Virginia. Although I live a few blocks from Long Island Sound in CT, I love getting to visit Chincoteague and the wildlife refuge, and do some birdwatching. The Atlantic Ocean has a calming effect on me, and I don't tire of it. Walking through the town and going up and down the side streets to see home gardens is another source of relaxation.(Now I'm counting the days until we get back there!)

    DebRo

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  16. I grew up in Billings, Montana. I've been to some other places, visiting mostly. I'm still in Billings, Montana. I'll pass on to the next phase from here.

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  17. I sheepishly have to admit that my happy-place is right where I am now. Since I was ten years old I wanted not much more than a keyboard for typing (connected to a computer so I would not have to re-type everything when the edits were done). I remember when the first mini-computers became available to businesses; they ran about $40,000. And they did a lot less than my current laptop. I also remember being about 10 and lusting over an ad in some periodical for a Panasonic reel-to-reel four-track tape recorder. It cost four hundred dollars. At ten years old, that was an impossible sum of money. Now with my mobile phone and Spotify and an inexpensive Bluetooth speaker, I can listen to any whim of music that I care to with no end, on-demand. My parents did buy us a piano that I wanted. I think they found a used upright for about $100. I've taken lessons my whole life. However, when I was almost 30, it was rumored that Stevie Wonder had purchased a digital keyboard synthesizer. I realize now, he might have gotten his for free, but the cost for the rest of us plebes would be about $20,000. Now, at 64, I own two acoustic pianos, sitting right next to me and a Yamaha electric piano which I purchased from a friend for $500. If I hook it up with a microphone to my laptop it will double as a synthesizer.

    We also ran free starting at the age of seven. We lived in the projects in Rockaway, Queens, New York. There was always a "gang" us doing something outdoors. When I got to be about ten my parents allowed me to go "into the city" with friends. The city was Manhattan. I remember visiting Lou Tannen's Magic Shop. Lou or his brother would dazzle us with feats of sleight-of-hand. If you wanted to know how the trick was done, you had to buy it. I saved my allowance. After that, we would go and get a steak at Tad's Steakhouse. Then it was off to Radio City Hall for the Rockets and a movie. Then we would take the long subway ride home. To Rockaway was a double fare so for twenty or thirty cents we'd make it back in time for dinner.

    In recent years, when my father was alive I'd make the trek from Bucks County Pensylvania to see him in the Bronx. I would always make a little time to just "breathe in" Manhattan. Although these days, if you sneeze there, it costs you a dollar. I don't really miss living there. Bucks County is pretty peaceful and I am certainly a man of peace. However, I miss visiting, which I suppose can be corrected.

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    1. My dad loved magic tricks and took three of us to Lou Tannen's one afternoon, after school! Didn't he have a catalogue that was like a hardcover book? I read it from cover to cover, trying to decide if I could afford to buy anything from it.

      DebRo

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    2. Yes. I would drool over that catalog every year. I think it was $25 and there was a new one every year. Last time I checked there was still a Tannen's but I bet the catalog has gone on-line.

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    3. Lou Tannen taught my brother, who was about eight years old, a trick and gave it to him. My brother thought he died and went to Heaven!

      I'll have to look on line for a catalog.

      DebRo

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  18. Loved this essay, Jenn. What glorious times for you and your boys. And I am so envious of your gorgeous cool weather!!!

    I guess at the moment my happy place is, like Hank's, my own back yard. At least in the mornings! By early afternoon the sun has sneaked around to the south west and then the back is off-limits until sunset.

    But my truest of heart-happy places is England. When I was younger it was all about the countryside and villages. But over the years I've fallen madly in love with London, and being anywhere in the city just makes my heart lift.

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  19. Alona Bay, Ontario. My grandmother had a cabin there. No electricty. Running water only when the generator/pump was working to pump water up from Lake Superior to fill the tanks that gravity fed the plumbing in the cabin. My uncle sold it after she died. I've gone back up once since then. I need to go again. It fills my being and rejuvinates a battered soul.

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  20. Reading about your heart place made me feel happy, Jenn! Thank you! I love that your boys are having an experience similar to your own. My heart place is probably near or in water, where it's quiet except for the sound the surf and the tide. I've been to Fiji a couple of times, and it's so gorgeous--and so removed from my everyday life--that it feels like a true escape that energizes me.

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  21. Jenn, my childhood mirrored yours, scooting out the door after breakfast and running the neighborhood with neighborhood friends until suppertime. I do think we had lunch somewhere, either we kids separated and ran back home for lunch, or one of the moms fed an extra kid or two or three. Of course, there were those lovely mudpies my friend Phoebe and I made. It was always obvious that I had made mudpies that day when I returned home later with the ends of my pigtails caked with mud. My next-door-friend Jimmy and I would sometimes fix a picnic lunch to take with us when exploring the wooded area behind the houses. Then other times we all joined in for hopscotch or jax or bike games (cops and robbers mainly). Oh, when it was getting close to dark, we all loved to play "Red Light, Green Light, Have You Seen a Ghost Tonight." In the winter we were out playing in the snow and sledding. A truly dream childhood.

    And, since my hometown was small (and my father in real estate), we pretty much all knew who each other was, and going to school with the same friends until we graduated from high school formed strong friendships and bonds. I drifted away from these bonds and friends when I got married after college and moved to the western part of the state, away from my beloved Maysville (Kentucky). So the business of being married, working, having and raising children followed. Of course, there was family I went back to see in Maysville, and I always enjoyed that. But, until my high school class 40th reunion in 2012, I didn't realize just how much I missed my old friends, some who had scattered and some who still lived there. We bonded all over again, and we started spending some time together. My hometown became my heart place again. It's where I feel my youngest, probably because of memories, and most carefree. It's where I am Kathy Lou, free of any other titles or responsibilities. It's where a bite of transparent pie can fill my whole being with contentment. It's a picturesque little town on the Ohio River, birth place and heart place of Rosemary Clooney. It's home.

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  22. I don't have a current heart place. I hope to find it in the next couple of years and move there. My grandparents' ranch in Hamilton County, Texas was my happy place as a child. We roamed around getting into mischief. Attacking wasps nests with cane poles, hunting for fossils, hunting for arrowheads, riding the donkey, gathering eggs with Grandma, poking around the barn, hunting armadillos, riding out to the pasture in the back of Grandpa's pickup to feed the goats, fishing at the tank . . . lord, we had a good time!

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  23. For many reasons I didn't experience the idyllic childhood that so many describe, but my children and their children have certainly made up for it and then some! My happy place is the ocean, whether we are there with the family or with just the two of us. Restful and soul restoring. We store a small (really cozy) trailer at Pismo Beach, here in California, everything we need right there when we go.....we just bring food and fresh linens and our clothes....and we are settled in our little slice of heaven. Walks on the beach, shell collecting, famous Pismo Beach clam chowder, fires in the evening, barbeques,reading and swimming.....that old saying holds true...."It's never too late to have a happy childhood".

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  24. Thanks for those wonderful memories, Jenn, old and new.

    My heart place as a kid was the old family cottage on Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto. Heavenly, summery, cousinly, grandparently bliss. And then it was sold....:^((

    But happily, I have a new one, equally a family historic site: my partner's family. So I got to click into his childhood bliss place, on a lake near Haliburton, Ontario, and the cycle continues. Ahhh.... Now we're the grandparents, and the kids and nieces and nephews are the cousins.

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  25. Not sure how I missed this post! My childhood summer happy place was camping in Sequoia National Park in California. We ran free, we made treasure maps and treasure hunts, we swam in snow melt streams, and at night we laid on our backs and looked more stars than you could even imagine possible. My kids did not grow up with camping in Sequoia because we were here in New England, but one of my greatest joys was taking them to Sequoia about 10 years ago and showing them my happy place (I know they had their own growing up).

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  26. Sand. Sand is always my happy place. And I have two in particular. The public beach in West Haven (CT). A long paved path along the shore, a bit set apart from the beach. My favorite part of that is that you can see so many people walking along--and all the different languages!--at least a dozen on any given stroll! Ah! The nation of immigrants, all at the beach. The second heart place is Block Island, RI. Sand again. Peaceful. Fried clam bellies. Best food ever. Can't wait until September when I can spend almost a month there. Until then, WH and those grilled, split hot dogs. And the sand.

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    1. Love Block Island - we used to vacation there when I was a kid!

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  27. So sorry I haven’t been able to reply - my paradise is also a cell phone sink hole so my posts don’t show up for days if at all! Chocolate cake baked in an orange rind on the grill: https://www.chowhound.com/recipes/chocolate-cake-baked-in-an-orange-31071/amp

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