I took a trip back "home" ten days ago. It's not the area where I spent the most time as a child, but after all the moving we did (seventeen moves in my 15 years of life at that point), it was the place that felt the most like home. I dropped in on our old landlords and had a lovely visit, and they let me wander though our old house. Standing in what was my old room, I remembered all the mornings that I awoke before the alarm clock went off and lying in bed listening. I could tell the weather from the sounds I heard. If it was foggy, I would hear the fog horn from the lighthouse and the bell buoy out in the bay, but everything else would be all muffled. If it was snowing without being a northeaster, it was all quiet. If there was a northeaster going on, I would hear the snow hissing on the windows and the wind sounding like it wanted to blow the roof off. Some mornings, I'd hear the lobstermen in Back Cove behind the house getting ready to go out for another day, gear clanking and NOAA on their radios giving the marine report. Summers, I'd be woken up earlier by the birds singing or the sound of Paul Yates' lawnmower at 5:00 AM.

I will always miss those winter mornings, though, when I would lie awake in the dark, snug and warm in my bed listening to the bell buoy or the foghorn.