ICE CRYSTALS

Someone asked me if "Contentment Cottage" was a real place. Yes, it is, and I live there. This is a drawing I made of it. The house was built in the 1700s. When my grandmother bought it in 1920, it was common practice to name your home. After all, there were no house numbers, and most of the roads had no names. They were simply known as the road to the river or up the mountain or to whatever the nearest town was. Directions consisted of phrases like, "turn left before you get to the Widow Hannah Jones's place on John Smith's road just past the elm tree where the old barn used to be." Never mind that Hannah Jones and John Smith had been dead for years. One of our neighbors' houses was "Holmcroft"; another's was "Indian Trail." Nana called ours "Contentment Cottage."