from this chair on the patio (which I meant to post 2 weeks ago)

From this chair on the patio, I face a flat-as-glass ocean. Beyond it are discernible the yellow of sand and the dark gradations of greenery on distant islands; the air is clear today, if not the sky, and from the right spot I can see both halves of the old wreck of a tanker that rests off the shores of Horse Neck beach and Westport harbor. Trees block my view of Cuttyhunk Island and Martha’s Vineyard, but I know on a day like this I could see them clearly if I stood in the right spot; I could even see the red tint of the cliffs at Gay Head in the late-day sun.

From this chair on the patio, I am surrounded by the noises of summer—crickets chirp a rapid tune from the gardens beside me; various birds call to one another from the power lines that run behind the honey locusts that shade the yard. A plane flies overhead behind me, making that lolling rumble that they always do out here, where the horizon stretches all around us and planes don’t disappear from view nearly so quickly as they seem to elsewhere. Now Grandpa has turned on the radio, and from the house stream the godlike voices of a women’s choir, filling the air with audial light.

All around me there are flowers and trees, collected seashells, beach rocks, and pieces of driftwood, the dried arms of a lavender bush. There are fields cultivated toward beauty, every inch of them lovingly crafted by my grandparents.

They bought this land in the 1950s. Back then there was nothing on it—nothing but grass and a barn in a corner of the yard, which my grandfather promptly feigned having accidentally burned down. (He didn’t want it, and he loves to watch things burn.) Soon there was a little cottage, with just three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. When I study photographs from the early days here, I see surrounding the child-sized forms of my mother and her siblings only meadows, only bushes; the sculpted flower and rock gardens, the individual and groups of trees that fill four acres now were yet to be thought out or planted.

Over time, the little house grew. First came a master bedroom off a long hallway at one end, then a dining room laid with tile the same emerald green hue as the water beyond the windows and outstretched land; later the spiraling steps of a wooden staircase led the way to an upstairs bedroom, an upstairs porch, from which one can watch the moon rise over the ocean through the fishbone branches of the locust tree outside.

As the interior expanded, so did the details of the exterior. A shipment of large rocks pulled from the harsh New England soil were organized into a garden just next to the house, then topped with flowers and tiny trees (and perched on by my parents on the day of their wedding; in the photographs, there are yellow lilies spilling over the rock beneath them). Soon privets were planted beyond the rock garden, then rhododendrons, then hydrangeas; soon a flower garden blossomed beyond it, an alleyway of grass left between the two for bare feet to dance through as children played tag or practiced cartwheels or ran through the grass to remove sand from their bodies before entering the house.

Eventually, the colonial stone walls gained neighbors—first conifers and blackberry vines, later day lilies, roses, and hundreds of flowers whose names I don’t know. In the next yard was planted a vegetable garden among fruit trees, was built a shed.

At some point, trees began to take root. Grandpa organized them with logic—some to block strong winds, others to block views of newly built houses that he did not want to face. Nine of the trees mark the births of his grandchildren. Mine is a dawn redwood, the tallest of all on the lot and perhaps a harbinger of my move to California. My brother’s is a bush-like short-leafed pine, dark green, stubby, and missing a patch toward the top where a hurricane stripped it bare. The blue spruce down by the stone wall is one cousin’s; the deciduous tree whose name I never retain but which drips like a chandelier with white flowers in early summer belongs to the youngest cousin, the last one for whom roots were set into the earth. These trees stand in various conditions around the house, protecting it from winds and rains and also reminding the people inside that the incredible bond to place that they feel here has a wellspring; that though the place itself is magnificent, it is all the more so because of its caring cultivation. The people inside look at the flower gardens and bushes, the nine grandchildren trees, even the windows and doors of their home, and they know that this place is sewn into them in the same way the roots outside are laced into the soil. They are deeply grounded in this place, and that’s not only because they have always been here and always loved being here; it’s also because it was shaped for them, shaped of them before they had even come into existence.