The setting of “The Perfect Day” was closely based on my grandparent’s lake house. My grandparents live in a little blue house on a little brown lake in the little, lovely state of New Hampshire.  Growing up, my time at the Lake House was almost magical: tubing and canoeing; all you can eat cheese doodles, brownies, and ice cream; water gun battles and swimming. Nana even made thanksgiving feasts in ninety-degree heat because she knew it was my favorite. In writing about the Lake House, it is very easy to paint the scene only using bright happy colors, but things in life are never black or white. On the lake, sunny days don’t become torrential downpours without gray overcast skies in between. My grandparent’s have a strained relationship. They snap at each other, and while we’re around they pretend they’re just kidding. They bicker about nothing. They both drink too much. Even now that I’m older, lying under the birch tree on the rocky peninsula that sticks out into the lake as a cool late September breeze stirs ripples in the warm water, it is easy to see the lake one way, as a magical place of perpetual happiness, but nothing is ever as one-sided as it seems. And it doesn’t have to be obvious or dramatic–it’s not a soap opera, my grandparents don’t hate each other–but often the little things are the most important. I love my grandparents and I love the Lakehouse and those were some of the happiest times of my childhood.

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Meditation     David Foster Wallace     First Grade      The Last Frontier of Creativity