This would be my last visit to my ancestral, country house atop a hill; this lovely old farm house, which made my heart rise up to meet it from the moment I beheld its white, picket gate.

Rising up from grasses wet with an early dew, a wispy mist floated above the gently sloping earth.

Lightening bugs, like so many twinkling emeralds on black velvet, had long disappeared, and a faint outline of the Appalachian Highway below was just beginning to emerge.

The crow of a rooster, crying out the arrival of dawn, greeted my ear; the faint sound of lowing cattle soon followed. Dogs barking filled the air with a friendly, excited yipping. The farm was waking up, and soon the hungry clamor of grunting pigs and neighing horses, clucking chickens and quacking ducks, would add their voices to the symphony of sounds common to a successful farm.

This would be my last visit to my ancestral, country home atop a hill; this lovely old farm house, which made my heart rise up to meet it from the moment I beheld its white, picket gate.

I settled more comfortably into my favorite chair, slowly set it to rocking with the flick of one canvas-covered toe, and reflected on the many years spent sitting here...right here, on this old, splintered porch.

Like a book of turning pages, memories rose up, one after the other. My tree, where I would climb and watch the gravel road for the approach of my mother's car; the snowball bush, which I would shake, and then twirl beneath it as if I were in a snow storm; the rose bushes, their explosive fire-like blooms blood red against the white of the farm house; the old oak tree, so wide, that five of us cousins could not encompass it when standing around it, hand-in-hand.

Remembering ... remembering: feather beds, and pitchers nested within matching bowls on old, cracked, dressers. The wood burning stove in the winter kitchen, the pump and the sink, fresh corn and big, ripe tomatoes, so huge that one slice filled a plate, running through the pastures, swinging on grape vines, swimming in the creeks - Mawmaw, Pawpaw, love.

Pictures flashing through my mind, in a kaleidoscope of images and sounds and smells, which totaled up and added together, equaled...me.

Rising from my rocker, I slowly walked to my car. Turning for one final look, I realized that I would be writing about this old house...perhaps for the rest of my life.

Writing to ease my soul, taking each essay, each poem, each memory, and placing them in an envelope tied with ribbon, pressing them forever close to my heart.