Do you remember when you fell in love?

How your heart leaned generously toward all that you came upon?

The state of grace that love permits?

The cottage stands as lucid testimony to that time when all you had was all you needed.

It is physical evidence of a state of mind that was full and simple and clear and strong.

Before you got everything you ever wanted

there was that time when you simply had what you needed:

One of each, two of none,

and there could be no more eloquent picture than that of the cottage.

Though the houses that follow may also depict your life clearly,

they will always be muddier in their complexity and never so lucid

as those days at the cottage when love was louder.

Thus the importance of the second home.

The revisitation and rediscovery of the cottage.

Bobby McAlpine – “Finding Home”  ©