The Simons House (part 1) by Margaret Ward McClain | Esse Diem

“Because we have all been children, we all have a physical place that is a part of our being, because it was the place of our becoming.  As children we are physical beings locked in the moment.   The sight, sound and scent of living, the tactile presence of it, embeds itself within us.  It is unnoticed but as constant and critical to our growing as oxygen that flows through our blood from breathing.  As adults, we live in layers of past, present and future.  When my adult present was rocked and cracked by death, sickness and separation until it split into a gaping rift, I found that childhood place.  It bubbled up, unbidden, and flowed liquid into the gap.  Some embedded tactile presence of living rushed into the emptiness that threatened to take my life and filled it.

This is a story about that place.”