This Was The Room Where It All Happened - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

The great room spans the front of the house. The floor to ceiling windows, cut into rectangles, bring the crystal-flecked ocean inside. The walls are streaked with horizontal brushstrokes the color of the water. A great yellow Chinese rug stretches from the grand piano to the fireplace where a huge red and green abstract swirls over the mantel. Peach-colored couches and chairs break the grand space into groups where you want to sink down, have a drink and talk forever. Or nap.

You can feel the bones of the family here. It is not my house.

I was married in it, dancing in circles to the Greek band while fog advanced outside. The damp air gave promise to the saying my mother told me about rain on a wedding day: A wet knot is hard to untie. All the other siblings of my young bridegroom married here too.

Parties, grandchildren, sailing talk. The first death. The second. The family gathered to honor each. Off the great room, in the bedroom, the mistress of the house died. The next generation moved in. Her grandchild was born the next year in that room. A decade later, her daughter died in the same room on the same day. Everything that can happen in human life has happened here.

Soon, it will be sold.