Daylight struggles past dust-littered window panes. The fight is waged on three fronts in the sun porch of the “back rooms”…servants quarters of long ago, now her studio.

Nana sits before her easel, considering the canvas before her. Gentle wisps of water color dance across the heavy vellum…two-dimensional whispers of blue and pale pink and sunshine yellow hinting at their future in a landscape.

The dull light catches her gray hair, caresses the silky, thick roll dotted with bobby pins that ribbons the back of her neck. One tiny hand cradles a paint brush. Graceful fingers stroke the black satiny handle. Blue veins scroll across the breadth of the hand, dissolving into a delicate wrist cuffed by the pale gray cotton of her rumpled, paint-smudged smock. The whiff of Chanel hovers, planted deep in each thread.

Pearls peek above the collar—two strands—wrapping her wrinkled neck like the ruff of an Elizabethan collar…creamy white screaming out their contrast with the frustrated slash of crimson framing her frowning mouth.

Brow furrows over clear gray eyes hiding behind bifocals. She reaches for a different brush. Diamonds flash in her wake, symbol of family inheritance nestled on her finger like a young bird hesitating to leave its home of entwined twigs, unwilling to test its wings.

She swipes golden yellow down one side of canvas and the brow clears, a tall forehead revealed—intelligent and filled with good humor. More yellow and a smile crests her face, encrusted laugh lines digging deep into rouge-accented skin.

Her eyes flash in joy, focusing on the wheat field beyond the canvas, through the window. An elderly Irish Setter lopes after a tow-headed toddler. Her hand blurs in quick swipes as she replicates the scene: a splash of rust joins golden stalks and the wee form of her granddaughter.

The hand is sure, now. Confident. Gray fabric rustles as  color yields form. Depth.

And a story.

The rich paper absorbs its fill, soaking up memories and dimension. The scene  completes itself through her fingertips.

She’s caught the moment by the tail and holds it still, forever honored behind frame and glass over her granddaughter’s bed.

It was not visible from the street.

Standing at the curb, we faced a thick veil of underbrush topped by towering trees. In the midst of the verdant lushness, a rusted wrought-iron gate and fencing peeked out…brownish black spikes running clear for a time before swallowed by plants  growing wild.

In the center of the frontage was a tall arched gate—doubled sectioned—designed to swing open in the middle from ornate metal hinges. The gate was ajar, one side of it hanging askew…the drunk toothy grin of an old mouth no longer used. Its long bars reached up to the archway, two stories above the ground. Iron letters ran inside a double metal band framing the arch over the gate.

DREAMHAVEN

All the letters were there, firmly in place…a  curious morsel of the past left intact in the midst of ruin.

Through the gate, a weed-dappled, gravelly lane ran straight back for a distance before it jogged sharply to the right. A dense thicket at the end of this straight stretch blocked the back of  the property from our view. The lane was seductive, its clear track in the core of overgrown chaos beckoning, the aura of mystery and magic too much for a pair of ten-year-olds to resist,

Giggling, we skittered around the rusty gate and stopped in our tracks. We were only a few feet inside the grounds of this abandoned resort, and yet that distance made all the difference. Now, the air was hushed and oppressive, holding its breath as it hung over our heads, demanding our silence.

We complied, standing in place, not saying a word. But curiosity soon got the better of us. We took a tentative step forward, looking around us, heads swiveling from side to side as we absorbed the lush wildness with innocent eyes.

As we crept down the lane,  we imagined ghosts of laughing socialites in satin dresses and plumed headdresses, leaning on tuxedo-clad arms. Champagne bubbled in crystal flutes, caviar slid across bone china plates, the muffled strains of violins wove through the thick air. Laughter rose, then faded, and whiffs of French perfume fluttered on the timeless breeze.

Hints of formal, landscaped grounds struggled to be seen in the heart of stands of saplings and dense shrubby weeds. How long had those carefully planted hybrids fought to survive among the riotous, undisciplined greenery?

Following the path’s jog to the right, the gravel gave way to concrete—cracked and creased—creating opportunities for immature trees to rise from bits of earth that had reclaimed the land.

The grounds opened up before us.

Ahead lay a giant concrete hole, once a swimming pool, yawning in the lazy summer sun, reflecting its light. Ceramic tiles rimmed it in a riotous burst of primary colors…splashes of red and blue and yellow joining green algae and the faded blue paint of the pool’s walls.

We approached the rim and looked down onto a dense mat of tree branches and decaying leaves. The seasons’ unrelenting march from year to year had turned this into compost—thick and lush and black. The drains, clogged and useless over the years, had allowed rainwater to gather in the pool’s deep end. A dead bird, its carcass decomposed and stripped of feathers, sprawled on the incline toward the shallow end, as if it had tried to climb out of the water and died from the effort.

A sudden chill pierced the sopping summer air. A crowd of ghosts gathered around us, closing in, trying to tell us something we didn’t have a chance of understanding.

We retreated in the face of the past, eager to reenter our present and weave our tales of the wonder and mystery of Dreamhaven.