Thanks to friends of our family who owned a house near the Headlands in Rockport, Massachusetts, I got to visit this lovely town once when I was a child. All I remember from that visit is a house with circular rooms, the quality of the light in the house, and a feeling of complete delight.

When we got the chance to visit Rockport this month, I knew I had to find that house. It turned out to be easy to find online: my mother confirmed my memory of its being round, so I put “round house Rockport” into a search engine and was immediately taken to a vintage photo of the studio of Harrison Cady, who was a well-known illustrator in his day. I hadn’t remembered that it was once his house, or that he had lived in Rockport, but I knew he was related to our friends, so there you have it: that’s how they came to have a house here. Joy and I walked up to it on my first day here.

It’s right on the water:

The view from the place we’re staying is no slouch either:

From the Harrison Cady house, we went on to the Headlands, which looks out across the harbor and out to the Atlantic, which is located where an ocean ought to be. I’m sort of joking, since after 20 years living a few miles from the Pacific, I’ve stopped thinking of it as being on the wrong side, but it still feels more natural to have the water “on my right” as I face north.

Another difference between here and California is how much longer Europeans have been here in New England. You don’t see buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries in California.

This house was constructed more recently. In the period when our daughter had tiny imaginary friends everywhere, she would have loved it.

Also on my first day, we walked around the corner to the Unitarian Universalist Society. I didn’t expect it to be open on a weekday morning, but when I tried the front doors anyway, a man waiting in a car called out that he was a member, and could he help us? That question is used so often to mean “What do you think you’re doing?” that it’s hard to convey that he really meant it, but he really meant it. He and his wife had stopped by to take care of a couple of things, so they immediately gave us a tour. In the lovely, sun-drenched sanctuary, we discovered that, like UUCPA, they have a chalice shaped like a tree. Isn’t it striking? I like the nest for the flame.

They have beautiful rooms upstairs too, especially the tiny room for the tiniest children, with its windows on three sides giving views onto the ocean and town. We also got to see their solar panels, installed just last summer. Sadly, I am fitting this vacation in between Sundays, so I can’t attend a service. But it was great to meet a few UUs, who were as warm and friendly as could be.