One of the curious things about our new home is that we want to change so little of it. It is such an evocative place. Today I opened the medicine cabinet and found a few old things – boric acid, an old mercury thermometer still encased in an alcohol-soaked cotton swab, an eye cup. People keep asking us when we will replace the wallpaper,but I think we won’t. The house was built in 1840, it’s fixtures frozen in 1950. The cabinets in the kitchen have a pamphlet dated to 1950, and Maria and I want to paint them white ourselves. My grandmother would have fit easily into Florence’s kitchen.