MEETING THE HOUSE

‘Now we’ve got to go to Craigville!” January 28, 1968. We’d been engaged barely twenty-four hours when my fiancé, Andy Buffington, proposed this; I had thought we were simply on our way back to Boston after the weekend with my parents in Brewster, on Cape Cod. Andy had told me about Craigville, but I hadn’t expected to meet the place so soon. Now I realized that it, too, was an honored and vital member of the family.

What Andy called Craigville (about twenty miles from Brewster) turned out to be a big, old weathered-shingle house planted on a hillside, surrounded by other dowager summer cottages. The place was shut up for winter in what I would learn was typical Buffington fashion: thorough, careful work had been done. With all the furnishings covered in old sheets, the water and power shut off, and the screens and curtains taken down, the place slumbered in a degree of induced desolation that verged on comical. A discolored slab of plywood protected the front door; bare branches, swirling dry leaves, and bleachedout grass added to the forlorn impression.

However stripped and wintery it looked, I saw the cottage with summer eyes. I was high as a kite and in love! So was Andy. Also, I had lived on Cape Cod year ’round; I knew the transforming magic summer would bring. Though I shivered when we stepped into the cottage and the dank air seemed as cold as the water of baptism must feel to an infant, I was undaunted. That whole weekend had been full of contrast and transformation.

The day before, Andy had proposed to me in brilliant sun on First Encounter Beach in Eastham, which he had chosen because he knew I loved the place. But as the result of a lengthy cold snap, everything was frozen. What water we could see was a deep Prussian blue; over much of the beach, wind had sculpted sea foam into mini-icebergs that looked like meringues. Sitting next to me on one, Andy said, “Will you go to California with me?”

Given our situation together, I knew he meant “Will you marry me?”

Of course, I said “Yes!” Which came to mean, for over fifty years ago now, that California has been our permanent home. Every summer we have flown Pacific to Atlantic — always to Cape Cod — and then Atlantic to Pacific back again, migrating birds in a bicoastal life.

Just about every day of my life, I return in mind to Craigville. That is, to many visions of that sprawling old house. In my favorite one, it is always summer, expansive and comfortable, sunlit and warm. Always the porch awaits me, open and hospitable. Sun dapples the lawn. Birds fly about in the branches, the dishwasher roars in the kitchen, full from breakfast and supper the night before; beds are made, the day ahead planned, and I sit down to write, pen poised to take charge of paper. Sun streams in on the surface of the desk and, as the trees stir lightly outside, their branches extend toward me, all the while spreading lattices of shadows on the ground beneath.

COURTESY OF SALLY BUFFINGTON The Buffington cottage in the town of Craigville. Below, the author, Sally Buffington, and her husband, Andy Buffington, on their wedding day.

La Jolla-based writer Sally Buffington has written a debut memoir called “A Place Like This: Finding Myself in a Cape Cod Cottage.” Born and raised on the outer banks of Cape Cod, she eventually moved and settled in La Jolla, after attending the New England Conservatory of Music and getting married. But each summer, Cape Cod beckoned, and she would visit the Buffington family cottage in Craigville, a small community on the Cape. In her new book, Buffington revisits the memories of the family cottage, and through its beauty, finds life’s simple pleasures and, eventually, herself. Buffington will have a book signing at Warwick’s on Oct. 3, from noon to 2 p.m. Here is an excerpt from “A Place Like This: Finding Myself in a Cape Cod Cottage.”