Foreword / Nancy Lindemeyer -- Childhood : Horse love / Jane Smiley -- Listening to my mother's song / Maxine Clair -- The palaces of downtown / Catherine Calvert -- My mother's open door / Reeve Lindbergh -- Miss Bartlett's quotations / Faye Moskowitz -- Learning the language of love / Priscilla Dunhill -- The gift of memory / Suzanne Berne -- The transient beauty of fireflies / Francine Prose -- Motherhood : A promenade with William / Judith Thurman -- The gift of a name / Susan Schneider -- A desk for my daughter / Gardner McFall -- Sweet William / Grandmothers : May your life be one sweet song / Susan J. Gordon -- Collecting grandmothers / Whitney Otto -- At grandmother's table / M.J. Andersen -- "Sick-abed on two chairs" : pudding comforts / Sylvia Thompson -- Cheers for the Queen Mum / Sisters : Forever entwined / Susan Minot -- Alice and Charlotte / Telling the story of sisters / Places of the heart : A bell-regulated Eden / Phyllis Theroux -- Porch swings, old novels, and memories of summers past / Medora's story / The site of first dreams / Janette Turner Hospital -- My mother and mendocino / The tangle and the bog / Oxford in my time / Caroline Seebohm -- A gently haunted house / Meditations among the peonies / Susan Allen Toth -- Houseguests / Kim Waller -- Rituals : "Tell me a story" / Madeleine L'Engle -- Messengers of the heart / Pansies for remembrance / Wrapping up a memory / Playing Santa / Thank-you notes : acts of grace / Jane Howard -- A Crosswicks kind of Christmas / By the Tuileries, the world in a teacup / Angeline Goreau -- A place at the table / Parties real and otherwise / Carol Shields -- In the company of the past : The dance of life / Doris Bryden Randall -- It all started with the sampler / Susan Crandell -- Piano for four hands / Marjorie Sandor -- In the company of the past / The stitches that bind / Linda Sunshine -- Gingham : forever fresh / My grandmother's shell / Faith Andrews Bedford -- On writing and writers : The narrated life / Perri Klass -- Edna St. Vincent Millay : afternoon on a hill / Passport to the universe / Patricia O'Toole -- Jane Austen's heroines / Looking for Edith / The grown-up charms of classic children's books / Michele Slung -- So I knew Rachel Carson / Tovah Martin -- Through the window of a book / A visit to "The country of the pointed firs" / Journeys with the Victorians : intrepid women travelers / "I feel the same way" / Writing to the human heart / Marian Seldes -- The quiet center of one's life : Meditations of a beekeeper / Reflecting on foot / Giving love a melody, memory a tune / The romance of old books / Canoes : summer's magic carpet / Too obvious to forget / Hiding out / On keeping a journal / The deer in springtime / Diane Ackerman