My grandfather Al Rights walked these paths.

He died before I was born. My mother always used to say, "You would have loved my father. He was so much like you." He taught literature to college students. So do I.

Although I spent plenty of time looking at photos of him in my grandmother's house when I was growing up, I had a hard time comprehending that he had once been a living presence in those rooms. Yesterday, as I conveyed my severely underslept body towards my rental car, I stopped for a while to take in this view. Leaning against the trunk of the tree you see in the foreground, I answered a stressful phone call from home. I wasn't happy, yet felt more peaceful than I usually do in those situations. And then I thought, "This is a place where I sense my family's past. This is a place where I'm standing on common ground."