My object is a house that has been in my family for about 350 years. The Big House. My grandfather lives there now. The breeze coming off the Chesapeake Bay wafting lazily towards the porch during a summer afternoon is one of my earliest memories. My grandfather, Ben, remembers coming to the house when he was my age and visiting his grandparents. Some of the things in the house are almost as old as American itself. Every summer I visit and spend a few weeks there, without wifi or much human connections, besides family. There’s a beach right by the house called The Rivershore. It’s on our farmland, so there’s nobody there but us. Every summer we walk up and down the shore looking at rocks and driftwood, trying to find arrowheads, or making s’mores at night. Skates, minnows, and jellyfish are scattered around the water near the beach, and you can walk out on foot for ages before it gets too deep to stand. In the picture there are little hedges, and it’s a tradition in my family to plant a new hedge whenever a new child is born. There are hedges all over, not just in those rows. I have my own hedge, just like everybody in the family. That way, they live on at the Big House with us, and are always watching over us. 

– Tench Cholnoky

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more