A GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
My parents bought the house on Cold Spring Road in 1975, three years before my older sister, Liz, was born. She and I were lucky enough to spend our entire childhoods in that dusky-blue colonial. The house sits on just shy of an acre, but a large portion of the yard is wetland. “Swamp” is the more honest word for it—a big, swampy backyard. Bad for resale value, a boon to the local mosquito population, and an idyllic playground for wildlife-obsessed kids. The first summer that Liz and I were old enough to grasp the pole of a frog net in our hands, my dad bought a large globe-shaped aquarium for the back deck. The rules were simple: He’d fill the tank with fresh water in the morning, and we’d…