A land of fairy tales and memories

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

We wore dresses - my grandmother, my mother, and I. My grandmother's was frilly and swirled when she walked. My mother's was light brown, a color she seldom wore but wore well. And mine was turquoise with puff sleeves, a cinched waist, and a white mock-apron top, which I thought was very Heidi-like.

I was into Heidi back then.

I had just seen the movie with Shirley Temple and was halfway through the book.

My mother said we were going to the place where Heidi and her grandfather sometimes lived. It was in New Hampshire. And it was called Story Land.

I all but yodeled on the long car ride there.

I don't have to look at pictures to remember that day, though my father took dozens with his new 35mm camera and Ektachrome - not Kodachrome - film.

There were so many trees at Story Land - and cool shade and wood benches to sit on and, in the distance, mountains that looked like paintings.

A winding dirt path. A pumpkin carriage. Clusters of small houses where Jack and Jill, and Little Miss Muffet and Humpty Dumpty and Cinderella and, yes, Heidi and her grandfather sometimes stayed.

And where I posed, in front of small doors, behind open windows, and in the yard of the Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, happily pretending.

I was 9. My mother was 31. My grandmother was 60.

I am the grandmother now. My daughter is 30 and her children are 3 and 3 months. We are here at Story Land, 51 summers later.

Does any part of the ground remember me? Is there a tree I sat under that is able to see the child I was?

I see.

The place is different now, bigger, better. There are fairy-tale houses still but rides, too, and shows and shops, and it's more theme park than just an imaginary land.

My grandson loves it. We ride a small train around the park. He flies in a plane with his mom and in a helicopter with his Great Auntie Anne, who lives in New Hampshire and has met us here. I take pictures with my new digital camera.

"Smile, Adam! Wave!" Will he remember this?

We splash in a water park. We watch an animated show about how things grow. We sing. We eat lunch and candy corn. And then Adam goes back to the rides - the Flying Fish, the Turtle Twirl, the Whirling Whales, the Bamboo Chutes. And then the train again, back around the park, this time with his mom.

I sit on a bench and watch them and see the child I was, watching me.

That child wore patent-leather shoes that pinched her feet. That child's grandmother and mother wore high heels. Did everyone? Or was coming here such an occasion that we dressed up as if for a party?

For us, it was a party, because we never went anywhere. This was special, this trip away from home, with my grandmother in the back seat beside me, telling me stories, singing me songs, letting me fall asleep wedged up against her.

On our long ride home, my daughter sits in the back seat wedged between her son in his car seat and her daughter in hers. She talks. She sings. I drive with the radio off and listen.

I hear her and Charlotte and Adam.

But I also hear me.

"Are we almost home yet?

"How much longer, Mommy?

"Can we go there again? Can we go tomorrow?"

"Not tomorrow, honey, but someday," my mother tells me.

"Can we go back tomorrow?" Adam asks his mother.

"Not tomorrow, Adam. But we'll go again soon."