A snapshot from our family vacation to Ohio: We are walking through my husband’s childhood neighborhood. Each of us is searching for something different. A camera strung on my neck, I am looking for the house of my dreams, which I spied just down the hill. A new place to fantasize about, perched on a lake with its own private beach. A Southern Living spread come to life far north of the Mason-Dixon, and I aim to shoot it.

Girl is hunting Indian bubble gum. Bob turns her onto it, pulling down a thin twisted twig from a wild grape vine. He calls it Indian gum because legend has it that the Indians used to chew it. It tastes bitter and nothing like gum, let alone bubble gum, but Girl is hungry and baby bear that she is, she roots it out everywhere along the road.

Boy is looking alternatively for snakes, frogs, groundhogs and crab apples that can be smashed on the pavement, because he learns from Bob that that’s what you do with crab apples.

Bob is searching for Snakesville — the grassy hill where he and his pack of wild boys used to catch garter snakes. It’s all overgrown now, unrecognizable to him. It’s hard for him to get his bearings — there’s no trace of it. He squints into the thicket, scouting for the paths they used to take as shortcuts home. These too are grown and gone, just like the children who made them. On the long way back I realize I am the only one on this walk not seeing things with the eyes of a child.