s I approached the house, I could not help thinking how beautiful it looked this morning, gleaming white in the bright sunlight, set against a backdrop of mixed green foliage under a sky of periwinkle blue.

Andrew and I had fallen in love with Indian Meadows the minute we set eyes on it, although it wasn't called Indian Meadows then. It didn't have a name at all.

Once we had bought it, the first thing I did was to christen it with a bottle of good French champagne, much to Andrew's amusement. Jamie and Lissa, on the other hand, were baffled by my actions, not understanding at all until I explained about ships and how they were christened in exactly the same way. "And so why not a house," I had said, and they had laughed gleefully, tickled by the whole idea of it. So much so that they had wanted their own bottle of Veuve Clicquot to break against the drainpipe as I had done, but Andrew put a stop to that immediately. "One bottle of good champagne going down the drain is enough for one day," he quipped, laughing hilariously at his own joke. I'd rolled my eyes to the ceiling but couldn't resist flashing a smile at him as I appeased the twins, promising them some cooking wine with which to do their own house christening the following day.

As for the name, I culled it from local lore, which had it that centuries ago Indians had lived in the meadows below the hill upon which our house was built. And frequently, when I am standing on the ridge looking down at the meadows, I half close my eyes and, squinting against the light, I can picture Pequot squaws, their braves, and their children sitting outside their wigwams, with horses tethered nearby and pots cooking over open fires. I can almost smell the pungent wood smoke, hear their voices and laughter, the neighing of the horses, the beat of their drums.

Highly imaginative of me, perhaps, but it is a potent image and one which continues to persist. Also, it pleases me greatly to think that I and my family live on land favored centuries ago by Native Americans, who no doubt appreciated its astonishing beauty then as we do today.

We found the house quite by accident. No, that's not exactly true, when I look back. The house found us. That is what I believe, anyway, and I don't suppose I will ever change my mind. It reached out to us like a living thing, and when for the first time we stepped over the threshold into that lovely, low-ceilinged entrance hall, I knew at once that it would be ours. It was as though it had been waiting for us to make it whole, waiting for us to make it happy again. And this we have done. Everyone who visits us is struck by the feeling of tranquility and happiness here, the warm and welcoming atmosphere that pervades throughout, and which envelopes everyone the moment they come through the front door.

But in June of 1986 I had no idea that we would finally find the house of our dreams, or any house, for that matter. We had looked for such a long time for a weekend retreat in the country, and without success. And so we had almost given up hope of ever finding a suitable place to escape to from New York. The houses we had viewed in various parts of Connecticut had been either too small and pokey, or too large, too grand, and far too expensive. Or so threadbare it would have cost a fortune to make them habitable.

That particular weekend, Andrew and I were staying with friends in Sharon, an area we did not know very well. We had taken Jamie and Lissa to Mudge Pond, the town beach, for a picnic lunch on the grassy bank that ran in front of the narrow strip of sand and vast body of calm, silver-streaked water beyond.

Later, as we set out to return to Sharon, we inadvertently took a wrong turn and, completely lost, drove endlessly around the hills above the pond. As we circled the countryside, trying to get back to the main highway, we unexpectedly found ourselves at a dead end in front of a house.

By mistake, we had gone up a wide, winding driveway, believing it to be a side road which would lead us back, we hoped, to Route 41. Startled, Andrew brought the car to a standstill. Intrigued by the house, we stared at it and then at each other, exchanging knowing looks. And in unison we exclaimed about its charm, which was evident despite the sorry signs of neglect and disuse which surrounded it.

Made of white clapboard, it had graceful, fluid lines and was rather picturesque, rambling along the way it did on top of the hill, set in front of a copse of dark green pines and very old, gnarled maples with great spreading branches. It was one of those classic colonial houses for which Connecticut is renowned, and it had a feeling of such mellowness about it that it truly captured our attention.

"What a shame nobody cares enough about this lovely old place to look after it properly, to give it a fresh coat of paint," Andrew murmured, and opening the door, he got out of the car. Instructing Jenny, our English au pair, to stay inside with the children, I quickly followed my husband.

In a way I cannot explain, certainly not in any rational sense, the house seemed to beckon us, pull us toward it, and we found ourselves hurrying over to the front door, noticing the peeling paint and tarnished brass knocker as we did. Andrew banged the latter, whilst I peeked in through one of the grimy windows.

Murky though the light was inside, I managed to make out pieces of furniture draped in dust cloths and walls covered with faded, rose-patterned wallpaper. There were no signs of life, and naturally no one answered Andrew's insistent knocking. "It looks totally deserted, Mal, as if it hasn't been lived in for years," he said, and after a moment, he wondered out loud, "Could it be for sale, do you think?"

As he put his arm around my shoulders and walked me back to the car, I found myself saying, "I hope it is," and I still remember the way my heart had missed a beat at the thought that it may very well be on the market.

A few seconds later, driving away down the winding road, I suddenly spotted the broken wooden sign, old and weather-worn and fallen over in the long grass. When I pointed it out to Andrew, he brought the car to a standstill instantly. I opened the door, leaped out, and sprinted across to the grass verge to look at it.

Even before I reached the dilapidated sign, I knew, deep within myself, that it would say that the house was for sale. And I was right.

During the next few hours we managed to find our way back to Sharon, hunted out the real estate broker's office, talked to her at length, then followed her out of town to return to the old white house on the hill, almost too excited to speak to each other, hardly daring to hope that the house would be right for us.

"It doesn't have a name," Kathy Sands, the real estate broker, remarked as she fitted the key into the lock and opened the front door. "It's always been known as the Vane place. Well, for about seventy years, anyway."

We all trooped inside.

Jamie and Lissa were carefully shepherded by Jenny; I carried Trixy, our little Bichon Frise, listening to Kathy's commentary as we followed her along the gallerylike entrance, which, Andrew pointed out, was somewhat Elizabethan in style. "Reminds me of Tudor interior architecture," he explained, glancing around admiringly. "In fact, it's rather like the gallery at Parham," he added, shooting a look at me. "You remember Parham, don't you, Mal? That lovely old Tudor house in Sussex?"

I nodded in response, smiling at the remembrance of the wonderful two-week holiday we had had in England the year before. It had been like a second honeymoon for us. After a week with Diana in Yorkshire we had left the twins with her and gone off alone together for a few days.

Kathy Sands was a local woman born and bred and a font of information about everything, including the previous owners—over the last couple of centuries at that. According to her, only three families had owned the house from the time it had been built in 1790 to the present. These were the Dodds, the Hobsons, and the Vanes. Old Mrs. Vane, who was formerly a Hobson, had been born in the house and had continued to live there after her marriage to Samuel Vane. Eighty-eight, widowed, and growing rather frail, she had finally had to give up her independence and go to live with her daughter in Sharon. And so she had put the house, which had been her home for an entire lifetime, on the market two years earlier.

"Why hasn't it been sold? Is there something wrong with it?" I asked worriedly, giving the broker one of those sharp, penetrating looks I had learned so perfectly from my mother years before.

"No, there's nothing wrong with it," Kathy Sands replied. "Nothing at all. It's just a bit off the beaten track, too far from Manhattan for most people who are looking for a weekend place. And it is rather big."

It did not take Andrew and me long to understand why the real estate broker had said the house was big. In actuality it was huge. And yet it had a compactness about it, was not as sprawling and spread out as it appeared to be from the outside. Although it did have more rooms than we really needed, it was a tidy house, to my way of thinking, and there was a natural flow to the layout. Downstairs the rooms opened off the long gallery, upstairs from a central landing. Because its core was very old, it had a genuine quaintness to it, with floors that dipped, ceilings that sloped, beams that were lopsided. Some of the windows had panes made of antique blown glass dating back to the previous century, and there were ten fireplaces, eight of which were in working order, Kathy told us that afternoon.

All in all, the house was something of a find, and Andrew and I knew it. Never mind that it was farther from New York than we had ever planned to have a weekend home. Somehow we would manage the drive, we reassured each other that afternoon. Andrew and I had fallen in love with the place, and by the end of the summer it was ours, as was a rather large mortgage.

We spent the rest of 1986 sprucing up our new possession, camping out in it as we did, and loving every moment. For the remainder of that summer and fall our children became true country sprites, practically living outdoors, and Trixy reveled in chasing squirrels, rabbits, and birds. As for Andrew and myself, we felt a great release escaping the tensions of the city and the many pressures of his high-powered job.

Finally, in the spring of 1987, we were able to move in properly, and then we set out taming the grounds and planting the various gardens around the house. This was some task in itself, as challenging as getting the house in order. Andrew and I enjoyed working with Anna, the gardener we had found, and Andrew discovered he had green fingers, something he had never known. Everything seemed to sprout under his hands, and in no time at all he had a rose garden, vegetable patch, and herb garden under way.

It did not take either of us long to understand how much we looked forward to leaving the city, and as the weeks and months passed we became more and more enamored of this breathtaking corner of Connecticut.

Now, as I walked through the sunroom and into the long gallery, I paused for a moment, admiring the gentle serenity of our home.

Sunlight was spilling into the hall from the various rooms, and in the liquid rafts of brilliant light thousands of dust motes rose up, trembled in the warm July air. Suddenly, a butterfly, delicately wrought, jewel-tinted, floated past me to hover over a bowl of cut flowers on the table in the middle of the gallery.

I caught my breath, wishing I had a paintbrush and canvas at hand so that I could capture the innocent beauty of this scene. But they were in my studio, and by the time I went to get them and returned, the butterfly surely would have flown away, I was quite certain of that. So I just continued to stand there, looking.

As I basked in the peacefulness of the early morning, thinking what a lucky woman I was to have all that I had, there was no possible way for me to know that my life was going to change so profoundly, irrevocably.

Nor did I know then that it was this house which would rescue me from the destructiveness within myself. It would become my haven, my refuge from the world. And in the end it would save my life.

But because I knew none of this at that moment, I walked blithely on down the gallery and into the kitchen, happy at the prospect of the holiday weekend ahead, lighthearted and full of optimism about my life and the future.

Automatically, I turned on the radio and listened to the morning news while I stood toasting a slice of bread and drinking a cup of coffee I had made earlier. I studied a long list of chores I had made the night before and mentally planned my day. Then, once I had eaten the toast, I ran upstairs to take a shower and get dressed.