Today’s guest columnist is Sarah Lindsay Dimonekas, an eighth grader at Middlesex Middle School in Darien, Connecticut.

Lindsay is the daughter of Sarah and James Dimonekas, and has an older brother, Zach, and a younger sister, Emily.

Lindsay is our granddaughter.

Recently she was given a writing assignment in school: “My Favorite Place.”

Here is Lindsay’s paper:

I rush down the stairs as I hear the oven timer go off. I grab the oven mitts and take the cookies out. A whiff of chocolate fills the kitchen as I release the hot tray on to my counter top.

The smell the cookies give off reminds me of my grandma’s house. A biggish house on a farm, with cows greeting you with a moo. The sweet smell of animals.

My grandparents’ house is in a small town in North Carolina. The garage door creaks open as I duck under. As I walk inside the house Beau is there to lick me head to toe.

My grandma’s kitchen has a small table where we eat breakfast. The kitchen where my grandma bakes everything, from her chocolate cake, to her well-known banana pudding. Next to the small table is the porch door, which I can vividly remember walking through. My grandparents’ house is the best place to be. The warmth of the house wraps around me like a blanket. If I could describe one word for my grandparents’ house, I’d say “memory.” The house is filled with memories.

When grandma would tell us the Julia stories, or when I’d watch grandma bake, or when grandma taught me how to sew, or when Zach, Emily and I would ride a golf cart to the farm. Even when my grandpa took me up in the barn to feed the cows.

The memories in that house will stay in my heart forever. That house is my favorite place to be.

My grandparents’ house is where I learned how to love animals.

Now, as I said at the outset, Lindsay has a brother and sister. They are — of course — wonderful children.

Don’t you know we wish they lived closer, that we saw them more often.

Oh, yes. That we surely do.