I always loved the place. I would have even had I not known what the village was called. I loved how patiently the girl who served us ice cream waited while we struggled to decide what flavor we wanted. Not much older than a child herself, she knew how hard it was, and anyway our indecision gave her time to hold the cold steel scoop against her sore wrist. Walking away, we ate it just ahead of its melting - all that sweetness she had given us and for which we had paid so little. I loved looking in the windows of the cluttered bookstores in which bespectacled bibliophiles sat, blowing steam off their tea and nursing their strong literary opinions. Had we walked in, they wouldn’t have raised their eyes, much less greeted us. They loved books, not people. I loved the tenderness of the Ohio summer air, the exposed cobblestone streets, the decorative fretwork perpetually unfurling as we walked along the black iron fences. But most of all I loved standing on the bridge above the Chagrin River to watch the Chagrin River fall. It couldn’t help but fall there. That was where it fell. We watched it fall again and again as if for the first time but also always. Beyond the rocks, you could see it collecting itself, so that the river was like an old woman who, walking her grandson down the aisle, stumbles violently in front of everyone, but instantly recovers her composure and keeps walking, as if to teach the bride a lesson. The lesson was that chagrin falls, so don’t hold onto it, but let it fall away, even if you’re the one who appears to be falling.
I grew up near Chagrin Falls!