To escape my mother and three younger sisters when I was in child growing up in northeast Detroit, I’d often run next door to Mrs. Penny’s house. At the time, I thought she was old, much older than my mother, but she must have been in her mid-fifties. How perspectives change.

What I remember most about Mrs. Penny is her hands. I loved them. If I’d even mentioned it, she’d have wiped them on her ever-present apron, patted my head, and said they were old and wrinkly. But I thought they were the most beautiful hands I’d ever seen and much more interesting than my mother’s younger hands.

Mrs. Penny was a small woman and the skin covering the backs of her hands was delicate and nearly transparent. I’d watch her hands reaching into her precious knick-knack cabinet, cuddling each pair of salt and pepper shakers as she handed them to me to dust while she wiped the shelves, then gently replacing them in the same spot they’d been before. In her tiny backyard, I’d sit on the grass, clipping clothespins to the handle of the tomato carrier that held them, watching her nimble fingers hang laundry on tightly stretched lines.

I’m older than Mrs. Penny was the last time I saw her and for the last few years have been bemoaning my aging hands. But yesterday while holding them up to admire my fresh manicure, I thought about Mrs. Penny. How exquisite her hands were with their short strong fingers and clipped unvarnished nails, and I looked at my hands with new eyes. Yes, they’re aging like the rest of me, but they’ve been through a lot during my life, wiping tears from the cheeks of nieces and nephews, grasping the hands of friends, moving briskly along my laptop keyboard and touching my husband’s face. I’ve decided to look at my hands and body as evolving, recording the life I’ve lived–the life for which I’m supremely grateful.

When I chose “Windermere” for the name of the beach mansion in my current mystery novel, I didn’t know I’d selected a name associated with a famous writer–Ernest Hemingway. I’d merely researched names of lakeside residences and chose one that felt right. It wasn’t until I attended a writers conference several years ago on Walloon Lake near Petoskey, where the Hemingway family’s cottage still stands, that I realized Ernest and I had something in common.

The Hemingway’s Windermere was built in 1904. It was where Ernest spent most of his summers until he was twenty-one. To travel to their cottage, the family took a thirty-two hour trip on a lake steamer from Chicago to Harbor Springs, where they’d board a train for Petoskey. They then switched railway cars to Walloon Lake and took a small steamer to Windermere.

Fortunately, going to the writers conference on Walloon Lake this year took my friend, Shelley, and me, only a little over four hours, including a stop in Charlevoix for lunch. Once we arrived at Camp Michigania, where the writers conference was held, we boarded a pontoon boat that took us past the Hemingway cottage. All I could think of was all the amazing ideas and unique ways of describing them that came out of that place and the surrounding area.

I struggled about whether to rename “my” Windermere when I learned about the Hemingway’s place. But by then I was invested in the name and nothing else seemed quite right. I’d imagined a two story white clapboard house with a wrap-around porch that backed up to Lake Michigan in the imaginary tourist town, Port Elizabeth, Michigan.

During the four years I worked on my novel, I’d looked for a “real” house that matched the one in my imagination. I scoured Petoskey, Harbor Springs, Grand Haven, and other places whose names I can’t recall. I googled beach houses, beach mansions, New England homes, etc. No dice. It was just last week when I ran across the snowy photo above. It was instant recognition. Almost perfect.

When I start a novel, I need to know the names of the characters before I can write about them. I also have to know what they look like. My protagonist, Alex, in the Windermere novel looks like Stana Katic (Kate Beckett in Castle). The antagonist, Cassandra, is based on Madeline Stowe (Victoria Grayson in Revenge). So it surprises me that I imagined my Windermere before I knew it actually existed.

But that’s what we writers tap into–our imaginations. Even if you don’t write down your stories, you still tell them–you might embellish events you’ve engaged in to make them sound more interesting. You probably imagine how characters in a book look and are disappointed when the movie is made because the characters aren’t as you’d pictured. I believe imagination is a gift–something that separates us from other creatures on Earth. And I’m grateful every day for it.