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Every year, usually in spring or fall, I spend a few days at Mohonk Mountain House, a hotel in the Shawangunk Mountains in upstate New York. With flags fluttering from its turrets and towers, Mohonk stands like a triumph of Victorian architecture, a hymn to nineteenth century beauty and civility. But I don’t go there for the luxurious setting, or even the amenities. I go to remember. In the spring and early summer of 1972, when I was twenty-five, my first husband and I had summer jobs at Mohonk. I worked as a “flower girl” gathering lilacs and lavender from the cutting gardens, which I arranged into bouquets for the guests. It sounds idyllic, but that summer was more of a nightmare than an idyll. The truth is, I was having a nervous breakdown (to use an old-fashioned but aptly descriptive term). And though I would have loved to stay on at Mohonk that summer, to see the roses bloom … Read on