I recently returned from a two week stint in Vancouver which was 98% critical family business and 2% my first solo vacation in thirteen years without kids. I was there to find a long-term living facility for my father, who now requires 24/7 care due to Alzheimers. I did, however, manage to fit in a few coffees with friends and a drop-in visit to my childhood home, complete with a spontaneous tour compliments of the current owners.
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I wrote an extended (and tear-stained) personal essay about this visit and submitted it to The Globe and Mail‘s Facts & Arguments page. If grace be on my side, it will appear in that publication sometime soon. If not, it will appear here in its long-form in a month or so. I will not re-write what I’ve already written, but I will share some photos and ask you to consider a request that has greatly enriched me as both a giver and receiver.
If someone knocks on your door and says that they used to live in your house, I hope you will consider inviting them in.
Unless it is brand-new and utterly lacks history, it is likely that someone at some point will slowly cruise your house, stand on the sidewalk staring, hoping to see movement, or have the nerve to actually knock on the door and introduce themselves.
As I talk to people, read more on the subject and experience it myself, it becomes abundantly clear that human beings possess a desire to connect with the ideals of their past, particularly as they age. Childhood homes, and their surrounding neighbourhoods, offer the symbolic, and very real, backdrop for all our personal histories. They are the touchstones for the people we eventually become.
My mother was shocked by my hubris as I marched up to the front door and rang the bell. She was equally aghast when we were warmly welcomed in. For me, it seemed particularly normal. After all, I had answered the very same knock on my front door not long ago.
The McCarney family owned my house, “Rustic Manor”, from about 1919 to 1976. I wrote, in “Picture Perfect,” about Patricia McCarney and the first visit she paid me in the summer of 2009. She later returned with a friend, and then with her nephew, John, and I have enjoyed their friendship ever since. They have loaned me their family photo books, which are amazing treasures. John e-mailed just yesterday, attaching a snapshot of the reproduction sign he has made for me and will deliver during his next visit to the area.
I can’t emphasize enough the transformative and cathartic value of offering this simple, yet priceless, gift to another human being. It is the chance, often the last, to re-experience the intensely familiar place they call home.
Plus you just might get a friendship out of the deal.
2 responses to “When Opportunity Knocks”
We live in a 160 year old house, and the first spring that we moved here we met the family who lived here for 80+ years. We invited them over – three sisters and their elderly mother – and it was they who gave us a tour of our home – sharing their memories and telling stories. All of them cried at some point. It was a really special experience for all of us.
Hey Krista – Thanks for checking out my blog. Lucky you and lucky them to have shared a little of that fleeting magic. Did you, by chance, record any of your conversations with them? Kindest, Andrea