Now hers.

A family home beautifully changes hands.

Sam and I went to dinner at a good friend’s house in the same New Haven neighborhood my dad grew up in, on the same street. I hadn’t known her exact address, so when she told me, it sounded strangely familiar. Looking through my dad’s high school yearbook, I saw, to my amazement, that he’d grown up in the same house.

I spent the lead-up to dinner wondering if I’d feel a sense of déjà vu, or possibly a wave of the lingering energy of my beloved family members in the house they’d inhabited.

Walking up the front steps, my father’s yearbook in hand because I thought it made for a dramatic reveal, I suddenly felt the significance of the moment. I half expected my grandmother to open the door, but this being real life, it was my friend, cheerfully welcoming us in.

Characteristically uncool, I wasted no time showing off my father’s yearbook. My friend was as incredulous as I had been. From where we stood in the renovated kitchen, I pointed to the backyard garage and told her about how my dad spent a freezing cold night in it when he came home from boarding school at Thanksgiving to surprise his parents, only to discover they’d gone on vacation.

This sparked a barrage of conversations about garages, schools, a local butcher shop, the challenges of dog management, our kids, and how we’d navigated the holidays. I set my father’s yearbook on a shelf before sliding into the cozy banquette to eat dinner.   

To be honest, at some point very early on I forgot about the house once being my progenitors’ because it felt so wholly and so perfectly my friend’s. My dad once bounded down the staircase, ate dinners in the formal dining room, but he and his family have, like Elvis, left the building. In her home, I felt my family lightly, not as lingering presence or wistful absence, but in the ephemeral grace of transition.