The House

To my dear bread pals,

I hope you had fun baking over the holidays.

I closed the season by baking with a seven-year-old on New Year’s Day. He wanted to roll out cookies, and so I pulled up Ellie’s Christmas cookie booklet on my computer – which is easier to search than my bookshelves – and had him read me the ingredients. He lives in Lansingburgh, the northern section of Troy, which is where I lived until I was six. He says he wants to open a bakery, and I told him about the bakery I planned when I was his age. Someday I’ll show him where I wanted it to be. It’s an incongruous ranch house on the Hudson River, with a bay window staring at a street of industrialist mansions. One of those Queen Anne’s was where I lived with my parents and sisters, and tenants who rented the top floor.

The bulk of my childhood took place in our next house, a former Methodist parsonage closer to the school where my father taught. My mom sold it shortly after he died, and a young family, friends of our friends, now live there.

They’ve invited me over, but I’ve never been ready. I was resistant, and sometimes mad about someone else being there – as if they had ended my childhood! I know this is absurd, especially since I am nearly 59.

A few things softened my feelings. On Halloween, I went with my older sister, who still lives on the street, to give the new family treats – Pegeen was giving candy bars to her neighbors. She and I stood in the vestibule, and I saw the front hall. The banister and stairs ran up the right side, same as ever. The hall was a kind of acorn hue, maybe even the shade my mom painted?

I stood in the vestibule, and felt the power of this mouth of the house. This was where I’d entered my life, every stage of it. The door I slammed as a teenager. The door I opened when I needed to see my familiars. Surveying the site of my passages, I realized the place didn’t hurt me.

In December, at a friend’s Hanukah party, I spent time with J., the mom of the new family. We hovered upstairs in the Lego room, away from the din of the crowd, and I felt easy with her. She invited us over for New Year’s Eve.

I was greedy about the experience and didn’t mention it to my siblings or mom. I wanted to visit our house, our former house, alone. But at the last minute, I felt lonely and scared and asked my husband along.

Jack and I were the first people there. We sat in the family room my dad built, the room where he died. It had a new cozy woodstove, and it – like the rest of the house – felt familiar. All the walls and rooms are in the same spot. I knew my steps on the stairs. I knew the kitchen. My bedroom!

J. has been peeling away layers of wallpaper. Most of my kid-dom, the walls and ceiling of my attic room were wrapped in a strawberry pattern, a navy blue background with deep red berries and bright green vines. The wallpaper said – screamed and shouted hello. I sat ensconced in the arms of the attic, witnessing the new life of my old room.

I showed J. where my bed and dresser had been. Where I taught myself to type. I asked if she watched the sunrise out the little windows, which are like portholes on a ship, aiming through the trees across the street. Of course she did.

Remarkably, I was not nostalgic. The house is their house, and my memories are mine. The container is still white clapboard on the bottom, and deep green shingles cover the second and third floors. This object – giant and fraught with symbolism, ordinary and essential – holds another family. And that is very good.

My memories come to life elsewhere, in the raucous gatherings I have with my siblings and mom. On Christmas Day, we filled my sister’s house for presents and brunch. I held my great niece Lilah, less than two months old! I sat next to an empty chair, reserved for my brother-in-law, who died this year. The novelties of these moments, arrivals and departures, are part of our togetherness.

Amidst the changes, we revisit the selves we’ve been. Our now’s reckon with our were’s. We are shoulder to shoulder over time, goofy, combative, comforting. Laughing at the same jokes. Finding a home in each other outside of the skin of the home where we grew up.

We had a home to love and cherish, that our mom made beautiful and welcoming and our dad built out – a family room, a sunroom, a deck, another deck! – until he noticed we were all in college and there was no need to make the house bigger. Within those walls, the sturdy support of a pair of loving parents created a fortunate comingling, one that continues as we lean into each other in the confounding limits of age.

The house is not what made us a family. That structure is sheltering another family, and they can use possessive pronouns! It is their house now. I will give them that at last.

Yours, Amy