Home at Last

“Homes everywhere can be defined as much by their past occupants as their present ones. . .” – From a May 16, 2009 story in The New York Times by Al Baker and Matthew R. Warren

The front page story in The New York Times spoke of a schoolteacher who moved into an Upper Manhattan apartment he thought was a great find – not knowing drug dealers had once used his new home, and kept returning to try to recover a stash they believed was buried beneath the floor boards. Aside from my fascination with urban crime, I thought the story captured an essential truth, that whatever past occupants leave behind -- good or bad, tangible or intangible -- affects the lives of their successors.

Fifteen years ago this weekend, my doorbell rang. Daphne and I were living in the house in Chestnut Hill, the only home she had ever known. I peered outside to see a middle-aged couple cheerfully announce they were Bill and Toby Albert. The previous owners of the house, they asked if they could come inside.

The whole experience struck my daughter as odd, in part because she didn’t understand how this couple could have formed such a strong attachment to a house they had owned for just one year, before returning to Detroit to be closer to their families. Bill and Toby thought the home looked dramatically different, maybe because I had removed their light yellow wall-to-wall carpeting. We had also removed all their wallpaper, red velvet in the upstairs bathroom, pink with gold foil in the dining room, and a trellis pattern in the kitchen. Never crazy about the house, to me it looked essentially the same as the day I first saw it.

Expressing seller’s regret, they knew the current market value of my house, and said the house they’d purchased in Detroit had not done nearly as well. Our interaction was a lot more cordial than that of the schoolteacher in Upper Manhattan with the previous occupants of his apartment.

I’m not sure when it was that real estate agents began staging properties, removing all personal photos and expecting the owners to be out of the house during showings. That was not the case when I bought the house in Chestnut Hill in 1976.

Toby and her three children under the age of six were home, and one had to navigate a lot of baby equipment. Very pregnant at the time, I don’t think I minded. This was a house of necessity rather than love, and I never expected to be there for more than 30 years.

When my offer was accepted, the agent assured me she would have the sellers sign the necessary papers immediately. Hours later I learned that Toby wouldn’t write on the Sabbath. Overly anxious to get things over with, I never knew whether she was motivated by religious piety or hopes of getting a better offer. When I met her 18 years later, I realized I should have given her the benefit of the doubt.

With their last child about to go off to college, perhaps Bill and Toby hoped venturing inside the house in Chestnut Hill would recapture a special time in their lives. It’s been more than two years since I sold that house, whose only charms for me were the neighborhood and a prime school district.

Having been both widowed and remarried while living in that house, I was determined that my next home be brand new. Having a husband who’s a lawyer came in handy on the purchase. The fact that he’s an artist came in even handier on the décor.

Although Daphne might have other ideas, I have no plans this Memorial Day weekend to go knocking on the door of Shaju and Sujita, the couple who purchased the house in Chestnut Hill. There are no previous occupants to knock on the door of my condo, and I find that comforting. Home at last!