A Legacy of Blessing

“That’s my home!”

The realtor pulled up in front of a house with a for sale sign. We almost missed it. I had asked her to take me back to the hotel after a frustrating and demoralizing afternoon. I was still jet lagged after having arrived back in the United States the day before, and I was getting a headache. But as she passed a cross street in the older neighborhood we were touring, I saw the for sale sign down the block and suggested she circle around for a look.

Until that moment, I was questioning my decision to move to Portland, Oregon. I had been living and working overseas for seven years. My adventure had taken me to three countries on three continents, but it was time to come back and I was eager to settle down. Only a few days earlier, the representative from the moving company had stood in my apartment in Paris, asking where to send my things.

I didn’t know. Memphis, where I grew up, no longer felt like home. I didn’t know where home was anymore. I felt lost. In what can only be called a leap of faith, I named the city that had been on my mind for months, although I had never seen it..

“Send my things to Portland.”

“To what address?”

“I don’t have one, but I will by the time my things get there.”

But when I arrived in Portland, nothing felt right. The first houses the realtor showed me might as well have been on another planet. I questioned my sanity.

And then, there it was. A small tudor style home with leaded glass windows, nestled in between two bigger homes on a quiet block with trees overhanging the street, and rusted iron rings still embedded in the curbs to tie up your horses.

As soon as I saw it, I knew it was home. I could see myself walking up the front walk at the end of the day, happy to be home. I could see my son, who had just turned four, riding his bike and playing with the kids I saw.

No one was living there, so we were able to go right in. As we stepped inside, I felt the loving warmth that breathed from the floors and walls. The house was in an estate sale and was still furnished with sweet, old fashioned taste and happy family pictures.

I found out that the house had had only one owner. Built in 1937, it was the first home of a young couple who moved in and raised their son. The wife, widowed and her son long grown and gone, continued to live there until she died. Nothing in the house was updated. It was an electrical and plumbing museum. Clothesline was strung up in the basement for drying. There was no dishwasher or garbage disposal. It didn’t matter. I was in love.

I bought the house that night.

Over twenty years later, it is still my home. My five children have grown up in it. I almost put it on the market when the third child came along, but I knew someday the kids would leave and this is where I wanted to be. So the kids shared rooms, and we all made do.

Someday, I know my time in this house will come to an end. I hope when that time comes, someone will pull up in front of the house and recognize it as home. They will walk in the door and feel the love that has permeated the plaster and seeped into the hardwood floors for decades, perhaps even a century by then. I hope I have honored the legacy of the woman who left her blessing in the home for me, as I will leave mine for those who come after.