This week, the house my husband and I bought in 2009 came back on the market. And there I was, looking at photographs of rooms I once knew by heart.
An older home, a short walk from a quaint, bustling village. We were just 22 and 23 when we bought it. Looking back, I feel such tenderness toward those two people at the beginning of their life together. What a privilege it was to have keys to a home of our own at that age. I understood that then. I understand it differently now.
We fixed it up, mostly in the ways that don’t make for particularly exciting photographs. A roof. A furnace. Air conditioning. Windows. Paint. We put our money and our weekends into caring for it, learning what it meant to be responsible for something together.
And while we were busy taking care of that house, we were living a life inside it. We brought our first baby home there. I recovered from surgeries there. Friends and family gathered, and conversations stretched across rooms. Some were easy and full of laughter. Others were the kind you have to find your way through carefully. So much happened there that never made it into a photograph.
In 2018, with a one-year-old and hopes for three or four children, we decided to build. We imagined bedrooms filling up, more little feet, a family growing into the space we were creating. There is something beautiful about building a home around a life you hope to live. Choosing things together. Watching plans become rooms. Imagining ordinary mornings in a place that doesn’t quite exist yet.
Leaving our first home was hard. There had been a time when I thought we might stay there forever, our lives unfolding with the village just a walk away. Still, we had another dream, and we followed it.
Over the last eight years, life has brought storms we couldn’t have accounted for when we were looking at floor plans. My health changed what was possible for our family. The three or four children we imagined became two, both of whom I am immensely grateful for. Our life took a different shape than we expected, and we kept building it together.
Then this weekend, we walked through our first home again.
There is something about entering a place you once lived that photographs cannot prepare you for. Familiar rooms brought back pieces of our life there, and I wanted to take my time. To notice what had changed. To let myself remember.
Beside me was our oldest, walking through the home where we had once carried her through the door. That part got me. To stand with her where I held her when she was brand new, showing her a beginning she knows only through our stories. Once, we were imagining who she might become. Now, here she was, old enough to walk beside us and listen.
I have always attached meaning to little things. A familiar room can bring back a conversation. A window can remind me of an afternoon I didn’t know I would remember. For a moment, I wondered whether it was silly to feel so much about a house.
I believe it’s the people who make a home. The love, the care, the lives unfolding together. But I still feel tenderness toward the places where that love had somewhere to land. I remember where we sat, where we gathered, where we rested when life asked too much of us. The people are what made it ours, and the house will always be part of how I remember them in that season.
So much of our living happens at home. We come through the door carrying things the rest of the world may never see. We recover, argue, apologize. We make dinner while something difficult sits quietly in the room with us. We celebrate good news and reach for one another when the news is hard. We raise children through thousands of small, repeated acts of care. Of course those places become meaningful.
And I won’t lie: a part of me would still love to scoop that house up again. I felt the pull of the familiar streets, the village, the life we once had there. Walking through also reminded me how much we have lived since we last held those keys.
So many people tell us never to look back on the past. Keep going. The way is forward. There is truth in that. Our lives need us here, and there is still so much ahead to experience. But every once in a while, I think it’s good to turn around. To thank what gave us comfort. To remember where we felt safe through changing seasons. To look with compassion at who we were and recognize how far we have come.
That was what this visit gave me: a chance to quietly thank a home that gave us a place to begin. There was something beautifully full circle about returning with the child we once brought home, and her little sister along for the visit. Our family had grown. Our story had continued.
Sometimes life offers these unexpected connections. A familiar place appears again, and the timing allows us to see it with new eyes. When we’re open to those synchronicities, we may notice how an earlier chapter still speaks to the one we’re living now. This visit reminded me how deeply I have loved our life, even through the parts we never would have chosen.
Then we left that house again and went home, all four of us, to the home we once drew on paper.
There is so much life waiting for us here. Conversations around our table. Friends coming through the door. Our girls growing into themselves. Plans we’re excited about and good things we haven’t even thought to imagine yet.
I’m grateful we looked back. It made me want to be more present for what we’re creating now. We can honor the home that held our beginning and keep filling this one with love, laughter, and the everyday moments that become a family’s history. There is still so much life to fall in love with here, so many memories waiting to be made with the people who have always been my home.
And to the next caretakers of this home: may you feel a little of the love we left here as you begin to fill it with your own. May it shelter you through difficult days and hold your laughter long into the good nights. May friends linger at your table, may ordinary mornings become cherished memories, and may you find comfort in the simple turning of a key, knowing you’re home. We wish you so much happiness here.
