Sometimes you can go home again!

SOLSC  #20 - Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Stacey and Ruth from Two Writing Teachers.  For the month of March, I've joined the challenge to post a slice of life daily.

This post is inspired by a fellow blogger who wrote of being disappointed when she visited a former home.  I simply must share my story of being visited by a former resident of our home. 

It was Easter Sunday of 1992 (and yes, I'm positive about the date because I have the letter to prove it).  My neighbor, Mary Ellen (our adopted grandmother), phoned to ask if she could bring someone special to meet us.  It was Sandra who had grown up in our house, but now lived in New Jersey.  Mary Ellen assured Sandra that we would be glad to show her the house where she grew up.  I frantically picked up a few items on my way to the door.  It was delightful to visit with Sandra, and we began an occasional correspondence that lasted for almost a decade.  She mailed pictures of herself and her sister dressed for a dance recital taken in the living room in 1949.  She talked with her dad and shared that the house was built in 1937, and they added on the family room in 1953.

When we moved from our Texas house in 1997, I received this note from Sandra regarding her visit in 1992.  "What I remember most was bending down and touching with my hand the red brick floor on what was our screened-in porch where I read and read for many a summer and Daddy listened to his ball games on his small black radio."

In 1999, I mailed a favorite children's book, Our Old House, to Sandra and received this note.  "My eyes filled with tears as I looked through it New Year's Eve.  I read it to my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter and explained my intrusion into your home in 1992 and how kind you were to let me have a tour and see my old room and touch the red tile floor on the porch.  Both of our sons bought homes built in the 1900's this fall. . . Both grandchildren will have to think about other children before them who played in the same rooms."

Perhaps our shared teaching lives sweetened this newly created friendship.  In the year 2000, Sandra was in her 30th year of teaching!  I now have a son attending law school on the East coast, so maybe on my next visit there, I'll give Sandra a call. My last note was from 2000, but I think it's time to send another letter and include this post of the time Sandra came home again.