We pull up next to AZ, my grandparents’ old farm store. The windows are broken, the first floor mostly hidden by overgrown bushes. I can see the land up ahead, the path that we once drove on in my grandpa’s van, still winding over the hill. It is for sale again, only a few years after my family said goodbye.
The house and vet clinic, now a separate property, are to my right and they look nicer than when I last saw them six years ago. There is a shed with hanging baskets and a row of new roses along the road.
A woman comes out and waves and we go to her. She is the new owner, a veteran and teacher from Queens who saw the house and immediately fell in love. She invites us inside and although I hesitate at first, we follow her.
My husband and daughter have visited the land, but it is my son’s first time at the place where I spent so much of my childhood. For all of them, the house is a stranger. But for me, when we step through the doors that lead to the kitchen, I am transported back to my childhood. The kitchen cupboards are the same and I resist the urge to look for my grandparents’ cat, Smoky, who used to sleep behind one of the doors. The house even smells the same, like cigarette smoke and dogs and I tell myself that this is how it should be.
The rest of the downstairs is gutted but I can still imagine the dining room table and the green molding, the china cabinet with a bowl of fruit that mesmerized me as a child. The thick carpets have been removed to reveal pristine hardwood floors. I can still feel my grandparents, my childhood in these walls, these walls that now belong to someone else.
A large dog finds us and it is apparent that she has just had puppies. She gives us a low growl and my husband blocks her from our children.
“Tabrina, go upstairs!” the woman says. The dog lowers her head and runs away.
When we go upstairs, the same staircase that I ran up and down on all fours as a child, the woman closes Tabrina in the room that was once my grandparents’ bedroom. The upstairs bathroom is retiled in a modern gray and white pattern.
“I found the old sink in the trash from the previous owners,” the woman says. “But I saved it.”
It is the sink where I brushed my teeth and drank from a small paper cup before bed.
There is a new hallway through part of my dad’s bedroom and we walk through it to my aunt’s room at the back of the house.
“Are you adventurous?” the woman asks my children as she steps down onto the boards that are a makeshift floor. I can see the downstairs through some of the plywood. She takes my children’s hands and we all balance on the intersecting boards.
“Did this room used to step down?” the woman asks me.
But I can’t remember. I remember the double bed that I used to sleep in and my dad’s soft t-shirt as a nightgown. I remember giggles with my cousin before falling asleep, the bed feeling humongous. Out the window, there is a view of the swimming pool which I thought had been filled in, but it is still there, the water murky. A new white picket fence surrounds it.
She then takes us to the vet clinic, the cages for the animals still inside. We go through to the backyard and I see my grandpa’s garden, now only grass.
I leave with a picture that the woman found of my uncle as a young boy. “Come back anytime,” she says and I know that she means it. “My family keeps asking me when I’m coming home, and I tell them that I am home.”
I smile because I understand. A part of me will always be home here too.