SERENDIPITY

Serendipity, I love it.  I love how it sounds, how the word skips off my tongue when I say it and I especially love how it feels when serendipity is at play in my life.  

When I was a little girl, I believed in fairies.  There was magic in that belief.  I don’t know when I stopped believing in fairies, but it was probably a good thing I did if I wanted to be taken seriously as an adult.  Now I quietly find my magic in serendipity.

The occurrence of chance events that have brought me the most joy so far in my life happened when I put my house in Houston on the market in preparation for my return to the Pacific Northwest.  It was a two-story Queen Ann style home built in 1906, located in the Westmoreland Historic District near downtown Houston. 

It had a deep, wrap-around porch, a high steeped roof with three decorative gables, and eleven turned posts framing the porch and the main entrance.  It was built on pier and beams, lifting it high off the ground.  Even when Hurricane Harvey brought days of heavy rain, and Hawthorne Street became a river flowing past my front steps, the house itself remained high and dry. 

There were frequent walking tours through the Westmoreland Historic District because of the variety of architectural styles located within a few blocks of each other.  Two doors down from my house was a home built from a kit ordered from Sears Roebuck & Company in 1908. 

The historical significance of the house at 215 Hawthorne Street went far beyond its location and architecture.  It held within its walls a wealth of family history that would soon be lost if I couldn’t find a way to preserve it.  The only family member I knew, who was a member of the third generation to inhabit the house, wanted nothing to do with the treasures I found in the attic.

 There were yearbooks from Rice University in the mid-1920s, old postcards describing overseas adventures mailed to the house from Europe in the 1930s, old photographs and letters containing bits and pieces of family history.  The greatest treasure of all was a family Bible documenting family history dating back to 1837.

All the bedrooms upstairs except one had connecting doors. This allowed the south breeze blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico during the summer to flow through the three connecting bedrooms.  The only private bedroom was Aunt Mary’s. 

Aunt Mary had been a slave who chose to stay with the family after emancipation.  Within that family Bible I found an emotional tribute written to Aunt Mary on the day she died.  It expressed deep gratitude to her for raising four previous generations of the Wilson family, the descendants of whom migrated to Houston and built this house. 

In the hallway downstairs were a couple of barrister bookcases that had belonged to the second generation of Wilsons to occupy the home.  There was also an old photograph of an unknown woman.  Within the frame was an arrangement of hair jewelry.  

I was very curious about the hair, so I looked it up online, and found that the practice of making hair jewelry began as early as the 17^th century to create mourning pieces as sentimental keepsakes from the hair of deceased loved ones.   It became a major trend in the 19^th century among Victorians.  People even wore the hair pieces as jewelry.

I had no idea who the woman was but knowing that she must have been someone important to the Wilson family, I left the photograph with its hair jewelry hanging in the hall for the entire ten years I lived in the house.  Walking past it reminded me that this house had its own history long before it became my home.

Leaving all these things behind in the house where I found them when I moved in didn’t feel right.  There was a good chance the new owners would not be history buffs like me.  The items would probably be meaningless to them and most likely would be thrown out. 

This is where the magic of serendipity was set into motion.  The house was already on the market with a for sale sign in the front yard, when one day as I was trying to decide what to do with the previous owners’ personal items,  I happened to glance out the front window  and I saw a man and young girl, probably in her 20s, standing outside.  The man was pointing to the house and talking with the girl.

I went outside and asked if they were looking for a new home.  He said no, he wasn’t looking to buy, but that he had known the people who lived in the house and had spent a lot of time during his childhood visiting them.  To him it was a magical place, and he was sharing some of his memories of those visits with his daughter. 

I said, “well come on in”.  They did, and as we were walking through the house, he suddenly turned to me and said he had to be completely honest.   It was his grandparents he had visited in the house, and that his mother had grown up there.  I can’t begin to describe how excited that made me.  I said, “you have got to come up to the attic with me”.

I took them to the attic and showed them all the family memorabilia and asked if he wanted it, which of course he did, for himself and for his daughter.  I even cried when I handed him the old family Bible and told him about the tribute written to Aunt Mary.  He knew nothing about Aunt Mary or the existence of all these old family treasures. 

They took all the items from the attic along with the photograph of the woman with her hair jewelry.  Both father and daughter were fascinated by the history of hair jewelry, and the mystery of who that woman might have been.  When they came back for the barrister bookcases he asked if he could bring his mother by to see the house.

I was fortunate enough to walk through the house with Anne, the woman who grew up there, and whose mother also grew up in the house, raised by Aunt Mary.  Anne’s daughter and son brought her from the nursing home to see the house one last time. 

Anne talked about wall-to-wall girls giggling through many nights of slumber parties in the middle bedroom upstairs, of hours spent in the finished attic playing games and of how I just wouldn’t believe the number of boys she flirted with while leaning over the railing of the front porch.  Anne’s wedding reception was held in this house.  This was the first time Anne’s children and granddaughter heard these stories.

Just as all the old forgotten photos, letters and post cards along with the old family Bible, were passed onto family members who had no idea such items existed, Anne’s memories too were being passed on. 

Anne was enjoying briefly reliving and sharing these old memories, when she suddenly turned to me and said, “I’m on my way out.  It’s time for new memories to be made in this house.”

Anne’s words echoed in my mind as I walked through the empty house one last time, closing the door behind me.  I couldn’t have agreed with her more as I too was saying goodbye to my old house, filled with my own memories.

I walked across the porch, between the double posts framing the steps and got into the car where my daughter, granddaughter, and a U-Haul trailer were waiting.  Like Anne, I was also on my way out, making room for new memories to be made in this house. 

I was ready to go and was looking forward to new adventures in old places.  Best of all, I was able to leave the house with peace of mind knowing where the forgotten family treasures had ended up, and with a renewed appreciation for serendipity.  For it was through the coming together of a series of chance events that long lost pieces of family history found their way to their rightful owners, connecting that generation to a family history they never knew belonged to them. 

And so, because of this, I have to say I still believe in magic as much as I did when my backyard was inhabited by fairies.