Earlier this year, two of my Aunts came to stay with me in what I affectionately termed ‘The Auntening.’ After a few years of my grandmother living in a retirement home, we sold her house in Richmond Hill and the family congregated to oversee unearthing and divying up all the treasures the house holds.

I’ve been living at 55 (as it is known) since last May, when I got a “can you start Monday?” phone call on a Thursday from a different city and was lucky enough to have the little white house waiting for me. I packed up my pet cactus, my modem, and an approximation of a business casual wardrobe and moved down the 401 to start a new job with and comfort of a neighbourhood I knew and loved ready to welcome me. I planted red geraniums, threw out most of what I found in the kitchen cupboards, and spent the summer being whisked in and out of the city on a scenic-if-unforgiving commute.

So I created new memories of my own in the space of a house I already had a childhood worth of visits and pumpkin-carving contests in – but it wasn’t until The Auntening that I appreciated the depth of remembrance the house holds.

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