3 oak hill terrace

 
And so, 3 Oak Hill Terrace is no more.  Title was transferred to a new family today.

Three Oak Hill Terrace was brand new.  It was created by our family in 1999.  A vivid memory I have is sitting with my parents at the architect’s office, going over a questionnaire he had asked them to complete.  The last question asked about anything extra they wanted.  My dad showed me how he had written “pool?” and then crossed it out and wrote “pool!”  This was going to be a nice house.

The Leibenhauts have been the only tenants of 3 Oak Hill.  Jay, Lena, and I live in a house built in 1925 – it has seen the stories of many families.  Three Oak Hill has seen only the story of one family.  It will, of course, like our house, see the stories of other families.  But so far, we are the only ones it has seen, and I find that noteworthy.

When my parents made the decision to build a house, I remember us all wondering if it would be hard to say goodbye to 67 Christian Hill – it was the house the three of us girls grew up in – the switch came during my first semester as a freshman in college when I, the youngest child, was officially a child no more.  When I left for college that fall, I was leaving my childhood home and arrived at our new home on my first college break.  I wondered if we would be constantly reminiscing over our Christian Hill house.  To my surprise, I think we rarely did.  Three Oak Hill was a far superior house.  It provided the space, the beauty, the pool, that far outweighed what Christian Hill offered us.  Christian Hill was a small house.  Yes, I do think of memories we had there when we were growing up, and when I have dreams about "home", it’s still that house.  But 3 Oak Hill was a much more enjoyable house to spend our time.

I predict this time around we will look back to 3 Oak Hill and miss it, and not just because it was a nicer house.  This house was special.  This house represents love.  Christian Hill will, of course, always hold a special place in our hearts as the home we grew up in.  But unlike Christian Hill, where my sisters and I had to be there because we were still children, 3 Oak Hill began when we were all grown up and thus ultimately, we were all there voluntarily.  We were there because we all wanted to be there, together.  One sister’s plan to come home one weekend often meant one or two sisters rescheduling their next few weekends around so that they would be there too.  If one was missing, she would be missed.  In that way, this house represented love a lot more than Christian Hill did because we were there because we all wanted to be together.

Three Oak Hill will forever be the place where Tara and Michael were married.  It was the place where news of pregnancies was shared and it served as the home of Lena's first days outside the womb and hospital.  Yes, this house saw the Leibenhaut family grow with the addition of significant others and children.  The love in our family has grown much larger as a result of these additions.  Perhaps Christian Hill would not have been big enough to contain it.

What I have always found interesting is how easily we refer to places as home.  On vacation for a week, people will refer to the hotel where they are staying or the home they are renting as “home”.  Sitting at the beach in Hawaii, “should we pack up and go home now?”  I suppose it’s because home is not a physical thing – ultimately, it is where you retreat where you have only your things and each other.  And so, the Leibenhaut home will continue to exist wherever we all come together on a given weekend, whether it be in a Hartford rental home or somewhere else.  We will sure miss that beautiful house though.