We moved around a lot when I was a kid, so I never got attached to any particular home or community.

Not attached enough, anyway, to consider any of the houses a homestead. In these past several years as I’ve sifted through generations of family photos, I’ve seen my maternal grandmother’s handwriting referring to her parents’ New Haven house as a homestead. That was technically correct, as the Lombard Street property included a house, a barn, and (if memory serves) an outbuilding or two.

After Grandma’s parents passed away (Pop in 1941 and Gram in 1962) and three of her siblings moved to a lovely home in nearby Orange, Connecticut, she referred to the new house as the Regan homestead.

It was only recently that I came across this poem Mom wrote about a fire that, years later, destroyed the original home of Irish immigrants Joe and Maggie Regan and their 11 children.

Album

The fire took it all except the stairs
built into the front hill
gone was our grandparents’ home
long after they were gone
no more the two porches
one facing the river and the trains
calling us off

Under the arbor and under the stars
we drank lemonade and Pip’s root beer
or pinochle drew us to wilder play

but best was apple pie on autumn evenings

In memory I built the house again
each thought carries me up a step
until I reached the top
and closed the album
and went on my way

~ joan vayo July 26, 2005

The fire, thankfully, didn’t harm anyone. By 2005, the property had been divided into six apartments. A new apartment building has since been built in its place.

The Regans who’d grown up in the Lombard Street homestead had all passed away before the fire took away their childhood home. In that sense it’s a blessing, as accusations of arson a few years later might have broken their tender hearts.

The homestead may be gone, but the memories, stories, and poems handed down from generation to generation will remain as long as Gram and Pop’s descendants continue to cherish them.

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“Album” © 2005  Joan Vayo. All rights reserved.

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