It was a sunny Sunday morning in May when I looked out my window and noticed an older gentleman talking with two younger men and pointing at my house. Curious, I opened my front door and asked if I could help them. It turned out the older man had grown up in my house and had come back to look at it with his two nephews, who had also spent childhood times there.

Excited to meet someone who had lived in my house, I threw the door open and invited them in. We introduced ourselves and I gave them a tour. It took them a few minutes to get their bearings. Some walls had been removed and additions made, making the layout different from what they remembered. But the man and his nephews thought the house looked good, and were happy that someone who obviously cared about the place now owned it.

I've been living in Rosendale in a charming Victorian built in 1888 with my large chocolate lab about five years. It is the first house I've owned. The house has a warm, friendly vibe and, despite feeling a sense of propriety, I've always wondered about my house's past, its quirks and previous tenants.So I pelted the gentleman with questions: "What's with the slanty kitchen floor? Tell me about this mystery chimney. How about the charred attic ceiling?"

He answered my questions and described my house when he lived in it with his parents and two brothers. A whole family, in what I always considered a small house! I'm nearly busting out of it. The man talked about the tiny room his brother slept in that is now part of my bathroom, the way the boys would chase each other in a complete circle around the second floor, a fire that jumped from our attic to the neighbor's house, the wooden steps in the back that went down to the Rondout creek before Rosendale flooded in the 1950s and the riprap, a loose stone retaining wall, was created along its banks.

As this man contentedly wandered through my house, I knew that he was seeing beyond the rooms, the furniture, and my belongings. He was reliving memories anchored in the same place where my memories are being formed. Who else, I wondered, has lived in these rooms?What other dramas have transpired between these walls?

Like a member of a private club, I am only a visitor passing through, my life and my history just one chapter in the secret life of my house.

Marlene Adelstein is a freelance book editor and writer living in Rosendale. Visit her website, www.fixyourbook.com