As a youth, I didn’t play tennis. The courts in my hometown of Hardin, Montana, were weed infested, cracked and peeling. My family played a handful of times, a way for my mother to feel her own youth again as a girl in California on a tennis team. For me, tennis became the vehicle in which I moved from work to social circles. In Iowa, when I first began to play, it was a way to leave my solitary work life and join people on the humid and hot courts of Hampton, Iowa, or Clear Lake or Mason City. I developed friendships and partners.

The same happened in Kansas City where I would go to the Westport Plaza courts and hit by myself against the backboard until I got lucky and someone needed a hitting partner. That’s where I met a man who invited me to play, and who later asked me if I would be interested in accompanying men in town on business. I was young back then, and didn’t fully understand what “escort” meant. It doesn’t matter now; I didn’t accept the offer and kept my glamorous day job buying ingredients for a livestock feed plant.

In Denver I caught up with a college buddy who was an avid tennis player and skier. Gary and I played a lot of tennis and he introduced me to his circle of friends who also skied. We had great fun, building beyond being casual college acquaintances to being lifelong, long-distance friends.

My next transfer took me to Minneapolis where I knew next to no one. Through Gary I met Larry, also a tennis player and skier. They had become acquainted in Bismarck, North Dakota, where they both worked on highways and parking structures. They met on the tennis courts. So Larry and I became tennis hitting partners. By this time I had an office job at Cargill and getting out and burning adrenaline on the courts was my physical therapy.

Back then, our Cargill business division president was an avid tennis player. Tennis was to our management team that golf has become. I played tennis so I hung with the managers. They had reserved court time once a week. It was effortless entry to the boy’s club.

Cargill had a tennis club, and I met Harriet Gerza on the courts. She worked in Human Resources. She invited me to play doubles with her husband, and I asked Larry to be my partner. We played on courts off Crosstown and Gleason Road, under a water tower. I don’t remember who won. Harriet and her husband invited us for drinks at their house a short distance from the courts. Larry and I followed them to their home.

They lived in a leave-it-to-Beaver two-story white house on a quiet street. We parked on the street and went up to the door, rang the doorbell, and waited.

Harriet was Japanese American from Chicago. Her husband was Caucasian. Larry and I fell into the same racial categories. As we waited at the front door, nothing seemed extraordinary. It was a white bread home in a white bread neighborhood. I was looking forward to a cool glass of wine.

Harriet came to the door and I stepped in first. Larry followed right behind me, chatting with Harriet. I stopped in the entrance, looking at the cherry blossom wall paper in the living room, the black stone pavers in the entry, the brass light above me.

I had a moment. A sense. A premonition.

I was going to live there.

I remember thinking, That’s weird.

We walked to the back deck, looked out over the grassy back yard, a large tree provided shade as the four of us chatted amicably. I didn’t think it appropriate to say anything to anyone about my out-of-time moment–the feeling wasn’t that Larry and I would live there, it was only that I would live there–and I figured Harriet and her husband would think it strange if I told them I was going to live in their home.

A year later, I ran into Harriet at work. She was leaving to go back to Chicago. She and her husband were parting ways. By that time I had met my future husband and we were house hunting. Harriet told me to make them an offer, they were moving on.

I told Scot the story. He said, “Don’t let that influence you. We should shop around.” So we did. But of course nothing felt right.

We bought the house. It was our home for 32 years. We raised three kids there, Scot died right before we moved out.

I am again house hunting, looking for a sign that the right house has appeared. I haven’t had any premonitions, no cold spots indicating a spirit is close. One listing I’ve looked at has the house number is 2363. That number has no significance to me. Or does it? Is it a sign? Is it an omen?

I wish I had a signal from beyond that this house, or some house, will be my forever home.

I am waiting.

Maybe I need to play more tennis.