The polite but busy doorman attempted to ignore me. Yet he was my only hope. So I tried again. That’s when I heard the most beautiful sound behind me. “Do you need help?”

After the brokenness of life in 2020, our overseas trip is a do-over of sorts — an effort to capture what eluded us that dismal spring, a celebratory sense of moving forward with optimism.

We came there in the spring of 1963. Our house stood alone in the newly subdivided farmlands south of Nashville. Its only companions were scattered foundations representing the future homes of families whose lives we would share for years.

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: The experience of holding an infant bear in your arms, and feeling it snuggle under your coat for warmth, is unforgettable.

Antiques Roadshow, the PBS TV series that for 25 years has revealed the history and occasionally breathtaking value of collectibles was coming to Nashville, and I had tickets. From there to stardom seemed what Bertie Wooster would have called a stone-dead cert, if ever there was one.