It’s a Wonderful Life

We thought it would be fun to tell you something about ourselves, to be read 20, 30, 40 or more years later.”

Elizabeth Wilson

Last September, when Elizabeth and Ken Wilson drove up to the Maplewood, New Jersey, house they owned over 35 years ago, memories overwhelmed them. The retired Fernandina Beach couple were in New Jersey for Elizabeth’s high school reunion. On a whim, they decided to drive by their former home —​ a stately Victorian Foursquare built in 1898 that the couple bought shortly after they married in 1987.

While sitting in the car, pondering the changes that subsequent owners had made to the exterior of the house, they saw a young woman walk out from the backyard with two young children at her side. Suddenly, Elizabeth says, she pictured herself in the early 1990s with her own two toddlers.

“I just burst into tears,” Elizabeth says. “I said, ‘Ken, that is me 30 years ago. I’ve got to talk to her.’”

The spontaneous drive-by that evening presented the Wilsons with an unexpected and emotional plunge into the past. While renovating the kitchen in 1992, the couple had planted a time capsule behind the drywall —​ a Ziploc bag containing a handwritten letter as well as family photos, photos of the kitchen before the renovation and the Oct. 30 front page of the local​ Star-Ledger newspaper.

Eliana and Noah Kaufman, who bought the house in 2021, had found the time capsule while renovating the kitchen shortly thereafter. When Eliana saw Elizabeth approach her in the driveway, she knew who the visitor was. “We’ve been looking for you,” Eliana said. “We found the time capsule.”

Elizabeth becomes teary recalling the meeting with the Kaufmans.

“Here is this young couple; they love the house as much as we did. They plan to stay. It just warms my heart,” she says.

Their first home together

The poignant meeting of past and present would likely not have occurred had the Wilsons, who retired to Fernandina Beach in 2010, not planted the time capsule. They had purchased the Victorian knowing it needed a lot of work. The previous owner had lived in the house since 1924, and the house was stuck in the past.

“The realtor​ said, it just needs a coat of paint, and it will come alive,” Elizabeth recalls, with a laugh. “I went on faith that Ken would know what to do with this house.”

Ken is a highly skilled craftsman; an electrical engineer who spent most of his career at General Motors.

“It was a big house,” he says. “But it looked like it had good bones. It had potential.”

The Wilsons soon added children to their family, first Alex and then Charlotte. Ken’s favorite memory of the house, he says, is an afternoon when he was lying​ in a hammock on the broad, wraparound porch as a summer thunderstorm moved in, toddlers Alex and Charlotte snuggled by his side —​ warm, safe and dry.

Elizabeth recalls big parties with lots of neighborhood children and the satisfaction of remaking the home to fit their needs. They did most of the work; replacing the electrical and plumbing systems and adding insulation. They added a full bathroom and two half baths and, lastly, remodeled the kitchen. Ken was a fastidious worker, securing every beam and board with superfluous nails and a few extra thuds of the hammer.

“One of Elizabeth’s favorite sayings at the time was ‘God help the person who ever has to undo this renovation,” he recalls.

When the kitchen was nearing completion, Elizabeth decided to plant the time capsule because she and Ken were always delighted when they came across old newspaper pages or coupons while working on the house. In the letter she wrote: “We thought it would be fun to tell you something about ourselves, to be read 20, 30, 40 or more years later.”

They wrote about the home’s history. The Oct. 30, 1992, Star-Ledger contained stories about the impending presidential election featuring Bill Clinton, Ross Perot and the incumbent, George H.W. Bush.

The letter’s last lines reflect a young mother happily rushing to meet the demands of her life.

“Tomorrow we’re going to sheetrock​, so I must conclude this note … Enjoy your home!”

Time passes. Things change. Life goes on. Ken says the time capsule reflected their knowledge that the renovation “wouldn’t stand the test of time and that it would be a fun surprise for someone in the future.”

In 1998, the Wilsons decided to move to another house in New Jersey to acquire a larger lot, a swimming pool and central air conditioning. The moving van arrived, and the time capsule was forgotten.

Time memorialized

After subsequent corporate moves to Ohio and Michigan, Ken took advantage of a General Motors early retirement offer, and they moved to Fernandina Beach. Now retired, they love cycling and gardening and play a mean game of trivia. But the couple retained fond memories of the house where they started their lives together. So, last summer, when they returned to the area, they made time to drive by the old Victorian before dining at a favorite Italian restaurant.

When they pulled up to the curb, they noticed the house color was painted a lovely taupe —​ the color they had chosen years ago but had been changed multiple times since. Then Elizabeth saw the younger version of herself round the corner of the house. She hopped from the car and raced down the driveway toward Eliana Kaufman and said: “We used to live in this house.”

“When Elizabeth came walking up our driveway and I realized who she was, tears sprung to my eyes,” Eliana says. She had always intended to try to find the Wilsons, although the common last name made it difficult. But, she says, “the universe found a way to connect us.”

Eliana, who is creative director for branded video at Condé Nast, invited the Wilsons inside. She and Noah, who is a senior commerce editor at Bon Appétit, have two children, Waylon, 5, and Zoë, 3. Noah found the house when Eliana was pregnant with Zoë and they realized their Bronx home was too small for the growing family.

“My husband loves looking at homes for fun and stumbled across the listing for the home,” Eliana says. “It was the perfect amount of space for us. It had the original flooring, a wraparound porch that I didn't know I wanted and so much backyard space that we have never had before.”

Eliana showed the Wilsons around, and they answered her questions about the home’s history. For example, the Kaufmans wondered why there were two switches marked “East” and “West” inside a closet. Ken explained that those switches controlled the two whole-house fans he installed years ago to combat hot and humid summers. The switches had long since been disconnected.

The time capsule had been discovered by the construction workers who were remodeling the kitchen, Eliana told them.

“My heart swelled when I saw it —​ what a sweet and unexpected surprise!” she says. “We loved reading the sweet letter, seeing the pictures of what the kitchen used to be, traveling back to ’90s fashion with the old family photos and uncovering the old newspaper with the headlines from the time.”

During their visit with the Wilsons, Eliana couldn’t find where she had stored the time capsule. But once the Wilsons returned to Florida, she emailed them saying she had relocated it and sent them photos of the contents.

After the Kaufmans found the Wilsons’ time capsule, they planted one of their own before their kitchen was completed.

“Sometimes, as a parent, you can feel like an island —​ completely wrapped up in the lives of your children and unaware of the world around you,” Eliana says. “But we are all so connected in unique ways. I think about that a lot as our families live in other states across the country and we look to build a home here for our children. The history of where you came from is so important, not just the house you were raised in, but your heritage as well. I've been digging deeper into each of our families' timelines to learn more about the people who made us who we are, in an effort to pass it down to our children. There is so much we can learn from others if we just open ourselves up to the opportunity.”

Like the Kaufmans, Ken and Elizabeth, who will celebrate 38 years of marriage in January, have been touched by their reunion with the past and the opportunity to acknowledge a life well-lived​.

“You recognize the passage of time,” Elizabeth says. “We’ve lived our lives. Our lives turned out well. We’re still together.”

“We still like each other,” Ken chimes in.

Both Eliana and Elizabeth recommend planting time capsules when possible; “paying it forward” with the currency of cherished memories.

Says Elizabeth: “It shows hope for the future.”