On my way to a coffee shop last weekend, I took a detour down a tree-lined side street and paused to check out a stoop sale. To be honest, it’s a personal policy of mine to steer clear of used goods, especially in New York, and what I was really checking out was the glorious brownstone behind the stoop.
“Would you like to look inside? A one-bedroom just opened up on the second floor.”
Of course I said yes. No matter that I have no intention of moving at the moment, that J and I recently signed a two-year lease on our rent-stabilized apartment, no matter that there’s no way we could afford to live in that part of town -- there was no way I was going to deny myself a glimpse at the inside of that brownstone.
Thanks to being raised by my perpetually dissatisfied mother, I have a thing for beautiful homes. Here’s a short list of my mom’s dissatisfactions, as expressed by her repeatedly throughout my childhood: my parents’ bank account, my father’s salary, her job, the fact that she wasn’t a housewife, the size of our house, the siding on our house, the location of our house, that our house wasn’t a lakefront mansion.
The main reason I appreciate adulthood is that I’m no longer in my mother’s custody. Every weekend she dragged my sister and me along on her errands, which inevitably included stops at antique stores to ogle pieces of furniture she couldn’t afford and wouldn’t fit in our tiny house (though she sometimes bought them on credit anyway), or visits to open houses in towns much wealthier than our own. These outings not only led to fights between my parents, they also instilled in me a love for crown molding, bay windows, and vaulted ceilings.
This apartment had all of that, plus original wooden shutters and a newly renovated bathroom and kitchen. Imagine this: the world’s fanciest oven range hood, a granite breakfast bar, marble bathroom tiles, a standing shower with a rainforest shower head.
It wasn’t perfect, of course. This is NYC, so a “one-bedroom” is actually a large studio with only a single closet. In other words, barely enough room for one human and definitely not room for two, but for the briefest moment I wished I could live there by myself. I’d hang up the cheerful yellow and orange flower curtains I got rid of when I shacked up with my dude; instead of artwork, stacks and stacks of books; the amount of blankets, pillows, and candles would overdose the place with cozy.
When I first moved to the city, I didn’t know anyone and my teaching job was hard and all-consuming. Every Friday I was exhausted and couldn’t wait to leave school so I could buy wine and sushi and catch up on all the TV shows I missed during the workweek. Color me crazy, but occasionally--and let me emphasize occasionally because my husband is the best--I just want to re-live one of those Friday nights, be by myself and shut out the rest of the world. I don’t even have a hard job anymore, I’m just a selfish asshole.
Do you ever think about the paths you didn’t take? Every time you say yes to a relationship or a new job, you’re telling an alternate version of yourself no. I could still be teaching, I could still be dating a different guy every six months, but I chose this version, unfulfilled by my job but very fulfilled by my relationship. Sometimes life just happens, but I can very clearly remember making this decision. J and I were at that crossroads of early dating where we could have slowly faded from two dates a week to one every other week to not texting back for a few days to not communicating at all. We were at a bar talking it out and he asked, “Do you want to try to be in a relationship?” I was notorious for not believing in relationships, I was almost proud of it, like that’s a thing to be proud of, but I thought about it for a long moment, and I said yes, I wanted to try.
And thank god. A few days ago I complained about being bored, so J dropped what he was doing and we rode our bikes around different parts of Brooklyn. We stopped at a bar, we rode along the waterfront, and we ended up eating dinner on a restaurant’s rooftop. There was a comfortable routine to my single life, but there was no spontaneity. Not to get too deep, but I grew up around someone so bitter that my adult life is one big attempt at happiness.
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