I am already homesick for this apartment I have not yet left. I loved this space when I first found it and I love it still - the exposed brick, the smooth, hardwood floors, the bright, palest-butter-colored walls, the bang for my buck. From my windows I can look out onto the el platform; the whoosh of the train an improbable lullaby. My space is large enough to feel spacious, even in the absence of a bedroom, a hallway.
My trifle dish is full of fruit and I keep my sugar in an old ball jar. Old custard dishes with flowery edges serve as cat food and water dishes. My fruit bowl holds rice and lentils.
Teaspoons and tablespoons have their separate homes as do salad and dinner forks. The teaspoons I inherited from my great-grandmother are kept separate from the (nicer; matching) set I use daily.
I have quality cutlery and expensive knives. I have a dozen or so inherited cloth napkins. My plates - mismatched - were my great-grandmother's. My table is formica and the chairs clawed by cat.
Can I blend myself into another home, with another person, with different silverware and paper napkins?
We joked yesterday - Updated for the new millennium! Two rooms of one's own! $20,000 per year and a cheese and wine per diem. Maybe I wasn't joking... I will gain in space, and the ability to move about, from room to room, will be wonderful. But only one room will be 'my own' and it will not be the room in which I can work.
I have lived alone six of the past nine years. It is sometimes lonely, but it is a loneliness of which I have grown fond. I wonder - I hope - will I be able to be lonely still when I move?
No comments:
Post a Comment