Reflections on Identity
Love, Loss and the Places I Once Called Home
Grieving the past and future while trying to find peace in the present, midlife and after divorce
It is one thing to move out of a home you love, another thing entirely to watch a home gradually become not yours anymore. I know this because I’ve experienced both in the past year.
My husband and I moved frequently in our twenty-seven years together, beginning with a tiny walk-up on the Upper West Side that we settled in weeks after graduating from college, intending for it to be a one-year starter apartment. It was in such an old, unrenovated building that the hot and cold water came out of different spigots; I cupped my hands to fill with ice-cold water and then rushed them under scalding hot water so it was warm when I rinsed my face, morning and night, for seven years.
Four years in, we got married, filling our living room with gift boxes from Bloomingdale’s, where we had registered and to which we returned almost every gift for cash to save up for an apartment to buy. We landed a studio apartment in a loft building downtown that had an elevator, doorman, and dishwasher — luxuries of which I had seven-years-long dreamed.
