I’m sitting on the balcony of our third floor apartment at 23-19 30th Drive. It’s the last night I will, because tomorrow we’re moving to our new home, just some blocks away at 37th Street, still in Astoria. The pear tree leaves are so heavy in Summer that they completely obscure the view West to Manhattan, just an orange window light peeks through here and there. There’s a breeze, a relief at the end of a humid day.
This is where C, Dad and I toasted the arrival of JNH, a welcome glass of champagne in the midst of sleep deprivation and discombobulated amazement. It’s where two years later, C was sitting with newborn CMH on his lap while chatting to a friend on his cellphone – the more relaxed mode of the second child. Of course there’s sadness at change, but it’s also time to move on.
Moves like this may accentuate the sense of time passing, but in an odd way they also create a block of permanence. I won’t have new memories of living here now. The ones I have, I have – some will last and some will fade. This was my experience of this place.
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On the morning that the newspaper stands were splattered with the news of Robin Williams’ suicide, I was at Woodside station in Queens. I was at Woodside to switch from the 7 train to the somewhat quaintly-named Long Island Railroad to go to Hicksville, to get a bus to Jericho, to close on the house and C and I were buying in Astoria. The closing was in Jericho because that is where the bank attorney is based.
Having hung around all Summer (says she, as if not travelling is such an ordeal!) for the long drawn-out deal to finalize, or else for us to decide to look elsewhere, this happened to be the one week when C had to be in work every day, filling in for the Chair of his English department. So I was headed to the closing on my own.
On the Woodside train platform I noticed one of my nails was split, so I bit the wayward strand off. I imagined that the other women around the table at the closing, like the seller’s and bank attorney, would have long painted nails. Then, that no doubt they would find it eccentric that I’m travelling to a house closing by subway, train, and bus. She’s buying a house, but doesn’t have a car?! Then, that they might put the inadequate nails and public transport and me not seeming to be bothered by either down to my being English, but why should being English be either here or there, but of course, being anything-ish is always a factor.
There goes a similar thought-pendulum to buying the house itself – a small “single family” to use the realtor terms – a process in which an under-current of conviction has been chopped at times by doubts (and annoyance at the predictability of those doubts!).
Isn’t this just what ‘people’ do, investing in a place they can only own a quarter of, committing to a big mortgage payment each month, believing they ‘need’ space, when perhaps a small and more affordable apartment would give us more freedom to the live the lives we want to lead?...A sense of responsibility to do the ‘right’ thing with our downpayment money but wondering if that ‘right’ thing is really right for us all, and back to the conviction again, to having to believe a decision is right or else we would stagnate. The idea of home holds so much more than merely a place to live.
One of the attorneys did indeed have meticulous long and painted pink nails. While at times since we’d signed the contract it had become easy to start doubting the seller and questioning his motives, suddenly with all of us there in the room the process became much more human: a man and his family of grown-up children who wanted to sell their house to move on, another family with young children that wanted to buy it. Papers were signed and exchanged, faster and faster, so many of them crossing the table and then the realization that now that was it, we’d bought the place.
My attorney drove me and the title insurance guy (such a team involved in one purchase!) to the station in Hicksville to catch the train back to Woodside – he sped round corners and cut through parking lots to get us there in time for a particular train. When I emailed him at the end of the day I said thanks for your help through this process, and also: we just made it onto the train. “It’s the little things, isn’t it?” he replied.
