sometimes i wish life was like thirtysomething

I definitely caught some of the show first run, but I always found the character of Hope insufferable. I mean, I always wanted to have a kid, and understand how that completely changes your life, but she seemed the essence of the obnoxious sort of mom who comes barreling at you down the sidewalk with her stroller, brandishing it as a weapon — "Step aside or be run over — baby on board." As if being a mom made her more important somehow. I don't get that.

In fact, most of the characters in thirtysomething, at one time or another, were pretty annoying. But I did love, if not the characters, their home. I loved their broken-down but charming house in Philadelphia. For one, it wasn't New York (where I lived at the time), so it escaped the pretensions attached to life in the big(gest) city. But mostly I loved the house because it was so welcoming. It wasn't the improbable sitcommy situation of Costanza or Elaine or Kramer always coming by Jerry's apartment. It was a big, warm house, a sort of hub for a ragtag group of people who had connections to each other, some close, some dependent on inter-relationships. It was a welcoming house, uptight Hope or not. I could believe that everyone wanted to drop by for a Sunday brunch of bagels and hang out. thirtysomething was a yuppie "message" show, but the '80s were like that.

I always wanted a house, a home like that. A place where my friends and family could feel they could drop by anytime and hang out. Raid the fridge (as well as stock it). Talk about the topics of the day. Drink or just watch television. I'm no longer thirty-something and I don't live in the suburbs. I don't even live near any of my friends anymore. I'm not sure if people I used to hang with are really still my friends. If you haven't seen or talked to someone in over a year are they still your friends? Facebook helps give the illusion of that. At least with the folks who bother to send you a message or "like" your posts.

I know that there are still a few true friends out there. But I don't have a cute Gary who will cruise by on his bike in the way home from work, or a quirky Melissa who will come and dump her latest boyfriend troubles at my door, neglecting to ask how I am. I kinda miss that.

For a while, in the late '80s, early '90s, I guess I had a quasi-thirtysomething thing going with my Brooklyn apartment. I had a fairly open door policy. Friends could drop by if they were in the neighborhood. Of course the Manhattanites rarely found themselves in Brooklyn (horrors!).

What we call today my BFF, my friend Mary, was also my roomie in that Park Slope apartment for a while and then got married but lived just around then corner — we were in and out of each other's apartments and lives all the time. I remember being hit hard with a stomach bug — the kind where just getting back and forth to the john is an effort — and she came over, an angel of mercy, with juice and soup and some trashy magazines. And this was way before texting and cell phones. I do miss that.

When I lived in D.C., my cousin Ann and I made a concerted effort to see each other often. She definitely had a thirtysomething house, where friends and family felt free to swing by often — and they did. The two of us maintained a "Sunday family dinner" date, even after my daughter was born and when our schedules got hectic. Even during her illness. But Ann died about a year and a half go and we left D.C. and that way of life seems finished.

We all grow up, and that unfortunately means that we also grow apart, either emotionally, or merely geographically. We've been here in Florida a little over a year so far and I'm still finding my way socially. I don't work outside the home, and I'm needing to be on hand more and more for an aging mother. It hasn't been easy to start a whole new real-life social network. I'm gearing up for another big change, leaving a job I've held for over a decade, and I'm not sure if I will feel even more isolated when that ends, or if I will finally be able to get out more and meet some new people.

The apartment where we live is certainly big enough to entertain. There's a doorman, so the act of dropping by might be a tad more formal than the days when someone used to ring my buzzer in Park Slope and I'd throw them the key inside of a sock or glove out the window, but it's still doable. I'm always up for a Sunday brunch or just yakking about a book or a movie. I like that.

to all the rooms i've loved before ...

I was thinking of all the different places I've lived.

When you live in older houses or apartments you are coming into spaces lived in, loved in, by others. Do the former inhabitants leave traces? The only place I have lived so far that was "new" was a model home ranch house that my parents bought when I was ten. But it wasn't brand spanking new. It was the ranch-style model for a South Jersey development, so had scores of families trooping through, wondering if they could fit their lives into its spaces. It had a typical seventies-style decor, with gold wall-to-wall and a kitchenette with gold appliances and wallpaper in tones of gold, rust and olive. What was it about the seventies and flat, fall colors?

 I forgot about the dark brown cabinets.

The house before that one was a Victorian that I still wish I could scoop up today and restore to its former glory. I don't think my brother or I have forgiven my parents for taking us away from this house. It had two sets of stairs, a storm cellar with a dirt floor where my dad had his photo enlarger set up. There were some great trees—there was a crab-apple grove in the back and a gigantic willow tree in the front yard where you could hide under the weeping branches. It had an arbor with wisteria bordering a garden my mother had lovingly planted. There was a detached spooky garage and a gardener's shed that I used to sneak into and play all sorts of make-believe games. We moved when I was in second grade. They came and pulled me out of class, actually, and took me home to see a moving van in the driveway. Somehow my parents thought it would be better to not tell my brother and me until the last minute that we were moving, or not tell us at all. It wasn't better. It sucked.


The house had two porches, one at the side and one at the front and a flagpole in the front yard.

By the wisteria arbor.
Other members of my family still like to go to that part of the Jersey Shore on summer vacation and on the years that I join them there for a day or two I always drive past that house, looking for a "for sale" sign. But there never is. The people who live there now cut down the willow tree and put a huge abomination of a swimming pool right in the middle of the front yard. They had to destroy the garden and the wisteria arbor and chop down the willow to fit that in. Idiots.

The house these days.
After the beautiful Victorian we lived in a small town where we could walk everywhere—to school, to the store, to the water. My brother and I didn't realize that this house was rented. Apparently my parents were trying to build or buy in the neighborhood, but it never worked out, so we moved even further south in New Jersey, leaving our new set of friends once again.



The house was painted a bright, canary yellow with dark brown trim. Check out the striped jeans. On my brother and my mom. No need to tell you the decade.
 This was when we moved into the model ranch house. At least we finally stayed, long enough for my brother and me to finish elementary school and get through middle and high school. When I left home and went to art school in New York I lived in the dorm for a year, but was shuttling home to New Jersey so often, or out to Long Island to visit my aunt and uncle, that it never really felt like home.

I had my first home, beyond the scope of my parents, when I moved the summer between freshman and sophomore year at Parsons into a fourth floor railroad apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was a crazy apartment. It actually tilted, so if you spilled water or dropped something on the floor that could roll, roll it would, from one wall to the other. That tilt feature became an endless source of amusement for guests and spilled drinks. My cats especially enjoyed playing with marbles. or not exactly playing, but whacking a marble and letting the apartment do most of the work. But there was also beauty in that apartment. The afternoon light, between 3 and 4 p.m. would pour in and give the wooden floors and the old moldings a gorgeous glow. No matter what was going on in my life at the time, just hanging out in the front room in the afternoon was always a soothing and reinvigorating experience.

The afternoon light of Park Slope, Brooklyn.

When I left New York for Washington, D.C. I always seemed to live somewhere near the zoo in Northwest. The apartments of D.C. are not that much different from New York, except that the rooms are a tad more spacious, but with lower ceilings. As much as I loved living in Washington, the outside surroundings were more enthralling than our indoor ones. The trees, flora, buildings and statuary were what appealed to me most.

Always bright and full of light

I'm still getting used to our new life and my new space in Florida, but I can't complain about the view. I find myself outside here even more than Washington. And I'm an indoorsy type by nature, Bookish, computerish.

Getting ready to walk on the beach.

But I could walk by the beach forever. It's always changing, always offering up new discoveries.