For the first six months I was on Cape, I lived in a very chilly Yarmouth Port furnished basement. I was always cold, always complaining, always wearing Uggs and my down coat in the house or reading in bed under an electric blanket. But I loved Yarmouth Port, and still do; when I see some of the magnificent pictures I took walking around, I have the same visceral response a thirteen year old has for her favorite pop star. For me, that was Ringo. I met him once in New York, I also met John Lennon, Bill Clinton, and Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones, although Ringo had my heart.

But I digress. The story goes, after several years of visiting a friend who’d moved to the Cape from Gramercy Park, I received a call from my New York landlord offering to pay me to relinquish my rent-controlled Soho apartment. It was not that big jackpot I’d had fantasies about, but it was enough to start fresh and frankly more money than I was ever going to put together on my own slaving away for wages. It was also rather odd how my landlord called late in the very same day I finished typing the transcript of a hearing that was central to the memoir I was working on at the time, and, I now see, the reason why I was still in New York. As soon as I was off the phone with him, I called my friend on the Cape and she told me a salesgirl at a cute shop I liked in Yarmouth Port had quit her job that morning. So I emailed the storeowner my resume and jumped on the bus the next morning. The storeowner hired me, and a half hour later I signed the lease for the chilly basement, which was a ten-minute walk to the store whether I passed the old sea captain houses in town or went through the trees along the glorious tidal marshes.

I was stunned by the beauty. I also slept a lot; I’d only had six weeks to empty out the four-room apartment I had lived in for thirty years. The worst was the room I used as a studio, it was crammed with three decades of art, most of which I was about to sell or destroy, and an embarrassing amount supplies and junk I’d hoarded over the years. More memorable though was tearing up thirty years worth of journals. I did it by hand, it took several days, my wrists hurt for a month but it was very liberating. All I brought to the Cape besides the art I kept and a ton of clothes, was my parrot, my computer, my little red Herman Miller chair, an insanely expensive twin mattress that I used as a headboard in my next three addresses, assorted knick knacks and two irreplaceable rugs along with some embroidered shawls and pillows. Still, it took six of us an hour to pack the truck. There was a quiet moment alone as I swept one last time; I had to leave it, as the landlord said, broom clean to collect the buy out money, and then I was gone.

This will be my fifth Cape Cod winter, and while I’ll never forget my first love, chilly old Yarmouth Port, I’m happier here and accustomed to the weather in Provincetown. It suits me, perhaps it’s my Irish roots, I have no problem with a wicked thick fog.

I did my very first public reading Wednesday night after presenting bits and pieces to the writers group I go to every week. It was only five minutes in front of an open mic, but having an audience felt like stepping off a cliff. Then I went straight home and edited the sentence I tripped over, which was probably the point of reading out loud to begin with.

I used to paint. I had a distinct style and was in shows in Europe and across the States. I didn’t make much money but I have a nice resume. I even had a blog on which I posted daily. But the work at the end was too New York and didn’t translate well to the Cape although I’ve been in shows here too and my piece at a members exhibit at the local art museum sold during my first summer in Provincetown.

The problem was painting became depressing. After almost six decades of making marks as if my life depended on it, and sometimes it did, I had to stop. I’d been that precocious child playing in clay or drawing on walls or the student most likely to be in charge of the class mural projects. I have a degree from a prodigious art school and moved to Soho where I looked and acted like an artist in spite of always having a day job. I know how to spread paint around until it’s perfect. I know when to put the brush down. I also know how to promote the work and show up for openings, and I can frame and hang it myself.

But then I began to write; first was a long memoir tucked away in the proverbial drawer, then two novels, both written or started in New York, that precede the one I’m working on now but involve the same characters and function as back story but need to be totally rewritten again to be published.

Baby steps.

My coming to Provincetown is too long a saga to tell at this point, but clearly I’m meant to be here. I like to think it’s for the writing; that I need to take it seriously and commit to this being more than entertaining myself with the lives of my characters. So I post on my blog and send it out into the ether hoping somebody sees it. I go to my group, I’ve engaged a mentor, and I’ve been invited back for the next open mic in January.

Anything is possible if you just say yes, and don’t quit before the miracle happens.

Last week, I pitched a proposal at Town Hall to have a crosswalk painted in front of my building. Three days later, it was already there; and this weekend I watched myself make the pitch because all the Town Hall proceedings are recorded and broadcast several times on the local TV station. My New York showed; I waved my hands around in the air like my old Italian Thompson Street neighbors.

I live in Provincetown now, in the apartment of my dreams with thirty-four houseplants, a great view, and a dishwasher. I have a garden where I grow more tomatoes than I can possibly eat and I’m a registered voter, but the townies still refer to me as a wash ashore. It fits; I’ve met people who can trace their family back to the Mayflower or Nauset tribe, but while the majority of the year-rounders come from the Portuguese who have fished here long before the artists and gays arrived, most of my friends in town lived in Manhattan at some point.

There have been a number of jobs, in galleries mainly, but the one that has stuck is at a bath and skincare shop. Who knew selling soap was my true calling? I’ve also taken six months of French, I totally suck, but I did manage to learn to tango. It’s completely out of my comfort zone but when I lost my ride to class, some 50 miles away, I was devastated. One would think I could find a tango partner among all the theater people here, but it is not happening.

I put it all in the book, Argentine tango, as well as the French. There’s always the book; wash ashore or not, I can do readings from it at the library. I can walk from one end of Bradford to the other in under an hour, or watch the sun set every day from the harbor. This is it, this is my new life; my crosswalk proposal got five inches in The Banner.

Things wind down in Provincetown come December, but in New York I was always crazy busy at Christmas because I worked retail. My last Manhattan job was the dreaded End of Summer Barney’s Warehouse Sale where more than a million people shopped over the opening weekend. But the winter before, during my last December in New York, I was at the gift shop in the Plaza Hotel.

Originally, I was hired to sell in the Eloise boutique but they decided I was better suited elsewhere. Mostly I sold bathrobes and slippers, or the brass guestroom key fobs, one of which I own and still use today. I went to work wearing something fabulous and black with either diamonds or pearls, and I was given a free haircut at the salon upstairs to look my best for our mink-draped clients who were mainly European or Saudi Arabian.

My favorite part of the day was lunch when I got to work on the novel I was writing after I had finished eating. I could usually be found on the mezzanine balcony looking out over the marble entrance with its glittering holiday decorations. There were two down-stuffed Louis XIV chairs that were the most comfortable things on which I have ever sat and a splendid little spindly table for my Starbucks and delicious toasted raisin bagel or BLT.

No one ever bothered me, I must have looked like I belonged there in my designer black as I cut and pasted in my notebook with a tiny pair of scissors and little roll of tape.

And when I was done for the day, I walked almost three miles home every night unless it was snowing because the  subways were unbearable at rush hour; at least outside I could breathe. It was always awful between Rockefeller Center and Macy’s, there was no way to avoid the horrible crowds of cranky Christmas shoppers and the gawking tourists; but once I reached 21^st Street, it was smooth sailing until I hit the Village.

A happy memory, walking in the cold with my IPod and the characters from my novel; it was home once, but I live here now. J.M. Barrie said God gave us memories so we could have roses in December. Maybe what I remember about New York is all I really need.