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.