In 1974, I lived on Avenue C and 7^th Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The block was always on fire and the junkies shot up on our doorstep. It was, supposedly, an improvement on where I’d previously been, which was a shack in the Ozarks where I had a wood burning pot bellied stove, and an outhouse because there was no running water. I went briefly downhill from Avenue C while I slept on a rollaway cot in the back of the stockroom at the boutique on West Broadway where I worked as part of my salary. It was thrilling to look at the lit up Trade Towers as I snuck in at night and quietly pulled the security gate down behind me. Once inside, I’d sit silently in the dark so the landlady wouldn’t know I was there, and I bathed in the industrial sink in the morning. But at least I got to be alone, which was part of the draw for the old shack in the woods, and eventually I found the rent-controlled apartment I then lived in for thirty years before that landlord paid me to relinquish it.

We moved constantly when I was a kid growing up in the military. In fact, my parents were driving from Texas to Michigan when I was born. They stopped in Fort Sill, Oklahoma so my mother could have me, then two days later they were on their way again with me asleep in a wicker laundry basket on the back seat. Even in college, I switched dorms and then apartments five times in four years. So I was afraid, when I moved to the Cape, that those nomadic days were back because I had four addresses, including the one in New York, in less than a year. I have a gypsy style, lots of black, lots of shawls, and lots of small scaled furniture I'm able lift myself, but transience makes me nervous. I can do it, I can stand it, but I want to stay put and be grounded. Luckily, I won my current apartment in a lottery and it’s the nicest place I’ve ever been in. Not even my parents had it better, and because it’s brand new, nobody else has lived in it. There are shiny floors and plenty of closets, luxuries in New York, as well as a tub and a shower in the same room as the toilet, which for me, was unheard of. But I was so intimidated by my fancy kitchen appliances, it took me months to use my high-tech oven.

I baked cookies in it last night. And ate them watching the big TV in the living room. There’s a smaller TV at the foot of my bed, both of them were given to me, as was the Pottery Barn sofa I was lying on and listening to the parakeets I rescued this summer try to sing louder than the background music on Downton Abbey. I had a life in New York, I was young and pretty then, but it got scary on 9/11. I have a life here now, I’m safe, I have a great view of the backside of the Provincetown skyline and I’m making friends. I even have hot water and heat that whisper instead of those old metal radiators clanking away all night. Oh, have I mentioned my dishwasher? It changed my life. So stay in the moment, wait for the miracle, I know for a fact they happen.