My Apartment

In my last posting (The Apartment Building posted 2/28/12) I feel as if I neglected an introduction to my apartment, only mentioning it as reconfigured space, a disappointed step down from the expected 1000 square feet, a place too small to have folks over, when really my apartment is the jewel of the neighborhood and deserves more.

What makes #309 the crème de le crème, the pièce de résistance, the brass ring is that it has, a virtually private, relatively unobstructed view in three directions. Now, maybe if you are living on a spread in Texas, sitting on your horse or tractor with an obstructed view of California you are scratching your head, but if you live in the city where you can watch t.v. through your neighbor’s window in the next building you are probably drooling with urban envy.

What makes this possible is that the designers extended the apartments on the northeast side of the building so they jut out, providing an added direction with a view. That’s right an additional view and still no passing cups of sugar back and forth to your neighbor. (Although living in a vintage apartment building gives off a vintage feel of how nice that does sound. In fact, it took me back to the apartment building in Sunnyside, New York where we lived when I was born. It had a U shape to it so the sides of the U faced each other in the back and everyone would “hang out the window” and “call across” to each other for one thing or another.) Now, if you’re Donald living on the penthouse floor of Trump Towers, an unobstructed view takes on a completely different meaning, but here in Portland, in my neighborhood, in my building, I can pretty much be anywhere in my apartment and not see or be seen by anyone else and, that to me, makes my apartment the icing on the urban living organic cake.

What sets things apart from other neighborhood locales is, there is a two-story house to the east of our building with a parking lot that fits three to four cars. This gap, space, opening as it travels up to where I live on the third floor, offers distance between me the houses down the street, leaving a view of the eastern sky. Looking south, directly across the street, is Trader Joe’s parking lot (which doesn’t hold more than about 25 cars) so again, up here off the ground my eyes can skip across the sky leaping above buildings beyond. The kitchen, bathroom and bedroom have windows that face north and where there stands a tree so large it looks like it has trees growing out of where you would expect branches. It is home to birds who pick this neighborhood to settle down and raise their children, and with my zoom lens I can see them teetering on the edge of what finally look like branches way up into Jack and the Beanstalk land. I love the view so much I painted the molding around the bathroom window black as a picture frame for what greets the eye out there. From the kitchen there is a similar view but this includes a rooftop with a large brick chimney that adds human charm to nature’s gift. I painted the frame around the kitchen window red to capture the red in the bricks outside so we are all part of the picture.

The sunroom was transformed in February when Amy came to spend a week. Maya had given me a DIY subscription and the first issue showed a room that was stenciled in birch trees and I fell in love with the look. I bought the stencil and while Amy was here she painted all four walls in the sunroom, mind you the walls are giraffe tall and there are angles not seen in geometry books. You had to be there to really appreciate the contorted positions it required from both Amy and the stencil in order to continue the forest all the way up and around the room. Of course that was almost nothing compared to her insistence on hanging out the windows in order to clean the outside. Having had a gene passed down to her from her mother that turns cleaning into an obsession (how nice for us on the receiving end) I held onto the leg that remained in the sunroom telling her that gene or no gene her family would never forgive me for letting her hang out three stories above the ground to clean my windows. Of course, my family would never forgive me either, had she fallen and I held onto that leg and went flying out with her. But she didn’t and I didn’t and the difference those clean windows made were right out of a Windex commercial (except Amy and her mom swear by oven cleaner) and the glass seemed to virtually disappear. While I didn’t put my head through the invisible glass I did run to the window on several occasions thinking I had left the window open (even though I know I didn’t open them) and feared Santina would take herself out for a tightrope walk. But it was just oven clean windows!

I marvel at this apartment of mine, this blank space, this new beginning, this place of endless possibilities at a time in my life when I feel the world is my oyster. I stand in the middle of the living room; arms spread wide, spinning around like Julie Andrew’s in the opening scene of The Sound of Music thinking this is my studio, this is my workspace, this is core, the hub, the center of space devoted to my creative juices that then flow into my forest where I write, in my kitchen where I cook and even in my bathroom that has phenomenal water pressure and brings me to life each morning.

The Apartment Building

In June I moved to Portland, Oregon. Since leaving New York City in 1965 I have longed for city living and the change of seasons. I usually have a yearning, a lusting, a strong desire for the feel that comes with a season change. It is one of nature’s sensual pleasures and I have missed it for far too many years.

I moved into a building that was built the year my mother was born: 1911. There is a shiny brass plaque marking that on the brick wall that leads to a small courtyard with benches and a water fountain that lends its voice to the backdrop of the city sounds. Spiral staircases on each side gently curve up and meet at the second floor where there is a substantial looking weathered wooden door. When I first entered the building I could feel my mother’s presence in that I kept thinking this building and my mother were born at the same time.

I live on the third floor. The building has an elevator that is also 100 years old and brings back memories of days in New York. There is a black wrought iron gate inside the door to the elevator that must be pulled back and forth for entrance and exit. Department stores had these gates in their elevators when I was growing up and there was a store employee wearing white cotton gloves who pulled it back and forth letting folks on and off. At each floor they would announce what could be found such as, “third floor: ladies dresses, lingerie, undergarments”.

My apartment is 650 square feet. When I first started looking for a place to live I scoffed at apartments under 1000 square feet. I could not imagine where anyone could put any furniture and still move around in a place that small. I went back to watching HGTV shows about apartment and house hunting only to realize that in some highfalutin cities people were paying well over a million dollars for condos well under 1000 square feet.

I had hoped for a washer and dryer in my apartment but had to settle for one in the building. There is a shelf downstairs where we all store our detergent and dryer pads so you don’t have to schlep them up and down; there is a line where you can hang your rugs or bedspread to dry, an ironing board with an iron for community use and a lovely long table for folding that makes tackling sheets ever so much easier. There is also a table where you can leave things you no longer want; you know it might be someone else’s treasure. In fact, I found enough sweaters (that I love) for my first winter here. The other day I went down to get my quilts out of the dryer. Someone else needed the dryer and mine was done so they folded all my quilts (four of them) very lovingly and they were waiting in my basket for me when I went to get them. So, maybe I like the washer and dryer in the basement.

I have imagined this building to be reminiscent of a tenement house filled with budding, struggling, aspiring performers of one kind or another. In my head I feel it is the nineteen twenties and I am thrilled to be here, part of this group of individual people. I think about Rear Window (one of my favorite Grace Kelly movies) where Jimmy Stewart could see what was going on in all the apartments in the building across the way (forget the murder part). That’s how I imagine us. For example, right now while I’m writing this blog the woman upstairs is giving piano and voice lessons. Up and down the scales they go, working on making that a smooth transition from note to note. I can hear the progress since last week and the week before that. The young man who lives next door to me has an easel up in his sunroom with paints, brushes and pencils scattered about his table, as if they have just been in use. There are folks who live on the first floor in studio apartments that share a common bathroom out in the hall. I am guessing they are actors who wait on tables while working at getting their first break.

We all live across the street from Trader Joe’s. In the fifties Trader Joe’s started out as a convenient store called Pronto Markets but changed it’s name in the mid sixties and expanded to include “innovative, hard-to-find, great tasting food”. I love that it carries Charles Shaw wine, known affectionately as Two Buck Chuck, because that’s how much a bottle of Merlot costs!! That’s as connoisseur as I get.

Portland is divided into fourths. The dividing lines are the Willamette River and Burnside Avenue. I live in the Northwest, which is how many people refer to my neighborhood. If I tell a Portlandian that I live in the Northwest across the street from Trader Joe’s I might as well be giving them the coordinates on a map. It is also referred to as the Alphabet Historic District. Around the turn of the century (the 20^th that is) the task of naming the alphabet streets trickled down to Douglas Taylor, who was the Superintendent of Streets (sounds like a precursor to a Monty Python sketch) and he gave them the names of prominent folks of the time, himself included (he is the T street). The word on the alphabet streets is that Matt Groening, who grew up in Portland, named several characters in the Simpsons after them: Flanders, Kearney, Lovejoy and Quimby. He however, is not the G name, which is Glisan (pronounced Glee-son), but that’s where I live.

We are also known as Nob Hill. Back in the 1840’s Captain John H. Couch (pronounced Coo-ch), believed Portland would be a better water navigational city than Oregon City, so he bought the land that became this neighborhood, and staked his claim. He wound up making a fortune sailing ships with supplies back and forth from Portland to San Francisco during the gold rush so the name Nob Hill seems an offshoot, tribute, namesake of the exclusive enclave of the rich and famous in San Francisco’s northwest. Over the years Portland prospered and at the turn of the century (when my building was a twinkle in some architect’s eye) the city had an enormous growth spurt attributed to folks flocking here in 1905 to see the Lewis and Clark Centennial Expedition.

In the Portland guidebooks there are walking tours through my neighborhood to give folks a slice of the architectural life during the 1900’s with its Queen Annes, Craftmans and apartment buildings that offered new city dwellers luxury, spacious living. Of course, the next population increase and re-interest in city living saw those buildings, my building, do some reconfiguring to increase the amount of residents it could accommodate. If they did an apartment walking tour you would see the beauty of the past expressed in apartments like mine with their high 10 foot ceilings, layered molding, creaky, worn but rich wooden floors, and doorknobs you see advertised in Restoration Hardware.

I refer to my neighborhood as the epicenter of the city because it takes me 3 minutes to walk to Cinema 21 that shows independent films, 3 ½ to get my hair cut, 5 to my doctor, 11 to my dance class (although it used to take me 14), 6 to Ace Hardware (7 back because of the “incline”), 1 ½ minutes to the thrift store, 13 to the post office. In 11 minutes I can catch the city rail that takes me to the door of Portland International Airport. No parking, no daily rate, and no traffic: just door-to-door service. It’s a 14 minute walk to Union Station to take the Amtrak, which provides a scenic, comfy ride to Seattle. In 15 minutes I can be at the Apple Store rubbing elbows with the rest of the crowd inhaling and exhaling technology. In 13 minutes I can go from my apartment door to a seat at Portland’s Center Stage to wait for the curtain to open or in 11 ½ be listening to live Jazz at the renowned Jimmy Macs. It takes about 25 minutes to walk to the famed Saturday Market and follow my nose from food cart to food cart while listening to the music from a harp or upside down plastic containers and empty hanging bottles. I mean if you get right down to it I can (and did) walk 52 minutes from my apartment to my daughter’s house and she lives on the east side of the Willamette River which means I can (and did) walk across one of the ten bridges that join the east (where she lives) and west (where I live). Damn, I’m an urban trekker.

My building is the delicious filling between two parallel streets that are lined with independently owned shops, bakeries, restaurants and services that, although they may be selling similar goods, are delightfully different. Restaurants span ethnicities and their aromas waft from their kitchens filling your senses and stimulating your taste buds as you breath in and out walking up and down the streets. Sometimes I can convince myself I am full after walking from one end of 23^rd Street to the other or I can stop and have lox and bagels at Kornblatt’s Jewish Deli for breakfast, Mio sushi for lunch, Swagat’s Indian cuisine for dinner and a dessert that should be an entrée at Papa Haydn’s in front of a roaring fire. There is ping pong, darts, pool and live music, gelato spots, chocolatiers, coffee shops and cafes. There is yoga, massage, hypnosis, meditation and Pilates. There are nightclubs, movie theaters and art galleries; bars, pubs, and taverns are brimming with folks watching the big screen together. It is the community living room for us folks in the neighborhood who live in reconfigured square footage.

In the evening the neighborhood transforms itself; the trees that line the streets spring to life when the sun goes down and burst into light’s that hug the trunk and branches, offering a runway of glitter to dazzle the nighttime diners and shoppers. For me, it’s the yellow brick road that leads me back to my building, of struggling artists, that was built in 1911, the year my mother was born.

The Decision

When I turned 66 I was prodded to investigate what kind of retirement benefits I had. My intention was not to retire but to agree to become more informed about my finances. I had heard through the educator’s grapevine that if you worked for the Texas Retirement System you might not qualify for social security. Turns out this could be true, but from way back in 1961 when I graduated from high school in New York City and got my first job at the Book-of-the-Month Club I began to acquire “quarters” and until I came to Texas in 2000, they kept adding up. Therefore I was entitled to social security benefits, in addition to my Texas retirement. So, financially it looked feasible.

But for me retirement seemed to mean more than just not working; it seemed like the beginning of the end. On weekend mornings I sat on my couch looking at my wall of ancestors: a compilation of photographs framed over the fireplace that showed those before me in poses younger than I am now. There is a picture of my mother standing on the roof of her apartment building in New York City at about 5 years old with her arms stretched wide and her face beaming with being alive. Gone! A blink of an eye! Now I’m 5 years old…now I’m not. There are my grandparents with my dad when he was a young boy, taken before they even came to this country, when they still lived in Scotland. Gone, all of them. A blink of an eye!

So that led me to thinking that life was a blink of an eye and I became maudlin and depressed at the slap of mortality reality that I was already a goner. My picture would be hanging over the fireplace and one of my daughters would be thinking, wow, mom was here and then she wasn’t. Blink!

I didn’t like thinking about life being over when I could see that there were many years of life to live. So I thought about my friend Laura who just had a baby boy and, predicated on the longevity of my female line of ancestry, (my mother, both grandmothers and great grandmothers all lived into their nineties) I surmised that her son could be in his late twenties at my swan dive. That meant he still had to learn to walk and talk. Developmentally he had to go through infancy, early childhood, school age, and adolescence into adulthood before I head to other side. He might even marry and have children. I knew that in my head but my feelings of “here today, gone tomorrow” wouldn’t let go. What difference did it make how long I had to live; a blink of an eye was a blink of an eye.

As I said, I never really meant to retire; I was just checking the feasibility at the urging of my daughters and friends. This “proof” that I could retire interrupted my comfortable avoidance of the inevitable blink of an eye by being too busy juggling long hours, a ton of paperwork and response to the accountability nightmare.

Then one Sunday morning when I was curled up on the couch with a cup of coffee trying to energize my moping self, who had work to do for work the next morning, I glanced above the fireplace and was startled to see all the family members looking at me. I could see each one of them at the same time even though my eyes moved from photo to photo. I put down my coffee mug and sat up giving them my full attention.

The voice I heard was my mother’s, “Susan, look at what you’re doing on a beautiful Sunday morning. You could be reading the New York Times or having breakfast with friends or sleeping in. God knows you need it with the hours you keep. Up early every morning, spending weekends in your office, doing that ridiculous paperwork.

I felt a collective nodding of heads.

“Your students are lucky to have a principal like you and lucky to have the teachers that teach in your school. You all have created a place where students, who are in residential care, can learn in an atmosphere of love and understanding while you offer them very creative ways to tap into their talents and interests. But at some point you are going to have to retire so why not do it now while you still have energy, creativity, and from where we sit, life itself.” Then she lowered her voice and added, “By the way Susan I think your hair needs a bit of a trim in the back.”

I touched the nape of my neck as I looked at the stacks of folders and papers piled high on my coffee table. They seemed to take on an almost cartoon-like sense of exaggeration. And then suddenly, like a meteor speeding through the stratosphere, I caught a glimpse of another possibility. Like Alice through the looking glass, like Harry on Platform 9 3/4, like going through the back of the Wardrobe closet, I found myself someplace totally unknown, where a sense of freedom sent electric waves of lightness through my body. I saw that my life could be lived in a different way, not regimented by the tick tock of time, but rather an expanse of possibilities. It was an invitation to a place of space.

I picked up my mug, took a long hard swallow and leaned against the back of the couch. In my head began a cerebral you-tube video of the Rockettes lined up along the stage at Radio City Music Hall, kicking in unison, singing, “How ya gonna keep’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?” in an attempt to add some levity to this profound experience, while making the point, that, in a blink of an eye I realized, I was, in fact, going to retire.