Good at Being Uncomfortable

I never quite realized, until asked to write about it, just how little I think about this notion of home.

When I'm in the city and I'm getting ready to visit my family on Long Island, I say, "I'm getting ready to go home." When it's Sunday morning on Long Island, my mother asks, "What time are you going home?"

Home is both.

In 1980 home was Miami, in a small apartment with a small backyard. Apparently, for a short time around 1984, we lived in North Carolina, but the details on that are fuzzy.

From 1985 until 1990, home was Middle Village, Queens. In 1990 we moved to the Hamptons. From 1998 until 2002, home was: the dorm on 5th Ave and 10th street, the dorm at Union Square, the NYU property at Via Pompeo Neri in Firenze, and the dorm on Broome Street and Centre.

In 2002 I moved into the smallest apartment ever built in the West Village; a year later I moved to a beautiful apartment in the financial district of Manhattan; two years later I moved back to Long Island (I moved back home); in 2005 I moved to another small apartment in Morningside Heights, but only lasted there a month; I moved into my friend's unbelievable apartment for a few months right smack on Central Park, across from Tavern on the Green; then I moved into my most recent home on the Upper West Side. I've been there- three years and counting.

I don't watch those fixer-upper shows-- those shows on TLC where they flip a house, or where they design on a dime. I don't buy magazines with centerpieces on the cover. (Unless the centerpiece is made of cookies). I don't like looking at paint swatches or carpet panels. I don't like thinking about color combinations for living room walls and crown moldings.

When I was younger I asked every female adult I could-- what's the deal with the white picket fence? Women always talked about it on TV and I never understood. But I didn't get it. Maybe because I never had a white picket fence. Not that I'm complaining... I'm not. I'm an adult and still don't miss the white picket fence.

I went through a phase where I decided my white-picket-fence was going to be a claw-toed porcelain tub. But then I used one and frankly something about getting naked in an antique feels a little...germy.

Another while, I mildly obsessed over my future home having a "meditation room" with a clear view of the ocean in a big bay window. But my yoga phase ended and I realized-- I don't even like to meditate, anyway- I might have ADD.

There was a time when I thought-- linen closet. ...Linen closet. With neatly stacked, fluffly, color coordinated towels-- sage and rose-- that smells of cedar and lavendar... and then I admitted that to some boy and a few, drunken nights later he got all goggley-eyed and said, "Someday I'm going to make sure you have the linen closet that makes you so happy." And I was like, "What ew gross."

I went to my very good friend's beautiful wedding on the island of St. John and I spoke to the wedding florist-- a woman who spends her summers in New York and her winters in St. John. It seems to me the most perfect arrangement. I wouldn't need much. I'd even settle for a partial view of the ocean from my room- or at least close enough to walk to the beach. I'd really only need a computer and an internet connection. Then I'd get my dose of high-octane, steel and dust, whenever I was living in the city.

I could live with that. I could call that home.

The truth is, I spend all my time thinking about "job." Not "home." What will my career look like when I'm big enough to make decisions about my life (I assume I am not big enough now to make such decisions). What my job will look like, will design my home. If I'm traveling, my home will be simple, stable. If I'm sedentery (oh please God no), my home will be six months here, six months there. If I can help it.

And it's ok, because I'm good at being uncomfortable.