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Monday, May 12, 2003 - 1:43 p.m.

Borne of a random memory

While listening to the radio heading into work today, the traffic report mentioned delays on the Triboro Bridge, and it made me think ...

One of my mother's cousins, who now lives in Arizona with her husband and two kids, used to live in a small Upper East Side apartment when they were childless and he was attending medical school and she was a temp and a writer. When he got all his degrees, they left for New Mexico where he established an eye-doctor practice. He's a specialist, too, I think. And I can't remember the "-gist" word for eye doctor.

Anyway, while they would often come see us in New Jersey, I only remember one visit to their apartment, which may have actually been on Park Ave. And we have have visited twice, but I wasn't even in high school yet, so my memory may have smooshed the two visits into one. The thing I remember about the place was how tiny it was. We walked in to a cramped living room with a couch, an end table, several plants, no TV (they didn't have one). The kitchen, to the right, was narrow and left no room for one person to get from the door to the fridge if someone else was already there. Off the living room was a balcony that could fit maybe three people. I loved the view from there, and I spent a lot of time out there gazing down on the city, because for a child of parents who rarely went into New York, this was the first time to really observe it, to take it all in. The view included the towers of the Triboro Bridge (hence this random recall), and hearing the name of that span has always reminded me of Christine's and Jon's apartment.

The tour of the place lasted mere minutes. To the left of the living room a tiny hallway led to the master bedroom, a spare one next to it that contained their computer and was used as a study, and then the bathroom at the back. Their cat � whose name I unfortunately do not remember � was, of course, an indoor cat.

My thoughts then were, "I could never live in the City," because I thought that a cramped apartment with no TV was what it would take, and I wasn't ready to give up on my backyard and bedroom (which, while smaller than even my college dorm rooms, was still bigger than all but the living room at this apartment). I liked the Upper East Side, and when we went to visit it was I think the one time � only, sole, absolute lone time � my father has ever driven in Manhattan, as far as I know. We came in through the Lincoln Tunnell and crossed through Central Park to get there, I remember.

I don't know if I'll ever live in the city, but with the stuff we've managed to accumulate after less than a year of living together, there certainly isn't a timetable Casey and I can lay out to get an idea of when we might be able to afford something to fit our needs. Not that we're looking or talking or anything. But what made this memory significant enough to write down was that I wondered just how small that apartment really was. It must have been significantly tiny for a med student and a freelancer to afford it (I believe the medical school/hospital had some sort of arrangement with the building, because I remember Christine explaining that some of Jon's classmates and their spouses lived there too), and being a child it no doubt would've seemed bigger to me than to an adult. While tiny, Mia's and Kerry's apartments seem bigger than my memory of Christine's and Jon's, and they probably are, though they may be just as big. They're certainly not smaller.

Anyway, my point: That apartment was small.

And you could see the Triboro Bridge from the balcony.

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