Day 348…
At some point over the last few months, I think that I finally moved into our apartment.
We’ve been here for several years and even though it is only a one-bedroom, there were still parts of it that weren’t really being used. I couldn’t have told you what some of our cabinets had inside them. We’d put stuff in them when we moved in and then never looked inside them again. In the apartment there were about 4 or 5 places, mostly surfaces, that I used and that was about it.
Some years ago, we were casting in Cape Town, South Africa and the producers of the show put me into a large two-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and a dining room. It was enormous. Rather than spreading out, however, and taking advantage of the space, I only used about 10 square feet of it.
In the morning when I woke up, I’d laugh because only a small sliver of the gigantic King-sized bed far off on one side was rumpled, the rest of it was untouched.
Traveling as much as I did (do?), I resisted fully unpacking in a new place because I didn’t want to then have to find everything again when it was time to pack to leave. Usually, I would just hang up my shirts and leave my underclothes in the suitcase which I would put on a stand in the bedroom.
When it was time to leave, even though I checked every drawer and closet, all I really needed to do was pull my toiletries together from the bathroom, fold whatever clean shirts that were left hanging onto the top of everything else and I was ready to go.
Back in New York, between trips, my suitcase remained packed with essentials and sat in the front hall ready for the next trip. The things that I needed for daily life here in New York were all concentrated in a few places so that I could keep track of where they were. I rarely spent much time in the apartment when I was in town except to sleep.
In general, I don’t necessarily travel light, but I do travel efficiently. I am a stage manager, after all. It only took me being in one place one time without something I needed before I added it into my permanent pack.
For instance, for some reason it isn’t possible to find a decent roll of scotch tape in the British Isles. Gift wrapping paper is also not as available world-wide as one might think. I always have both in my suitcase, and I’ve used them.
I think I’ve written about this before, but I do like taking a bath sometimes before bed to relax. A glass of wine and a good book do wonders to help me to unwind especially when I know that there is not enough time ahead of me to get a proper night’s sleep before work is scheduled to start up again the next day. After being stuck in a hotel room several times with a bathtub whose drain stopper either didn’t work properly or was missing, I started traveling with one of my own.
These days, my suitcase is down in the storage unit. Over the course of this year, I’ve raided it for supplies that we’ve run out of. A pair of batteries that have been in a side pocket of it since time immemorial got used when one of the Christmas LED candles needed them. A roll of packing tape that I used out of town more times than I can count got used up around the holidays as well when I was mailing gifts to my family.
My suitcase is, for the first time in over a decade, now actually in a state that might be able to be described as unpacked.
A few days ago, I bought us a drying rack. There are a whole bunch of shirts and jeans that we don’t put in the dryer. Instead, we drape them over the backs of our six dining table chairs.
Yesterday, Michael walked into the living room and saw all the damp clothes on the new rack rather than the chairs and his eyes went wide. “Honey - this is amazing. Are you going to write about this?”
I think that when people have kids, they really do move into where they live. Not only do kids get into everything, but at least one parent usually spends most of their time in there with them. Not having kids, Michael and I tended to drift in and out of our apartment at will, nothing except the bed really keeping us here. Most of our days were spent somewhere else.
In the movie, The Goonies, Sean Astin lives in what just might be my ideal of the perfect house to grow up in. The house that they used in the movie is in the town of Astoria in Oregon. When Jersey Boys was playing in Portland, I, of course, took a trip out to see it.
It is a ramshackle old Victorian that looks like it is being held together with string and gaffer’s tape. It is like the Weasley’s house in the Harry Potter films but without the supernatural components. The current owners of the Goonie house are aware of what it means to fans and they let people walk up the driveway and have a look.
The movie is about a group of kids trying to save their homes from developers. Those houses and all they represent are well worth fighting for.
Our current apartment is arguably the nicest place that either Michael or I have lived in in our adult lives, but I don’t know that until now that it truly felt like a home.
Our walls are lined with art that I’ve picked up over the years from all over the world. We don’t have any show posters or other work-related material up, but in the bedroom, we do have a framed ticket from the night of Michael’s Broadway debut in Love! Valour! Compassion! as well as a beautifully drawn series of caricatures of him from several other shows. We have furniture and other objects from both sides of our family throughout our living space and things that we each had in prior apartments.
Truthfully there’s far more of my stuff than there is of Michael’s, but Michael doesn’t accumulate things the same way that I do. There is also a fair amount of stuff that we have accumulated together. As a shell I think it pretty well represents who we are.
After several years though, it is only in these last few months that we have really started fully inhabiting this shell together.
We’ve adjusted where things go and how we use them. The white enamel kettle that has sat on the stove for years because it looked good was given away because we never used it and it was constantly in the way. Our apartment now has some of the feel of the house in The Goonies in the best possible way.
Yesterday I did a massive clean-up of the top of the table. We eat at one end of it which we keep clear and use the other two thirds of it as a catchall for our lives. After the clean, I can now see the piles of stuff that is sitting on it.
We USE the table.
My great-grandfather originally bought it from a department store in Virginia well over a hundred years ago. He used it in his law office to spread his books out on. My grandfather eventually shared the office with him, and my great-grandfather would complain that my grandmother would come in and clean up the table so that he couldn’t find anything that he needed. A century later, nothing has changed. If Michael moves my stuff or I move his, we can’t ever find what we need either.
Yet again, it is snowing outside which makes the apartment seem even more of a Hobbit hole - snug and comfortable.
The Senate is holding a judiciary hearing before voting on whether or not to approve Merrick Garland as the United States Attorney General. Senator Ted Cruz is questioning him. Having just returned from his Mexican sojourn, it seems to me that he should be in quarantine and doing this virtually. But why should he think that the rules apply to him?
The Marriott hotel chain announced, yesterday that they were revoking all of the Senator’s award points and instituting a lifetime ban against him ever staying in one of their properties again. Participants in the awards program agree to the company’s terms and conditions and contained within Marriott’s is a morality clause.
Andrew Canard, the company’s CEO said, “If a participant in the program engages in a heinous crime, we can’t be seen offering such an individual, perks. It would damage our brand. Unfortunately, Senator Cruz decided to abandon his constituents in their hour of need. We had no choice but to nullify whatever awards he earned.”
For a brief moment yesterday, the Senator had himself photographed handing out bottled water to people waiting in long lines of cars. While water service has been resumed in many areas of Texas, residents are being advised to boil it before drinking it. I am guessing that this was supposed to show how concerned about the crisis he now is.
On Saturday Night Live this week, Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost said, "If you hate Ted Cruz, this was a pretty fun week. And if you like Ted Cruz, then you're Ted Cruz."
The Supreme Court ruled against the former President today when it refused his request to shield his tax returns from the New York grand jury investigation. He is now out of legal options in that regard.
Both of these men are facing the consequences of their actions. That each has repeatedly acted in their own self-interests at the detriment to others is nothing new. That perhaps, now, they will be held accountable for it, is. I wonder if they will, ultimately.
This is one of the things that our country’s justice system needs to firmly address. The rich and powerful can often evade justice. Back on the Senate hearing, Senator Cory Booker is questioning Merrick Garland on this very thing as I write this.
We passed a tragic and gruesome milestone this weekend with over half a million COVID-19 deaths reported here in the United States.
The bigger the number gets the harder it is to put into any sort of context. As a possible way into understanding it, there are whole countries on our planet that don’t have that many people.
It is really snowing outside. I know I travel a lot so I’m not always here, but this seems like a great deal more snow than we usually get here in the city. It’s going to be a challenging walk, today.
I feel fortunate to have a place to shelter in that has heat, electricity and running water. As has been driven home by the crisis in Texas this past week, even here in the United States of America, that is not, by any means, a given.
More than shelter, I am truly grateful to have a home.
Merrick Garland’s family fled Russia at about the same time that my great-grandfather was buying our dining table. He just testified that the United States took them in at a time when anti-Semitism made them unwelcome in many other places.
This country gave him and his family a home. In an emotional moment, Merrick Garland said, “This is the highest best use of my skills to pay back.”
We all deserve a place where we feel safe and welcomed and protected - a place that we yearn to return to when we are away from it.
I’m grateful that I’ve always had such a place and even more grateful that this year has made me able to recognize it.
One of my nieces writes for Weekend Update on SNL. Will have to find out if that was one her submitted jokes. It was a good show. They had me at the opening with the Bridgerton Duke...even at my age! It is a gift and pretty much of a privilege to be able to live with and use items of our family’s history. I think of how many people who have come to America have had to abandon everything to move on and create a life. Guessing the Garland family is in that group. I love that you treasure your inheritance and can share story. It is an expression of gratitude.
❤️...if I may add the rich, the powerful and the criminals often evade justice in this country. Not sure that justice has much to do with integrity or truth....
yes, me too, the epidemic stilled me to gratitude and appreciation for all I have, and recognizing how “much” I don’t need. Love how I can sit in one place, yet experience the world through your posts❄️🌟💫