Moving
“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.” —Benjamin Franklin
Recently we moved. I am not a stranger to moving. Although my parents lived in our farmhouse for over fifty years, we had several year-long moves during my childhood. London-Dublin-London. We left for a full year on my father’s sabbatical and then bounced back with funny accents, lost friends, and travels all over Europe which marked us as snobs whose dresses were too short. It was the sixties.
When I went to college I moved out and never returned. Eighteen, I drove my parents VW Beetle to an apartment. I eschewed the dorm and lived there for a year with almost no furniture and a roommate who could not cook. At all. Anything. Her freezer was stuffed with frozen steaks until she dated a goy, and the steaks ran out. I had the opposite problem dating a nice Jewish boy who wanted to live with me in utter poverty, probably in a teepee. My parents bought an off-campus house, so I stayed behind while he went off to a cooler school. The house was wonderful, and my roommate was a sweet pothead who fixed roofs. My junior year I went to Dublin to attend Trinity College and stayed there for a year and then travelled all summer. I returned to the house and finished college.
After college I moved to Hoboken before it was cool. I lived with a friend who was depressed, we were both depressed, and I worked as a line foreman at New Jersey Bell Telephone Company. I climbed frozen poles and tried to be a boss. I was twenty-two and basically clueless despite six months of wiring and pole climbing school. We had roaches and a mean landlord, so my roommate moved out and I got another Hoboken apartment. And then another.
There was a major family tragedy and after I had a complete nervous breakdown and nearly drank myself to death, I decided to get married and we moved to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, an Hasidim neighborhood where I drank, and he raged. I had a job in Manhattan with a former lover and rode the D train into the city, hungover and bruised.
I left him and started to get sober. My first attempt at a Manhattan apartment paired me with a Columbia anthropology professor who drank so much I frequently found her passed out on the living room floor. So, I moved. My new roommate was also sober and had an apartment on 69th and Broadway. It was heaven. A one bedroom with a non-existent kitchen above a Greek diner. You would often hear the murmur of the cooks announcing meatloaf or eggs. We each had a black-and-white TV with a hanger antenna, and I walked to therapy and work through Central Park which was three blocks east.
In 1992 I met my second husband who was on his way either to Mexico City or London writing for a major newspaper. We got engaged, pregnant, and married in less than six months. I was informed by the super (I now had the lease on a rent-controlled NYC apartment) that I could not sublet. He told me this as I was sitting in the empty apartment rolling pennies, six months pregnant. I suggested we were getting the furniture cleaned but really, I didn’t care that much. I was having a baby.
We moved to London, found a place in Islington and had our child. It was a sweet, lullaby of a life, walks, besotted mommy, workaholic father. He was offered a promotion to work in Dallas and I agreed, eager to be a good wife, to shake off my father’s nickname of the “Bolter” and anyway, how could I understand Dallas was to be the worst place ever? We landed in 103 degree heat and as my ex-husband drove his new pick-up truck through the streets lined with malls and mansions, I began to understand my naiveté was breathtaking. This was a place that would feel as alien as the Middle East, another story. Two years in Dallas, a month in New Mexico, alone, writing, an almost affair, our move to Chicago was a desperate attempt to remain married. We got a too small condominium. We separated, he moved downstairs and then we bought a two-flat across from my son’s future grade school. He lived upstairs and I lived downstairs. We divorced.
I remarried and bought a gorgeous condo that would eventually need to be repaired because of the incompetent contractor continuously for two years. We had many nice parties and stayed there for fourteen years. December 2019, we bought a wonderful Cape Cod style small house in Leland, Michigan surrounded by Lake Michigan and Lake Leelanau. We sold the condo and moved to a rental apartment on the corner of two of the noisiest streets in Chicago. We never hung any art. There was a “Happy Ending” spa on the first floor and gunshots in the alley. We looked over a Mobil station.
Now, we are in a rental on a quiet tree-lined street. We will stay here until we commit to living full tilt in northern Michigan. Moving teaches you to throw stuff away, the transitory nature of life and that you will probably stay married. Our cat is currently living in a drawer in my husband’s bathroom.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach