In another of my routine memory lapses, I am not sure what got me thinking about this, but I started looking to see if I could find pictures of any of the homes I have lived in over the last 63 years.
From birth to age 7, I lived in
University City, MO at 8614 Orchard Court, a 910 square foot, 2 bedroom, 1
bathroom house. By the time we moved on we were 2 adults and 4 children
squeezed into that tiny home.
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.676798,-90.357496,3a,75y,190.9h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1smYxc9tNFlGpZH6aq9KRXyg!2e0
From ages 7 to 17, I lived in Olivette,
MO at 15 Queensbrook Place, a 1484 square foot house with 4 bedrooms and 2
bathrooms. It must have seemed so much bigger!
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.675126,-90.391746,3a,75y,3.5h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sYgWpZ5LXfz4W--bm9_zsow!2e0
From ages 17-18, I lived in West
Hartford CT at 4 Shepard Road. I do not have the exact details but it was quite
a bit larger than the previous house. It had 4 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, a
good sized living and dining room and large family room.
From there I went to
the University of Rochester, and spent only one summer (1971) living with my
parents. Barry and I were married in 1973. Our first apartment was in the newly
constructed Goler House.
Then we moved to
University Park, where we lived in a small one bedroom apartment until Simmie
was about a year old.
From 1978-1980 we
lived in Patchogue on Long Island while Barry was a postdoctoral fellow at
Brookhaven National Laboratory. I cannot seem to remember our address there.
In 1980, Barry was
offered a position at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas,
with a laboratory at Parkland Hospital. Many of you will recognize that name
because it was the hospital to which the late President John F. Kennedy was
rushed after that fateful gunshot. We lived in an apartment on Harvest Hill
Road; I believe it was 5725, Apartment 402.
In 1986, I completed
my doctorate in Statistics and Barry accepted a position at Brown University.
After a brief time in a rental apartment, we bought a house at 96 Brook Road.
In 1991 Barry was
offered a position at Mount Sinai and we moved to New York. After living
briefly in a rental home, we moved to 38 Pershing Avenue in Yonkers. We lived
in that house for six years.
During those six
years we became increasingly involved with the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale,
and wanting to live closer we sold the Yonkers house. After a year living in an
apartment while searching for the right place, we found it at 571 West 231st
Street in Riverdale. I quickly found this lovely picture on Google maps.
We first found about
the house from a friend who knew the owner. We knew we were in trouble when the
price was quite a bit higher than we wanted to spend and we fell head over
heels in love with it as soon as we walked in the door. We could foresee the
day when we would have our married children and our grandchildren spending time
with us there. Somehow we made it work, and even though neither of our
daughters ever lived there full-time, it has still been our family home. It is
the only house we have ever owned that we truly loved, even with the headaches
that are part of any aging home. So although we talk about selling some day, we
continue to push that date as far into the future as we are able to maintain
it.
This has been an
enjoyable trip down memory lane.
Meanwhile, we did
manage to squeeze in a movie this week: Felix and Meira. The film is about a
young Hasidic couple, Meira and Shulem who live in the Jewish community in
Montreal with their infant daughter. Shulem seems a decent fellow but Meira
wants more from life than the role to which she is constrained by life in that
tight-knit community. She clandestinely takes contraceptive pills and listens
to popular music. She meets a fellow named Felix who has had a very different
life and little by little, in stolen moments, these two very different people
come to care for each other. There are many awkward moments as Meira begins to
experience a very different life than the one she has known.
We might have
expected Shulem to be painted as the “bad guy” here, the unfeeling husband who
would not let his wife go. But that would be an unfair description of him.
Shulem wants her to be happy but it is nearly impossible for him to understand
the emotions driving her or what he can do to improve things.
The movie ends as
Felix and Meira are beginning their lives together with her young daughter. But
somehow I was left feeling that the future did not seem so bright after all.
Was Meira just one of those people who will never be happy with what she has?
As wonderful as Felix may have seemed, it is easy to see her becoming tired of
him as well, and needing to move on to the next challenge. All in all, a
well-acted and thought-provoking film.
We are heading into a
three-day marathon: Sabbath followed immediately by the two day holiday of
Shavuot, which commemorates the revelation at Mount Sinai. My favorite
tradition on this holiday revolves around the food. When the Jewish people
received the Torah, they did not have time to go out and properly slaughter the
cows and prepare the meat according to the rules contained therein, so it has
been traditional to eat dairy foods on this holiday. We have a refrigerator
full of cheese blintzes and a big cheesecake. I also made a fresh blueberry pie
with home-made crust (have not done that in years) and some lemon butter
cookies. I had baked very little over the past twenty-five years and it has
been nice getting back into it.
Have a wonderful weekend
and for those observing, chag sameach!
Love,
Rebecca
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