Square Footage, Closet Space and a Dark Night of the Soul: Adventures in House-Hunting
By Amanda Toronto

aaaaharming two bedroom on quiet tree-lined street. Eat-in kitchen, dishwasher, decorative fireplace. Laundry facilities on-site; close to public transportation. 750 square feet." Oh…my…goodness. This is my reality now: Obsessively checking real estate listings. Attending open houses on the weekend. Becoming fluent in the nuanced language of real estate brokers so we can decide whether it is worth going to the open house at all. Because we are moving. aaaaI don't want to move. I don't want to move. Four nights out of seven I lie awake, literally breaking out in a cold sweat over the thought of moving. As my husband would say, I don't deal with change well. And he's right. It takes me at least an hour to adjust to a hotel room when we go on vacation. How can I be expected to adjust to the mere thought of a new apartment in a new neighborhood?!?! The expectation of moving, of familiarizing myself with a new neighborhood, with new sets of neighbors, with new public transit routes and restaurants and coffee shops and libraries is just too overwhelming. But this train has left the station and it's time for me to get on-board. Grudgingly.
	aa	aaaaIf I had any sense of collective memory I would remember that I've felt this way before and during every move I've made since college. Luckily, that's why we have parents and spouses: "You didn't want to move into this apartment and now you don't want to leave?" Oh, yeah. Because even though I don't deal well with the prospect of change, once the move is accomplished, I actually adjust fairly quickly and become very, very attached to apartments and neighborhoods. I move rapidly from, "How can I live here?" to "How can I possibly be expected to move away from the single best coffee shop ever?" This loyalty is a good and a bad quality, I would argue.
aaaaWhen my husband finished graduate school he decided to move to New York to be with me. However, at the time I was living in a studio apartment and because he didn't have a job and because my salary as a graduate student was minimal, in that studio apartment we stayed. For one and a half years. For a year and a half he lived out of two drawers and three duffel bags shoved under my futon. But even though my memories of that time are marked by strenuous arguments about tidiness and space, I also remember thinking that New York had been transformed because we were experiencing it together. It was a whole new city for me, and after five years of living there, it finally felt like home. aaaaNow my husband is starting graduate school again, in England, and we are required to move from our apartment, which is attached to his job. So, to ratchet up the pressure, we are looking for two apartments simultaneously--one in the U.K. and one Stateside. And I am required to decide where I will be making my home come September and what is a necessity and what is simply a want in my choice of new homes. Where will I be able to work best? Where can we get the most space? Will I be able to work if we aren't together? Will I work better if we aren't together? aaaaIt is time for me to face reality. We are moving. Though I suffer through panic attacks at night, during the waking hours I allow myself to daydream, just a little, about what life in our new apartment, in New York or in Bristol, might be like. Though I realize it's a bit of a cliché to reference Virginia Woolf, no wiser a woman than she believed a woman needed a room of her own in order to create. Maybe this new apartment will be my space in which to create and dream. Maybe in this apartment I can have a desk. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Tentatively, I allow descriptions of square footage and eat-in kitchens to set my mind to wondering about the happy life, clear skin and productive career I will most definitely have in this new apartment. Because even though apartment-hunting is mostly about geographic and physical space, a tiny part of the hunt is about pure imagination and daring. I am allowed, ever so briefly, to indulge my deepest domestic and personal desires. Most importantly, during my dark nights of worry and panic and my days of wishful thinking, I need to remember how, five years ago, New York City finally became my home because of the presence of the man who would become my husband. It is important to have a house, and I'm sure we'll find one soon, but regardless of that, I know I will always have a home.