begun Nov 22, 2022 — in Chestnut Hill, MA (aka Boston) — completed Apr 2, 2025 — in Evanston, IL (aka Chicago) — because PhD life is a series of interruptions in whatever personal sensemaking one might be doing
I married a man 15 years my senior. The year we married, we also bought a house, because he “was tired of moving all the time.” (I was too, don’t get me wrong!) I have lived in that same house from that point forward… until my educational needs took us to other cities. As a graduate-student couple, we now — of course! — live in an apartment. A tiny, tiny one in MA. One half again as big in IL; woohoo! Both in buildings over a century old… steam heat, no ‘mod. cons.’
I did not viscerally (viscera: all my squishy gut bits) appreciate how much of a suburban, bourgoise person I was until I, viscerally, had to be something else. Here’s a few formerly automatic behaviors that are now headed for extinction…
Can’t hose anything off. Know how one will take a sort-of-washable item — say, a doormat… crusted with salt and road grit in addition to all the twigs and leaves — and hose it off in the driveway because the detritus won’t matter there? Yeah. No hose access. No place where detritus “won’t matter”… the bathtub strainer catches it all again and it won’t scrape up, the kitchen trash can is too narrow to get all the dust. Oh well, thank you kitchen sink with garburator! [update: the garburator was in MA but is not in IL. on the other hand, there’s an outdoor tap on the side of our IL building… <looks over each shoulder> ]
Insulated tumblers? No more. When I lived a life that used cars frequently, I carried a lidded tumbler full of my preferred beverage (decaf unsweetened iced tea) and so had something to sip whenever the urge struck. The tumbler fit neatly into my cupholder, where it was stable during motion and secure as I left it to run in and out of buildings. Or I brought it with me to meetings, and refilled it before I went back to the car. But now I move around on the T [in greater Boston], where we’re technically not eating or drinking anything. I still bring something to drink, but since it has to go in my backpack, my tumbler won’t work. (Their lids aren’t that sealable!) Water bottles work well for my urban life… my tumbler stays in the apartment.
[update: this is still true, though now I’m on foot and not on the T or the L. i don’t like stuff in my hands for that long when i’m the one in motion.]
Oh yeah, and bring my reusable cup to the store is gone. Well, this may just be how my “grab a beverage while running errands” has evaporated because I’m in transit culture, not car culture. Starbucks is now an intentional errand that generally adds 15m of walking to whatever else I’m doing; since it’s intentional, I’m always using the order-ahead option. (To be fair, I LOVE the order-ahead option, always have: digital memory is the best!) Transit culture has shifted me towards: can I carry XX on my person? If not, guess I don’t need it that much-! I have previously been a ‘reduce’ and ‘reuse’ person — I still am a fan of bring-from-home shopping bags — but I have not come around to toting an empty cup everywhere. Maybe I need (more | bigger) pockets!
I have always been a Big Purse person (“Be prepared!“). I am the daughter of a Big Purse person; my paternal grandmother, too, could lay hands on whatever random thing was needed wherever we were, just by rummaging in her handbag. And yet I have not taken my beautiful Big Purse off the shelf since Labor Day [nb: 3 months at the time of writing, though it stretched until Winter Break]. Or did I use my sleek travel purse then, too? It turns out it’s too awkward for my student life — that, I knew already — and it’s rounder than I want to carry on the T. Nor do I use any of its helpful contents: no spur-of-the-moment chopsticks meals, no sudden ponytail moments, and very few reusable shopping bag opportunities… because I put everything in my pockets if I don’t shove whatever-it-is in my backpack. I did not anticipate that my lovely handbag would be suburbs-contingent, but here we are-! [update: i bought a purse specifically for when i take the L — not much larger than my flattened palm, but it holds enough… plus it has a thief-resistant shoulder strap. that beautiful purse now lives at my TX house!]
I still have Crocs(tm), but instead of covering my feet as I run to the garage or stand under the arbor, they are for crossing the courtyard to get to the laundry room or for running up and down the stairs to get mail and packages. These days when I take out the trash, I put on proper shoes, because the roofed bay for the dumpster is nasty and Crocs are way too flimsy. On the other hand, they are too gritty to wear indoors.
PS: My Sweetie has met a rat (ratS? unclear) on his walk to work. And back in MA we watched one scavenge someone else’s dumpster as we walked home from Whole Foods. That had certainly not been part of my sub-urban experience.
Apartment life is different in lots of other ways, but most of them I expected: the lack of storage, the lack of dishwasher, the restlessness when I work at home for too many days in a row. On the other hand, that drives me outdoors, and most things are close enough to home that I can walk to get there. And pass by sights like this:
I have been missing your stories. Glad you are back!
Well, we’ll see how “back” I am… writing (academically) as my primary job keeps pulling me away from here! This kind of writing feels good, though, so maybe I can elbow out more room for it.