Find Me a Place Called Home
After a lifetime of traveling and four years living in Airbnbs, I’ve finally found home
When I was younger, I’d filch the real estate listings from the local Pennysaver and pore over the apartments for rent — a new home brought with it the possibility of happiness. Or something that resembled it. On weekends, I’d board buses that stretched the length of Long Island, spending hours getting lost in the unfamiliar.
Oceanside was a miniature theater that played Dream a Little Dream. Freeport was dirt, soot, and exhaust. Cold Spring Harbor was a boardwalk where I’d watch men fish in waters of glinting glass. Nursing a Coke and a warm cookie, I’d trace over the barnacles that covered the rotting wood. Bethpage was far, and home to a Little Caesars where I’d tear apart breadsticks with cold hands. “You have pastry hands,” a lover once told me.
I’d come home from my travels and report about the places I’d seen. “We could move here. We could start over,” I’d beg my mother. Sometimes, she was an accomplice to my escape fantasies. We even visited that apartment in Oceanside. I told her about the research I’d done — digging up high school yearbooks in the local library, and cataloging the nearest laundromats, supermarkets, and bagel shops.
