A Humble Home

Today is our final day on Locust Lane, and it is bittersweet. I’ve lived in this building for 5 1/2 years — first upstairs in an efficiency and then on the second floor in a one bedroom apartment.

I started my adult life here. For the first time I paid rent and electric along with student loans and car payments. I filled my cupboards with colorful dishes from the Pfaltzgraff outlet store and secondhand pots and pans. I watched the Food Network on a circa 1970s console television from new red couches. (You see where my priorities once lied.)

I hosted as many as nine friends in my small space on any given home football weekend. In the beginning we partied late on Friday night and tailgated early on Saturday morning. In later years we stayed in and sipped wine from the comfort of the red couches and crashed on the carpet immediately following the game.

For eight months in 2006 — during my dad’s battle with cancer — I had a roommate. My brother and I split the bedroom down the middle with tall bookcases. I would often come home from work to find him and his best friend playing video games with an empty bag of cookies between them. Andrew always ate the last cookie. But he made it up to me with his sausage sandwiches.

I established my independence here. I ran the neighborhood streets at dusk and tucked myself into bed. (Though admittedly I would quickly change the channel if a preview for a gruesome horror film filled the screen.) I grew up and learned to take care of myself here. I walked downtown when I was sick to buy cough medicine and chicken noodle soup. When the dishes piled up in the sink, I had nobody to blame but myself.

And then, almost three years ago, I walked into a university lab to produce a research report, and my life changed forever. He was wearing a white lab coat and hovered over a microscope. I had a camera bag slung over my shoulder and a tripod tucked under my arm. His name was Nick.

We fell in love in the kitchen with its retro cabinetry and half-size appliances. I seduced him with sweet potato and apple soup and chocolate cake with thick peanut butter frosting. Nick grilled burgers with tangy blue cheese, prepared calzones with pepperoni and pineapple, and introduced me to Wiener Schnitzel, which is still my favorite dish in his repertoire.

And then he got down on one knee on the carpet of this apartment with candles flickering all around us, and he asked me to marry him. Ten months later we said “I do” in a garden on the banks of the Susquehanna River.

From the day we locked eyes in the lab to the day we slipped rings on each other’s fingers, Nick moved from student housing in Hershey and into a farmhouse in Hummelstown. Then temporarily from the farmhouse and onto Locust Lane. Three months later he took a job and moved to Hoboken. Through every move, this place has remained our constant. He came here again in October, and we finally began permanent cohabitation as a married couple.

Some elements of my life before Nick remain. My scarves and jewelry are displayed on the wall outside of the bathroom. Macro shots of flowers hang in the hallway. And my sweaters and skirts still have the closet all to themselves.

But Nick inserted himself and his things in many ways. He brought a spider plant that multiplied faster than we could give it away. He lined the bookshelves with his neuroscience text books and German beer steins. And he stacked bins of camping gear and ski equipment behind the wardrobe in the bedroom.

The movers arrive at 8:30 tomorrow morning (weather permitting, of course) to pack up the previous five years — from vulnerable college girl to liberated single woman to hopelessly in love to happily married.

Twelve hours and counting until we establish residency on Noelani Drive.