Financial navel-gazing.
For my November rent check I used the last check of my very first checkbook — the book I received when I opened my own independent bank account at the Washington Mutual on the corner of 6th Avenue and W. 4th Street. That means every one of my rent checks written — for all of the apartments in which I have lived over the past four years — bore only one residential address: 75 Orchard Street, New York, New York.
Is this a milestone? Am I all grown? Am I, to paraphrase a friend post-long-term-boyfriend-break-up, “the woman I always wanted to be?” Well, I was too lazy to spare an extra few minutes in the customer service line to order new checkbooks, and yesterday, after getting something like three hours of sleep the night before, I ate a piece of cake in bed. My room now, too, is smaller than my old one on the Lower East Side — a truth that my twenty-one year-old self would find shocking. But then, I am doing what I want to do — and am doing it myself. And this might be, despite today being the coldest and darkest day in a long time, a nice November. That is a hopeful line — “nice November” — well, that’s one my younger self, even a few months ago, would definitely never believe.
