We left our apartment in Manhattan on March 12 to “stay awhile” in our second home on the North Fork.
Our daughter was just three months old and the coronavirus was hitting New York hard. We thought it was prudent to go to our home to have more space to ride this thing out. We called my parents in Staten Island and told them to join us, and Phil stocked up on food from Costco.
We were planning to stay for a few weeks.
We never went back to our apartment.
We hunkered down in the North Fork and watched in horror as the global pandemic took hold. We stayed in, cooked all of our food, ordered every grocery item or toiletry via a delivery service and didn’t dream of going back to our apartment building across the street from NYU Hospital (where we delivered our Giuliana) since it was basically the epicenter of COVID in New York City.
In those early days, I really believed eventually we would go back. It was my husband who said to me early on that maybe it would be prudent to get rid of the apartment and live in Southold for a while.
I laughed at the thought--- we were city people! I had been living on the East Side of Manhattan for 13 years. My job was there. My family lived in the outer boroughs. How could we possibly even think about that?
Time passed and I went “back to work” from maternity leave in early May. I went back to my job— where I work in media and live events—and things looked grim. It became clear after only a few days back that my company was either going to have to reinvent itself or we wouldn’t survive. Shortly thereafter, inevitably, they announced a significant pay-cut for staffers globally. That’s when we decided to get rid of the apartment.
We couldn’t afford rent in NYC on top of a mortgage in the North Fork and the city was becoming more dangerous by the second. As long as I was working remote—for however long that might be for—we had no other choice. It was time to cut our losses and move on.
We hired OZ moving to do it all for us. We never stepped foot back in our apartment—not even to say goodbye. I had lived in that building complex since 2011, and as you can imagine, it held a very special place in my heart.
My sister and I moved in there together in the spring of 2011. That apartment saw a lot of boyfriends/girlfriends, parties, sister sing-a-longs and lazy nights in on the couch.
A few years later, I got my first studio apartment on my own—it meant the world to me that I was able to afford a place of my own and live an independent lifestyle, but all in the same place I felt safe and comfortable in.
Then, my husband (then-fiancé) and I lived in my tiny studio apartment briefly before upgrading to a place together. It was in that spacious, sun-lit one bedroom on the 12th floor that I would labor in for almost 24 hours on New Years Eve before having our daughter right across the street at NYU Hospital.
That building saw it all and the doormen were like family to me. Two of them watched me in labor as we hopped into a cab on the morning of January 1, so thankful that I didn’t deliver Giuliana steps from the front desk.
Kips Bay Towers bore witness to my life’s transformations—from fun loving 20-something to early 30s modern day woman to a wife and mother. I will forever look back on that time of my life as one filled with joy, adventure, love and warmth. For now, this blog post will be my farewell to a city, and more importantly, an apartment complex, that I will always cherish.
It will never be good bye New York; only, until we meet again.
