Kate Spade Shoes

The water was coming up from the floorboards.

“This is weird, right?” I asked, applying pressure to the floor with the sole of a hot pink Kate Spade stiletto that was a little too big, but that I’d gotten on steep discount at Nordstrom Rack.

Water oozed. Squish.

Anth did the same thing with his shoe in another corner of the living room. Water there too. Squish. “We should call them.”

Not five minutes later, Chad, the head maintenance guy in our apartment building was in our unit; they don’t mess around with plumbing issues. Five minutes after that, Chad left and promptly returned with Amy, the building manager.

“A pipe burst under your shower and spread through the entire apartment. We need to get you out of here so we can tear up the whole floor.”

“Today?” I asked distractedly, noting that our dog seems increasingly displeased by her wet paws.

“Right now. For good. We’ll find you an open unit in the building.”

This is how we ended up living in a lavish two-bedroom corner apartment on the top floor of a luxury apartment building in downtown Seattle for roughly the same cost as our modest one bedroom with the squishy floors.

It remains our nicest home to date, with unobstructed views of the Seattle skyline and Mt. Rainer, two ovens, huge bathtub, a balcony... I don’t remember the square footage (who are we kidding, I never knew the square footage), but I do know that our current bathroom could have fit inside that walk-in closet. And that wasn’t even the only walk-in closet.

I remember those years fondly. How could I not? We had cushy-ish paychecks, a decent amount of disposable income, and an apartment nicer than we’d properly earned. Sure, we weren’t in love with our jobs, and lived for Friday afternoon even as we started dreading Monday morning. But that’s what you do in your 20s, right?

We knew the bubble would burst when our lease came up for renewal, and we braced. But not hard enough. Our lease renewal packet was more grenade than bubble. Rent went back up to market value which was roughly double what we’d been paying. And so far out of our price range that we didn’t even bother with the conversation of, “Well maybe we can make it work if we cut back on happy hours, and quit buying Kate Spade shoes at Nordstrom Rack …”

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had been able to stay in that apartment. I think we probably would have. And I think our lives would have gone a very different direction. Eventual house in the Seattle burbs? SUV? Two SUVs? Middle manager in a cubicle? Kids? Maybe. Maybe even probably.

Instead, we were staring down the barrel of an expiring lease with no idea where our next home would be. There were other apartments in Seattle in our price range, obviously. But we’d had the taste. A taste of the “good life.” We’d become snobs. I’d also recently typed “the end,” on my first romance novel, was increasingly unhappy at my day job.

Suddenly the life that had felt so sparkly and new just months before was peeling at the edges. We weren’t hard-up, but there was a vague restlessness that we hadn’t even identified until …

Anth got a call on a random sunny afternoon from his boss. His company was expanding to New York, and was Anth interested in relocating to NYC to open the Manhattan office? The trick: it was happening fast, in August.

Our lease in the cushy apartment we could no longer afford? Also up in August.

We didn’t believe in signs, but this definitely felt like a sign.

We said yes before we could think it through, and I’m glad we were so rash. Had we had time to research cost of living in NYC, those Seattle one bedrooms we were wrinkling our nose at would have looked awfully nice by comparison.

But we found a place in the city. New construction, which felt safe considering our tight timeline meant we would be signing a lease sight unseen. And it was in midtown, which to the uninitiated, seemed a prime central home base until we could get our bearings in a new city.

Plus, we could afford it. Barely.

But it still somehow felt right. Or maybe we were just too far committed. We’ll figure it out.

Anyone who’s ever moved knows that it’s not until you have to pack up your home that you realize how much shit you have. This becomes even more acute when you’re moving from a huge two bedroom with ample closet space into …

A studio apartment. With no walk-in closet. There wasn’t even a closet, just sort of wall with a nook to hang a few clothes in the hallway leading into the bathroom. And by hallway to the bathroom, I mean take a medium-sized step and you were in the bathroom.

We got rid of nearly everything. We had to. And when we arrived in Manhattan and began unpacking, we had to get rid of more. Until we were down to the bare essentials, not because we were minimalists—not yet—but because it’s what would literally fit. At one point I was down to three pairs of shoes. A pair of sneakers, a pair of “nice but practical” shoes, and one pair of horribly ugly waterproof boots for east coast winters. Those discount pink Kate Spade heels were long gone by this point.

It’s been sixteen years since that pipe burst under our floorboards. Fourteen since we moved to New York.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what’s next for me, for us, which counterintuitively, means I’ve spent a lot of time looking backwards. At that Seattle apartment, which to my memory, feels a bit like the Golden Age. Back when fancy dinners were commonplace, I thought nothing of buying a new dress for an upcoming event, and our bathrooms were freaking marble. Not faux. The real stuff.

And then I think back to that little studio apartment as well. Where our bathroom doubled as a phone booth, because it was the only place in the home with a door when one us needed to take a call. Where our idea of a big splurge was hailing a cab during a sudden downpour, or a slice of cheese pizza from Claudios for dinner.

Our living situation right now is somewhere in between the two. We’re still in New York, and there are no walk-in closets or marble bathrooms. But we have do have a large one bedroom, and we now have two doors—no more bathroom phone calls. We still go to Claudios for cheese pizza, only now we can afford the whole pie.

It’s a good life—a very good life, one we work hard to craft intentionally. If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go backwards.

But if I could bring elements of our past into our present?

It wouldn’t be from the Seattle golden age. I have a fondness for those glittery Seattle years, but it’s more bemused nostalgia.

But I do miss what happened after. I miss what happened to our lives, to us, when we got rid of it all.

In our earliest months in that little studio, we had no furniture besides a mattress on the floor. One sweltering September evening, Anth was working late. I had the windows open because money was tight, and AC costs money. I sat cross-legged on the hard floor, writing my second romance manuscript on my laptop.

I was hot. I was sweaty. Supremely uncomfortable. And almost unbearably … happy.

I miss the peace that comes from having everything you need, and not a single thing more.

I do not miss the Kate Spade shoes.