Places Where I've Lived: My First One Bedroom Apartment

I moved there in mid-April, 1977, age twenty-one.  The drab grey stucco wall of the building façade was beautified by freshly blooming bluebells.  My mother had obtained a dresser for me.  I succeeded in buying other furniture cheap in various second hand havens.  The building was very old with perhaps eight one bedroom suits.  The hall stank of stale cabbage and other cooking odours.  There was no elevator.  Mom helped me clean the apartment and move in.  We both found the process enjoyable and more than ever she felt like my friend as well as my mom.

The building was managed by two thirty-something sisters and their brother, each living in one of the four units on the second floor.  I occupied the fourth apartment.  They had dogs, two aggressive Belgian Shepherds that would fiercely bark from the open upper windows as I returned home.  One of the sisters had a long haired cat named Tripper who often visited me.

I was so used to living with people that I welcomed three separate strangers to stay with me for the short-term.  This created strain for me and I was glad to get them all out of there.  Ten days into my first month there I finally had the place to myself.  I put up new art posters:

and

I still had one of my exotic Indian bedspreads, all golden-yellow paisley, and it covered a foam mattress that acted as a simple couch.   Two tatami mats covered the bare wooden floor.  It was quiet and I was happy living in a sense of holy solitude.  I had neither TV nor radio and this was in the olden days before the internet.  I read copiously: the works of Dostoevsky,  Virgina Woolf, CS Lewis, George Macdonald and others.  I worked casually in construction in the early summer for only ten days then enjoyed some free weeks, while looking for work and surviving rather well on Unemployment Insurance.  I was always meeting new and fascinating people.  It was just so difficult forming solid reliable friendships.

Every day I went on long walks.  I would sometimes visit friends but usually I was alone, walking along Tenth Avenue from where I lived on Prince Albert Street, one block east of Fraser Street in Vancouver's East End, to Alma Street on the border of West Point Grey then down to Jericho Beach.  I almost always stopped in the same mom and pop shop at Fourth and Alma where I would buy a giant oatmeal cookie.  I always took the bus home.

This contemplative joy of walking, resting, reading, praying and meeting people came to an abrupt end in September when I started a new job in a florist warehouse.  By the end of the month I was moving yet again.