Falling in love again, particularly if it is with the same person or place, is exciting. It isn’t easier because one already knows the drawbacks and takes the plunge anyway; it’s a stronger commitment, a love story re-lived. This is what I’m going through now that I’m back in my home in Philadelphia from the Jersey Shore. Falling in love again with my condo is easy, but loving Philly takes some doing.
I tell myself that the city is stimulating. After all, there are brochures galore for the upcoming fall events: Broadway shows, plays in several venues, the world-famous Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin at its helm, wide-ranging dance performances at the Kimmel Center, new exhibits at several museums, the upcoming Film Festival. Never mind that the sidewalks are a walking hazard and I have to pay attention, life is not a beach here. Yes, there is trash on both sides of the road when I drive out of spiffy Society Hill. There are homeless people (I know, unhoused) sleeping in Washington Square, since the weather is still warm. But I can walk, carefully of course, to all the doctors’ appointments I have collected while I was away. I can take public transportation if I rather and it’s free for senior folks like me. I can get a decent haircut (what’s with Jersey girls and Mediterranean hair?). I have a myriad of restaurants within walking distance and I don’t have to order the fried fish house special.
My apartment, on the other hand, is the perfect partner, it’s a good thing I like change and reorganizing closets! I love the paintings I have brought back and added to my small art gallery, including Ann Chahbandour’s “Beyond Audubon,” and my favorite piece by Bernard Felch that has moved to my bedroom. I have refreshed the balcony with a new chaise lounge to take naps in the fall sun; the mums are in bloom and the mint, the lavender and the rosemary have survived the ocean breezes and seem to thrive in my high-rise. A few of the glass shore birds have flown from Murano with me and look pretty in the city. I have even added some pieces with shell motifs–which I thought I would never do–, but let’s face it, this is not “Casa Concha” for nothing.
Like always, I go back to the years growing up in Spain and I blame my constrained childhood for this intense desire to collect objects d’art, books, paraphernalia, even clothes and shoes. I remember that I shared a drawer in my mother’s armoire to keep my clothes and used a shelf on top of a radiator for my French books. I slept on a murphy bed in the family room and often I fell asleep while my mother was still sewing on her Singer machine. I didn’t feel unfortunate, everyone around me lived in similar circumstances, and my brother and I attended the best schools in Madrid, thanks to my father’s privilege as a university professor.
There was an expression that captured the life style of those years under Franco’s regime: “Quita y pon.” I have to check in Google to see if it exists anymore and it does, it means “to have one of something and another to replace it.” Such as having only two pairs of shoes, two sweaters or two school uniforms to wear each season. AI claims that it comes from bullfighting, since the matador needed to have two suits ready, just in case. Now I come up with my own translation better than AI: “One to wear and one to spare.”
I read in a recent New Yorker that Americans are obsessed with keeping stuff: “Ninety per cent of the world’s self-storage capacity is in the United States,” says David Owen in his article “To Have and to Hold” (September 21, 2026). It’s obvious that I can’t win, just when I think that I am an authentic, suffering Spaniard, I realize that I am becoming like the rest of the Americans!