I kept my space to the essentials while I went through IVF When my husband and I met, in 2009, I had been living with two roommates in a one-bedroom apartment four blocks due south of Central Park. On our first date, five (of six) cocktails in, I declared that I was never moving.
Eight months later, we signed a lease on a one-bedroom rental on the 30th floor of a glassy, dorm-like skyscraper in Downtown Brooklyn. The living room afforded views of the East River; the bedroom, the Empire State Building. We got married and soon brought home a puppy.
A couple of years later, committed to staying in a neighborhood that was growing and changing around us and thinking about having a baby, we moved within the building into a two-bedroom apartment on the 28th floor. The apartment was narrow but well laid out, with an enormous stretch of west-facing floor-to-ceiling windows. At sunset, the sky glistened with oranges and pinks and light bounced off the East River. In blizzards, the city below was silent. We got, lost, and changed jobs. We got, lost, and changed friends. Shake Shack opened its first Brooklyn location a few blocks away. A small supermarket opened in the ground-floor commercial space in our building and promptly posted security-camera flyers that shamed kombucha shoplifters. The corner deli rebranded itself with glittery tilework and the word ?Gourmet.? Across the street, another apartment skyscraper broke ground. I went off birth control.
Then, after more than ...