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Jackie G.'s avatar

My Harriet was my father's sister, Joyce. She lived at 138th and Madison in Harlem, NYC. My earliest memory of her apartment was looking out the window as a kid and seeing the Harlem River at night. She married once, and when they divorced she never married again but she had a gentleman friend for many years. After he died, there was no one else. But Joyce wasn't lonely. She had her squad, Vivian, Muriel, and Jenny (who we also claimed as Aunt). Many times we'd visit and they'd have their apartment doors open so we could just go in and out. She had a very good job as a secretary at what was then Bristol-Meyers, and she traveled. She sewed the most lovely clothes for herself; she's the person to call if you had a pattern or fabric problem. When I was around 15 or 16, I spent a week with her at her apartment. I knew then that I didn't need a big house, I just needed an apartment, good friends, and an awesome city or town to live in. I could live on my own and choose my companion. She was the first person I ever came out to and years later met my girlfriend who later became my person. There's so much more but I'll end with this: of all the things I kept of hers after she died, the letter addressed to the thieves who once messed up her apartment is the one that makes me every time I look at it. It's framed and is accompanied by a dollar bill for their trouble.

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Amy's avatar

I crave this kind of content - thanks for giving a climate weary married young millennial permission to be the master of her own damn life. I have plenty of older female mom friends, many of whom have relayed to me that their lives were basically destroyed by motherhood. More through patriarchal and societal conditions than the kids themselves, of course. I told an older mom friend earlier today, in fact, that the latest “time is running out” climate news may have been the nail in the coffin for my parental aspirations, but I need to remember that self preservation and independence and choice are equally good reasons to abstain.

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