Born in the boroughs, both my husband and I came to East Meadow as our first taste of suburbia in the middle 1990s. From the start, we understood the obvious — we'd be gaining more space and some newly found privacy. What we didn't expect were the simple realities that would go away when we left our one-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment behind. What I didn't expect at the time was that a lot more than our address changed.
Flowers. My spouse's green thumb now had a chance to flex its muscles beyond the philodendron and snake plants that filled huge pots inside our former apartment. Though limited in land, he now had a real garden to tinker with, grass seed, peat moss and all. It was a good thing for me too, as I finally learned the difference between an annual and a perennial and how an azalea bush can fry before your eyes if you underestimate a western exposure.
Laundry. I grew up negotiating the apartment basement laundry room — my mom timing just when to run the washers and dryers with ample quarters to feed the machines while I played in the hallway leading to the elevator. My husband's apartment laundry room was not as habitable, so he taught our three-year-old how to sort clothes and they headed to the coin-operated laundromat every Saturday morning. Now in the suburbs, the private machine hums and the Lev laundry room never closes.