Sesame Street

For children “Sesame Street” is a magical place where Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch live in row houses, the kind of brownstones you see in New York City. You get there by turning on the television.

I can tell you how to get to Sesame Street.

You go to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is only fifteen minutes from the airport. Drive west on Bridge Boulevard, passing auto body shops and karate studios with signs in Spanish. The street goes steeply up hill onto the mesa. The street is still sloping upward at the traffic light at busy Coors Road. You’ll need to keep your foot on the brake. When the light turns green, go ahead to the second street and turn right. That’s Sesame Street.

The third house on the right is a little fake adobe house: 412 Sesame Street, where I lived for twenty years.

I bought it at one of the lowest points in my life. I was divorced, unable to live on $500 a month, and the man I loved for 30 years refused to speak to me or give me more money. My apartment rent was $350 a month. Then I found this little house. It was filthy – how surprised I was when I cleaned the black stove and discovered that under the grease the color was Sears’ harvest gold! But it had a fireplace, a dishwasher, and a view. And the payments were exactly $350 a month.

I had to go back to Chicago to sue the Cad. It was a miserable situation. I rented a moving van and drove it back to Albuquerque with what worldly goods I had left after the divorce.

I loved that little house, surrounded by my favorite things. Blue couch bought after we built the house in Arlington, Heights, Illinois, in 1960. Hanging above the couch the brown landscape print I bought with my grocery money when we lived in Dallas in 1968. Bookcases I purchased at Union Station in Chicago in 1976 to hold all my favorite books.

After John and I married, he had the couch reupholstered in a similar blue fabric. Since I had not been able to salvage tables after the divorce, John hired a crazy Hispanic to make a coffee table and end tables in the “Santa Fe style” appropriate for a fake adobe house in New Mexico. Later I added a Gayle Waddell watercolor of a cat on an Oriental rug for my bedroom and in the living room Acoma and Zia pots above the books in the fake walnut bookcases. I loved the way the house looked.

But the best part was outside, the view from the patio. High on the mesa, over my back wall, across a big open field, beyond the traffic on Coors Road, looking down on the city of Albuquerque, as a backdrop I could see two ranges of mountains. At sunset Sandia Mountain turned red. The color only lasted a few minutes, but it was magical. Darkness fell, and the mountains disappeared into the black sky. Then the city lights came on, a carpet of twinkling lights spread out for my enjoyment.

People said to me, “What if they build something behind you?”

I said, “That’s the advantage of living on the wrong side of town. No one wants to build in this low-income Spanish neighborhood.”

But after eighteen years, someone did. A row of nice new houses, with a pair of two-story houses right behind me. Between them I had just a narrow band of glimmering lights at night.

I was still happy living on Sesame Street. Then the kidney doctor said, “It is time to go on dialysis.” I moved to Texas to be near my brother and his wife.

My apartment in the retirement community is comfortable. I still have the blue couch and the “Santa Fe style” tables. The shelves in my living room hold the Acoma and Zia pots and my favorite books. The watercolor of the cat is now in the living room, and the Dean Meeker print is above my bed, its brown tones harmonizing with my new brown and blue bedspread. From my third floor balcony I look down on the backyards of houses with a swimming pool and barbecue grill. Long ago I learned to change with the times, to keep what I can but go ahead. I am content.

But I miss Sesame Street.