The first place I lived was in an apartment in Riverdale, The Bronx, New York City. My parents subdivided the space to accommodate their growing family. They took five bookcases in an L-shape with a doorway, attached a floor and ceiling, leaving enough room to hold a bed and trundle. The room was so small my parents had to take the door off the closet to get into the closet and the trundle would not completely open. This addition chopped the dining room in half. The apartment was rented from my mother’s parents, who owned it as a co-op (tenants own the building; each apartment is considered a share; you are the landlord and all owners hire someone to keep the place going). This was an affordable place for our household (my family paid around $525 a month in maintenance fees – heating included, paid for electricity, no building wide internet at the time, didn’t have cable but would have had to pay extra). We were in Riverdale to be close to Montefiore, where my mother worked (first as an intern, then as a resident, and then as a physician), and because it had a vibrant Jewish community. Religious Jews tend to live near each other to support kosher groceries and restaurants, Jewish schools, synagogues that are within walking distance, and to be able to carry out various other aspects of religious law like eiruv and mikveh[1]. Single, my mom moved into the apartment after her brother and his wife moved to Queens. When she got married, my dad moved in and over time my four siblings and I were born there. We moved in August 2003, because there the apartment felt cramped.

[1] Both are complex Jewish legal topics which, although I can explain further, did not seem necessary to do so in this context.