A Brick Rowhouse

Sugar cookies cut into sloppy hearts, decorated with the cheapest pink frosting we could find in the baking aisle. Piles of spaghetti from Little Nonna’s served with heavy pours of boxed red wine. We stole a framed photograph of Nonna from the restaurant bathroom once; she looked on from our kitchen wall as we devoured her meatballs. 

A potluck dinner complete with Karlei’s lemon orzo, Gigi’s quinoa salad, and McDonald’s chicken nuggets. Jarred tomato sauce spread over dough from our late-night pizza parlor. Mckenna became friends with the servers behind the counter, so they gave us the dough for free on homemade pizza nights.

Mac and cheese and mashed potatoes on Friendsgiving. Birthday carrot cakes topped with spiced walnuts. For your future reference, the carrots will turn green if you add too much baking soda to the batter.

When we moved to Locust Street, it was just a kitchen table; a used, stained, overpriced kitchen table, in a brick rowhouse that wasn’t ours yet. 

Though equal in size and stature, most of the other houses on our block were renovated in the past 50 years. Brick was not. The house next door was painted a sparkling white, with brand new turf in the front yard where our neighbors used to sunbathe. Brick’s front yard was made of dirt and wood chips, guarded by two thorn bushes and a wrought iron fence with a creaky gate. The front door didn’t shut unless you slammed it, causing the house to shudder with each entry and exit. 

We had a porch, complete with a cracked wooden bench that was chained to the bars on the living room windows. We regularly crowded onto it—four of us on the bench, four on the surrounding concrete—to sip on coffee or wine and people watch.

Our home was the epitome of West Philadelphia college commorancy charm, complete with carpets that visiting residents from the 1970s confirmed were never replaced. Where our parents saw cracked ceilings and peeling paint, we saw seven bedrooms, crown molding, and lower rent than every other house on the block. Each stain and rodent sighting only made us adore Brick more. She was ours. 

The previous tenants left lemon yellow bar stools in the living room, along with multicolored canvases with BOOGIE, PLAY, and SLURP printed across them. We wrote our inside jokes and memories on the canvases in Sharpie and complemented the prior renters’ decor with our own: Karlei’s paintings on the walls, Cam’s zebra rug on the floor, and Mckenna’s floral pink loveseat in the corner. It was a technicolor funhouse, where we watched movies on an old TV the size of a laptop computer. It emitted a constant, high-pitched whine.

The name was supposed to be temporary. We couldn’t decide on one when we moved in; “Brick” felt fitting until we came up with something more creative. Needless to say, we never did. Our brick house was named Brick. 

During the two years we lived in Brick, the kitchen table became our canvas. We decorated it with flowers, pink candlesticks, and secondhand Target tableware. We spent hours shuffling around the kitchen, attempting to prepare elaborate dinner parties with limited cooking savvy. We didn’t own a single serving platter; food was arranged on the table in whatever pot or pan it was prepared in. 

The kitchen was a sauna by the time our guests arrived. We propped the back door open for air, offering them the view and faint odor of the trash in our back alley as they sweated through dinner. 2000s pop music mingled with chatter. As the meal came to a close, we drunkenly piled our dishes into the sink and topped off our solo cups to dance around the kitchen. 

This was the state of our table on its best days, when the mood struck and we decided to play dress up. Every other night of the week, the candlesticks were tucked into a cupboard. Various books, mugs, and Diet Coke cans were strewn in their place, surrounded by the eight of us in our designated seats.

Between the hours of five and eleven at night, our kitchen was effervescent. We doodled on whichever catalog was delivered that week. We ranked ourselves in order of cooking ability and debated who would win in a fight. We recounted middle school memories and embarrassing drunken encounters. Grace burst into song at random intervals. Erin, our honorary roommate, inevitably knocked on the front door. Cam poured frozen blueberries into her yogurt, pretending to do schoolwork as she sipped on her sixth coffee of the day. Mckenna bounded through the back door, Popeyes in hand, always with a story to tell from her afternoon. Sky trotted in from down the hall to prepare her nightly rice bowl, smiley face slippers on.

This was our permanent state of existence. We avoided weeknight plans and evening classes to preserve it. It was a constant; we sat at that table through breakups, family crises, and failed exams. No topic of conversation was too absurd, no laugh too loud, no story too long.

My friend Anna came over for dinner one Tuesday. Sky was bent over laughing at something Cam said, tears streaming, face pomegranate. Gigi squatted on her chair in her typical frog pose. Oil bubbled on the stove as Erin and Grace studied a Trader Joe’s pesto chicken breast. Karlei sat on a couch cushion on the floor, painting Mckenna as she posed in her chair.

Anna turned to me as we loaded the dishwasher.

“When I’m here, it’s like you’re all speaking the same foreign language that I don’t understand.”

It was the result of too many hours spent together. As we sat around the kitchen table the next day, I recounted what Anna said. We’d all heard something similar before.

My time at university wasn’t defined by frat parties, basketball games, or economics lectures. The most influential moments of my college experience took place at a used, stained, overpriced kitchen table, in a brick rowhouse named Brick.

The night of graduation, we pushed the loveseat and zebra rug aside to dance in the living room. My bedroom was 14 feet above us; within it, a half-packed life I wasn’t ready to drive away from the next morning. Our secondhand Target tableware was in boxes. The pink candlesticks had melted to stubs. 

We used our house keys to carve our names into the wall, then climbed onto the roof to watch the sun rise over Philadelphia for the last time.

As I drove down I-95 the next morning, fueled by one hour of sleep and Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee, I decided to write this essay. I recorded voice memos on my phone to document the idea while “Hallelujah (Shrek Soundtrack Version)” played in the background.

Never again would I hear Grace run down the stairs at 4:30 PM, yelling that it was time for dinner. I’d never enter my bedroom to find a painting of a nude obese man taped to my mirror, courtesy of Karlei’s figure painting class. I’d never stand on a kitchen chair surrounded by my roommates, using brooms and ladles as prop microphones. What was once my life was now a memory. It would soon retreat to the recesses of my brain, to be summoned on occasion.

That may be true. It’s not the end of this essay. 

I’m addicted to ensemble sitcoms, particularly those set in New York City. Since I was twelve years old, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and Sex and the City have played on a steady loop from my laptop. I can quote each of them.

“It’s about that time in your life when your friends are your family.” 

That’s the one sentence pitch of the show Friends, according to its creator David Crane.

That time in my life began when I lived in Brick. It hasn’t ended. It’s a time when your friends are the first people you call with good news; when you celebrate holidays surrounded by them; when days stretch ahead of you and they are the only people you want to fill the time with. 

Family won’t always live down the hall. Home isn’t an address. It’s Central Perk, or MacLaren's Pub, or Carrie Bradshaw’s brunch café du jour. It’s a room full of your best friends playing cards, or cooking cinnamon waffles, or cuddling to watch a movie on a TV that doesn’t whine. It’s dinner parties in new kitchens and dancing in new living rooms. 

It’s potluck dinners in the New York City apartment I share with Erin and our friend Jane. Sky is visiting from Washington D.C. Grace took the train in from New Jersey. Karlei and Gigi brought lemon orzo and quinoa salad from their apartment on the Lower East Side. Cam and Mckenna pour glasses of wine from a bottle, not a box. There’s carrot cake in the fridge. 

2000s pop music plays as we set the table with flowers and pink candlesticks. We reminisce as we eat, then top off our glasses to dance around the kitchen. 

One of the beautiful parts of change is the realization that it will never touch everything.