The Joys of Elevators

I haven’t had an elevator in about 17 years. When I first moved to Manhattan, lived in a 20-story prewar on 34th street and 9th avenue. It was a lousy neighborhood back then, and is a lot better now, but I needed to be within walking distance of the LIRR to get to work every morning. That was the first of many homes I had in urban neighborhoods, since I always loved living in the city (NYC, SF) even though my work career later confounded me with a long line of suburban jobs (Long Island, Palo Alto, Brooklyn, Hudson Valley).

But I had an elevator, which was glorious. And a doorman, which was less necessary for a strapping 25 year old who had tip-ophobia and would have traded a simply keyed entry for the anxiety of figuring out the complex holiday gratuity ettiquette. (I’m apparently not alone in that.)

For the last 15 years, though, I had a walk up. I loved the apartment, hated the walkup. For the first ten years, it was four full flights. After we bought the apartment below us and did a combination, we lowered the entrance by one flight, which seemed like heaven.

But still, every trip to the grocery carried with it the dread of three or four trips up the stairs with heavy bags straining my increasingly weak and out-of-shape arms and shoulders. (My wife, who is otherwise pretty liberated, draws the line on carrying bags, having explained that it is one of the perks of the ring). And every holiday getaway was wonderful, except that toward the end of the trip I’d start thinking about carrying those bags back up the stairs.

So now, finally, I have an elevator in my new condo in the suburbs. And now just any elevator. We have the whole top floor of the building, so we’re the only ones who use the elevator for that floor, and have that cool keyed access — no one can take the elevator to our floor but us, and the elevator opens up into a private hallway leading to our unit. Pretty neat. Impressive when people come to visit. Not that anyone has visited, but theoretically impressive.

And on top of that, the prior owner left us with a simple but magical gift — an old shopping cart that she apparently stole from a supermarket. You wouldn’t think this was a big deal, but it’s like manna from heaven to me. I come home from the market, pull into one of my parking spaces in the basement garage, roll the shopping cart over (it sits unmolested in one of our parking spaces), fill it up with groceries, roll it into the elevator, take out my nifty key, take the elevator upstairs, roll the car into my hallway, unlock my front door, and just roll it into right into my kitchen. It’s like my favorite part of the condo, being able to roll groceries into my kitchen.

It’s the simple things.