My first apartment. Columbus, Ohio.

A very long time ago I lived in a ..... OK, real estate porn coming.

Lovely efficiency apartment in a unit called Neilwood Gables on the Ohio State University campus. Big living room/bedroom. Beautiful bath with subway tiles. Kitchen with glass doored cabinets. In the 1970s this place rented for $115 a month.

Mom & Dad paid most of the rent (thank you, So  so much). I loved living there, especially hearing the mourning doves cooing in the pretty alcoves between units. (The whole building was in the shape of an E, with the spaces between the tops, center and bottoms of the E being garden spots, with beautiful stone floors and benches.)

Did I say mourning doves? What I treasured so much about that apartment was that it was mine. My home, my place. I loved waking in the morning and hearing the doves ... before class, before my job as a secretary in the OSU anthropology department.  I remember their coos to this day.

I was 20-ish then. I write this as a 60-ish woman, who took a late Sunday afternoon walk and heard the cooing of mourning doves.

I wish, I wish.