My apartment is a grand total of 320 square feet. When we first got married, Caleb and I were college students and, subsequently, pretty broke. This apartment was cheap, easy to clean, near to the highways we needed to hop on to get to our respective unis, and (did I mention?) cheap.

That first year we lived in it frugally and wholeheartedly, building(!) a loft bed out of cheap 2x8s in order to still have space for a couch and borrowing green farm chairs from my grandma’s basement for our foldable kitchen table with its sewing machine hole in the top. We hung posters, tried cooking new (cheap) foods, and wrapped our bedpost in fairy lights because we couldn’t fit or afford a Christmas tree. We wandered our neighborhood, spending nothing to play pickleball on the tennis courts north of us and to watch the sunset from the hill to the south.

Now, nearly two years into leasing this space, our apartment is furnished with my sister’s ceramics art, our wedding photos, and an espresso machine Caleb gifted me for Christmas. With our “adult” jobs, we’ve invested in each room, and the surrounding neighborhood, differently this year.

But this season, the season of our first apartment, is closing. Our needs are changing, and we are (shockingly) outgrowing our 320 square feet. I knew this would happen, but when I saw this space—our space—go up for rent on Zillow, every moment here flashed through my mind. So here are (in no order whatsoever) the top five things I thought of in that split moment of joy and grief.

1. Nantucket Bakery

If you know her, you love her. Last year, while we were still in school but our financial situation was looking up, I would drive the 0.75 mile to the little brick building on Fuller and bring home bite-size quiches, nutella croissants, and blueberry muffins for Sunday breakfast. In the fall, I began to try out walking there, or south to the one on Lyon Street, and my walks were brightly colored with sunlight through the leaves, rap music of passing cars, and the scent of my fresh ham and gruyere croissant.

2. Walking in the City

My car died a few times during our time in the Creston neighborhood, and groceries still need to get got. I walked to Family Fare in January and found that it is a great leg workout for balancing muscles I never knew I needed. I walked to Lyon Street Cafe and braved the walk across the highway now more times than I can count, and I’ve walked past (or into) a number of sketchy-looking liquor stores that always have the nicest, or weirdest, cashiers. I will miss this thing I’ve learned about discovery, that there is a taco place past Sweet Street and a fusion Mexican-East African restaurant on Plainfield, this thing I know now about how zoning laws could keep us apart from our neighbors but haven’t for two years.

3. The Tennis Courts at the Local High School

There was a random day last spring when Caleb and I bought pickleball paddles and simultaneously promised one another we would not try using them at Belknap. Instead, we walked up the hill to the high school, where three tennis courts overlook the city. I have watched well enough sunsets while Caleb whoops my butt in singles pickleball, and this, particularly, I will miss. It’s cool to have a “spot” that is no one else’s.

4. The Kiddos

A few months after we moved in, the kids next door began to greet us. It was always simple “Hi neighbor!” or “What are you having for dinner?” but it made all of us smile. Our cat would watch them out the window as they dunked on one another using their four-foot plastic hoop, and if we went to bed early enough in the summer, sometimes we could hear them giggling under our window.

5. This 320-Square-Foot Corner of our Creston Corner

We brought our adopted cat home to this place. We built a bed together and got into Premier League soccer here, and we hosted our small group in the smallest living room-bedroom-office space to date. We have sat on the kitchen floor at midnight to work out a fight and we’ve sat on the living room floor at midnight to build a lego set. The sunlight is beautiful through the front windows in the morning and I love my kitchen layout.

My mother-in-law and I have been talking a lot about dialectics and paradoxes, and as we begin to pack up our home, I am feeling this deeply. I am so excited to have a laundry machine, a tub, and a door on my bedroom. I am excited to adventure somewhere new, to find new rhythms and favorite bakeries, and to not worry about our cars getting bumped while parked on the road.

But I am making space, too, for how hard it will be to leave the memories here. I play it in my head often: this was our first home. We lived and grew here together as newlyweds and students, and we have rhythms with the Walgreens and the Taco Bell.

This is the dialectic: when you choose one thing, you leave behind another, and the point is that it is painful and also joyful. This dialectic’s name is hope.

Kate Wilmot

Kate Wilmot (’24) is a Grand Rapids resident who has found herself in the in-betweens of undergrad and post-grad life. She is an avid children’s fiction reader and a globally-minded cook who will feed anyone that walks in her door. You can find her losing to her husband in pickleball, weight lifting, or getting coffee with her mom.