I first saw Trainspotting probably a year or two after it came out. I was fourteen in 1997, and the world Trainspotting presented blew my mind with possibilities.

“Will I become a heroin addict?” I wondered. At the time, I gauged the odds to be about 50/50: either I would get into hardcore drugs at some point during a troubled youth, or I wouldn’t. It would probably largely depend on what “crowds” I fell into in high school. Could be the wrong crowd! I could go that way! Shit could get fucked up. Or, just as likely, it wouldn’t. But I’d always been suspicious of adults, myself in ten years included. I viewed future-Adrianne as a complete stranger, divorced from current-Adrianne through circumstance, vulnerability, and hormones. The potential paths seemed endless, an infinitely branching fractal.

But I figured you could probably draw a line down the center of those possibilities, and half of them would involve heroin.

I was thinking the other day, during a quiet walk to yoga class, about what I now considered the odds of me becoming a heroin addict. I decided that this was — maybe — two percent. To be honest, I’m being a little generous there. Like, I guess I could get outrageously drunk and pass out on my way home and land on top of a needle. A needle full of heroin. That’s what the young kids use these days, right? Needles? But then it occurred to me that I don’t even drink, really, which seems to close all kinds of whimsical, happenstancical doors.

Call me crazy. It made me a little sad.

Seven years ago, a girl named Sara moved in across the hall from me in our college dorm. Four years ago I held a corner of her chuppah. Two years ago she and her husband moved from San Francisco to across the street from the apartment Maria and I shared, and nine months ago she called and asked if I wanted to come to an ultrasound with her.

“Wait, what?” I said.

Sara and Miriam

They’re moving to New York today, two weeks after the baby was born — averaging four scattered hours of sleep every night since. “There has to be a prize for what you are doing,” I said. “Also, instead of helping you pack I’m going to get in the way and take pictures. Tricked!”

The house had such a stupifying abundance of rooms that, every time I learned how to reach one of them, I would catalogue sights along the way, memorizing routes. It was like dropping bread crumbs. Each time I prayed for the ability to find the damn thing again.

Pass the picture of her mother in the yellow jacket. Proceed up the stairs dappled with carved chipmunk statuettes. Look for the giant silver harmonica in front of the fireplace. Enter gleaming lemon marble hallway. Sliding door, stove island with visible pilot lights, bio-lab variety hanging vent. Three stairs down, beige carpeted hallway, sliding door: bathroom.

“Do you know where Rachel’s bedroom is?” a passing boy sporting low-riding swimming trunks asked me.

“It’s at the top of the tower.”

“The tower?”

“Go up as many stairs as you possibly can.” Now was the time when I could have handed him some crumbs, said “make sure you pass the Renoir poster in the golden frame” or “at some point, the carpet changes color” but I’ve learned that these details are never really appreciated by the direction-seeking public. One woman’s crumbs is another man’s “why are you still talking.” He was already gone.

What happens when you take ten total friends/strangers and put them in a two-bedroom cabin in the middle of nowhere? Shit starts to get real, obviously.

Real eggy.

An afternoon swim with watermelon.

Maple cookie button with heart imprint!

See all pictures from all kinds of fancy cameras here.

I should tell you that I’ve been undressing your house with my eyes.

The screened in porches, the old brick pathways through your garden, the latticework of fire escapes. Sometimes I don’t care for your color choices, and I redress you like a fussy mother. Sometimes there is a mildewing couch in your yard, a pile of old toys near the garage, someone’s abandoned boat/television/motorcycle/stash of plywood where there could be a hammock. You’ve used different siding on that addition. You’ve embedded a mosaic of Jesus Christ below your bedroom window.

But many times — too often to count, really — you’ve done everything perfectly. Paint is peeling where paint should peel, there is a grill in the corner, the sound of a drummer in your basement, an explosion of wildflowers leading to your beautiful storm door.

I’m envisioning where I would keep my toothbrush. I’m thinking of the closest thai restaurant and convenience store. Five minutes from now I’m moving in.