One of the earliest childhood memories by Taraia Morrell is in making her family's apartment ironed with a plate with food in one hand and in the other hand.
“From the moment I could go relatively stable, I passed the starters,” she said. “My mother would tell me what I was serving and I would go to a guest and say:” Would you take care of an endive sheet with Boursin? “You know, something completely ridiculous.”
This smaller version of her did not know that Ms. Morrell would fight decades later to the highest court in the state of New York to stay in the same apartment.
Regardless of the sophistication of your parents's dinner parties, the house is an idiosyncratic single-bedroom. “It is such a special, quirky, gentle, asymmetrical, great place,” said Ms. Morrell. “It's not huge. It has a bathroom and to get into the bathroom, I had to go through my parents' bedroom. “
It was her father who found the place in 1973. It was affordable and would stay that way because he was accompanied by a rental contract stabilized, which meant that rent increases were limited and regulated by the New York City Rentines board. However, the former tenant hoarded newspapers and had hundreds of them stacked all over the apartment. “My father tells when he brought mom into the apartment, he said to her: 'Ignorize the newspapers, concentrate on the terrace.”
It was the terrace that made the place so special, and it was the place where so many dinner took place. “The terrace doubles the size of the apartment,” said Ms. Morrell. It was my oasis as a child. “
After all, it was where all the food took place in the warmer months under an awning that protected everyone from rain or too much sun. “I grew up in a family that concentrated very much on meals. Food and wine paid the rent and they were also an enormous source of family connection. “
In 1947 Ms. Morrell Morrell & Company, a wine shop that developed her parents into a New York lamp. “My parents were able to talk and concentrate this wonderful life on food and wine.” She grew up with the guests of dinner such as the food critic Gael Greene and Ariane and Michael Battberry, co-founders of the Food & Wine Magazine.
“Mama didn't know how to cook when she married father,” she said. “If they were organizing dinner, he expected to serve food that corresponded to the wine he entered. In this very small New York cuisine, my mother taught himself to cook. “
When Ms. Morrell turned 15, she went to boarding school. She received a Bachelor's degree in Barnard's art history and started a career as a freelance writer. She started writing about the things she grew up – food, wine – and her work brought her to different parts of the world.
When a planned move to Paris in 2016 went through, she decided to withdraw from her parents. “Life has happened,” she said. “If it had worked out as I would have imagined it, I would have fallen in love and married and moved another place, but it didn't work that way.”
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Expect Morrell, 44
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In the next book: Ms. Morrell, who together with Fatima Ali, “Game: a hunger for cooking more”, works on a memoir. “It's about growing up in the food and wine business and in this special apartment,” she said, “and do everything to get away – the apartment and the industry – but finally where I started, even though I have my life Here looks very different. “
Punctual capsules: While she emptied her apartment to prepare for repairs, Ms. Morrell found several things left behind by her father. There was a baseball card signed by Jackie Robinson and a collection of stamps. She also found a pack of Marlboros and Reel-to-Reel recordings of conversations with women with whom he was dated in the 1960s.
After Ms. Morrell's parents shared the apartment for a few years, they planned a move to Hudson Valley and demanded that the rental agreement be put into the name of their daughter. They went from successive years.
However, the landlord answered with a evacuation notice. So Ms. Morrell hired a lawyer. “When the trial started, I thought I got it – that's my home,” she said. “Well, yes, I fought.”
While its efforts to stop the clearance process, the building's administrative company began urgently needed work to repair damage to the brick facade.
The scaffolding was increased in early 2019, and Ms. Morrell's terrace was used as a access point for a large part of the necessary work. It would take two years before she would step back on the terrace.
It was two years. First there was a partial collapse of a section of her ceiling. Then the pandemic completed the entire work. “It was a very lonely start of covid,” she recalled. “There were holes in the walls through which I saw sunlight and plastic tarpaulins fly around.”
When the work was restarted, it got worse. The collapse of the ceiling showed that critical steel rays were passed. “They couldn't replace the bars with someone who lived the apartment,” she said. “So I had to go and I couldn't go as much as a towel shelf. All doors had to come from their hinges. “
She hopped between friends and family and Airbnbs for six months. “I didn't know if I would ever come back. I didn't know whether the legal struggle would be solved or whether I would win. “
The court case said goodbye. “I would panic at the beginning,” she said. “When I got the first eviction letter, I was so annoyed and freaked out. In the end, I would simply add the messages to the stack. My life has changed so much in the course of this. “
The change was so essential that until March 2021, when the work on the steel carriers had been completed and she returned to the apartment, Ms. Morrell was no longer alone. “I was withdrawn in my stomach with a baby.”
It would take more than two years to be sure whether she and her daughter Viva could stay in the apartment. Ms. Morrell had already won her fight to stop the evacuation procedures when her daughter was born, but her landlord made an appeal against the result. And appealed again.
“There was never a round that I didn't win,” she said. “You would make an appeal every time. I had to win every round. There were so many moments when I said to myself: “I wish I hadn't fought, I wish I had just moved on.” But it is difficult to stop, so I fought. I couldn't afford to live in the city without rental stabilization, certainly not as a single mother. “
It was September 2023 when the final decision was handed over by the Court of Appeal in its favor. “The emotional moment for me was when I sent my signed rental agreement. When I went home from the post, I finally realized that something changed. I realized that it was reason to celebrate. “
It was not only her name on the rental agreement, but also Viva's.
“My connection to this place is not only how extraordinary it is – which I notice every day and does not take it for granted – but it is the patina that still keeps it,” said Ms. Morrell.
“Nothing is boring,” she continued. “Everything is structured and carved and warm and deeply imperfection, and that is the history of my family's life here.”
There are still children's stickers in cupboards in which she attached her decades ago, and now her daughter is sleeping in the same room in which she slept as a child – a small corner with a bed that was created by Ms. Morrell's mother years ago . She hung a curtain so that Viva has privacy on the way to the bathroom.
“I am so aware of how privileged I am and how unusual this place is,” said Ms. Morrell. “I am sure that one day when I am gone, they turn it into a two-room room and put another bathroom in a bathroom and make everything white and gray. So I lean on how colorful and splinters it is and enjoy it so much. I feel blessed and don't take it for granted for a single second. “