No forwarding address

For a New York resident, here's a not-so-surprising statistic: Only a third of New York City homes are owner-occupied, compared to two-thirds in the rest of the nation, says the Census Bureau. That means that, like Sarah and me, most New Yorkers rent the homes they're currently living in.

We've lived in our apartment for three years, but many people I know have lived in theirs much less longer. I find one particular side effect of this urban nomadism in our mailbox every day: We frequently receive mail addressed not to us, but to the previous resident of the apartment. Today, for example, a postcard came for Amy D. from Joseph S. Tanen, Violinmaker. The postcard invites Amy to visit the soon-to-be-opened Tanen shop at 3111 Broadway, next to the Manhattan School of Music.

So at some point in the past, our apartment was occupied by a violinist named Amy. Did she practice on her instrument here in this very room where I'm typing this? Was she an amateur who simply annoyed the neighbors? Is she responsible for our broken doorbell, the one that has never worked since we moved in? Or maybe she made the hole in our screen window -- the one that lets in flies and bees in the summer -- with an overly enthusiastic stroke of her bow. Only Amy knows.

When we move out of the apartment next July, someone else is going to move in and start receiving our mail. Not the bills and the letters of correspondence and the magazines, of course; we'll make sure we leave a forwarding address for those. But perhaps the catalogs from Musician's Friend. And Guitar Center. And Music123, Zzounds, Sam Ash Music, and Disc Makers.

What will these people assume about me? Only they'll know.