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In a big square window of my second apartment, there hung a huge Swedish ivy.

Facing south in the unobstructed sunshine of a third-floor view overlooking the railroad tracks and a broad, open tract of pavement that had been abandoned first as a railroad terminal and again as a parking lot, it thrived -- gloried, even. The long tendrils of scalloped green leaves must have been three feet long.

Naturally, in such an apartment, the air was rather cool, and I kept the plant well watered. It was a truly happy ivy, and I named it Olga.

Olga was a gift from my sister, in honor of my moving into my first unfurnished apartment. The place was (a) cheap and (b) most convenient to everything I might need downtown -- just across from my office and a little pizza place; down the street from such necessities as drugstores, and the discount store was conveniently placed beyond the parking lot. Not that I had any money to spend, for my pay was low and a lot of it went into rent and heat. I wore my hair long because I couldn't afford haircuts.

The apartment was big, though -- half the top floor of a commercial building. As a fire exit, I had a door in the kitchen that had been trussed up in plastic, duct tape and insulation to keep noise and smells from the other apartment from coming through. If there ever was a tenant back there, I never knew. I didn't worry about it, because I expected the building across the street that housed my office to burn first.

In fact, neither of them did, but the old hotel that housed the office later became a real estate agency and the brick facade just outside Olga's window collapsed in the 1990s. I think they tore down the building after that. The bricks would have landed on a greasy-spoon diner with an arched roof that huddled against mine -- I wonder what the patrons made of it.

I liked the flat I had because it had central heat. The one before it had an antique space heater that I didn't trust. I could live with cold, except at bath time -- the place had not a shower but a tub, and that located against the outer wall of a huge, unheatable room with big, sunny windows that frosted up in the winter. I often cadged showers from my friends. Fortunately in those days I spent a lot of time running around the countryside and, while I probably got dirtier, I didn't smell any worse than the farmyards I was visiting. It was a lush and green time -- green in all its senses, for I surely was, too. I labored happily with the idea that I was making a difference in the world around me, and I was proud of what I did. I suspect now that I was so green I had no idea of what I was doing, but I plugged away at it with enthusiasm and no thought for the time clock.

An older woman I got acquainted with tried to set me up with her daughter, saying she liked my innocent enthusiasm and idealism. The daughter probably thought me a complete geek, but was nice enough about it in a conversation we had on the back porch: She confessed she had no interest in me -- I, rather surprised it was an issue, acknowledged that I had no interest in her, either, and that was that. Mom lost interest, too. It was just as well; she was rather overwhelming.

In my spare time I rounded up furniture -- a secondhand bed from home, tables and chairs from garage sales up and down the valley. At the time, a lot of folks from my grandparents' generation were unloading traditional wooden chairs, tables, cupboards and whatnot, and there were great bargains to be had in antiques. They were quite unfashionable and cheap. The chairs in particular creaked, and a small dinner party I had, just under Olga's window, was a symphony in groaning, wobbling wood. I still have quite a bit of that, though it lives mostly in the cellar, waiting to be refinished.

A couple of times I cut the ivy back a little and replanted the cuttings, to make it thicker. I remember talking to a woman who told me I had to be ruthless in trimming plants, to keep them thick and manageable. Indeed, she had a lovely coleus on her desk. I couldn't bring myself to be ruthless, but I paid a lot of attention to my ivy.

This blissful, hard-working time lasted less than a year. I moved on to a different post -- not really a promotion, more an opportunity to do more work in another place. I moved again, repeatedly, for a while.

Olga didn't like moving. Her subsequent windows faced sometimes north, sometimes east, and seldom enjoyed the daylong, full sunlight she enjoyed in her first window. Scalloped leaves turned yellow, and the stems grew bare and ugly. I trimmed and rooted some to try keep the plant full. The trimmings even became a second pot. The original pot eventually died out. Over time, I lost a good deal of green, too. Now, 30 years later, I still have the clones, which get a filtered sunlight in a southern window and survive without particularly thriving. Much battered; more confident; less innocent and quite a bit less idealistic, I suppose I have fared better than the plant. I really owe her (them?) a repotting.