The train whistle trumpets its warning. I watch the woods, meadows and marshland slowly morph into urban views and city skylines. Washington. Baltimore. Philadelphia. Newark. New York will be next. The best of memories surface as I approach Manhattan, the captivating city for which I feel a claim and abiding affection. What, I wonder, does it take to be considered a New Yorker.
My first memories of the city date from the 1940s, a formative time and closeness to my parents. We lived on Seventeenth Street near Stuyvesant Park where my mother took me to play in the sandbox. I loved riding with my father on the red double decker bus uptown to the zoo and feeding the ducks in Central Park.
From the third through eighth grades, I attended Friends Seminary on 16th Street. I walked to school along Third Avenue, then the site of the elevated (EL) train and numerous bars and early morning drinkers. My resourceful mother convinced my father that they should buy a burnt-up apartment in a Victorian building on Gramercy Park. She had it restored to reflect her own sophisticated taste made up of family antiques and Second Avenue thrift store finds. She taught me to shop for deep discounts at Klein’s on Union Square. Meanwhile my father rose in the ranks of advertising on Madison Avenue.
My parents generously introduced me to the theater—Ethel Merman hitting her high notes in “Call Me Madam,” and Ray Bolger, in a dress, rollicking across the stage in “Charley’s Aunt.” I wished I could be Maria Tallchief dancing the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the “Nutcracker” and the Swan Queen in “Swan Lake.”
When I started high school, my parents moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, their home turf as former residents and students at the University of Virginia. They saw it as a way to start again and confirm my Southern heritage. I felt I was leaving home.
My father wrote and taught at the University’s Graduate School of Business. I made new friends and went to college in Virginia. On graduation, I hoped to work for a New York magazine but my father warned against the city saying it was too dangerous. I dutifully went to Washington instead.
Ironically, I have ended up living most of my adult life in Charlottesville, a conservative-to-progressive college town surrounded by woods, rivers, and the Blue Ridge Mountains. I joke that nature makes me nervous. Although I expected to marry, live, in New York, I fell in love with a sassy Yale man who, despite living in Manhattan until age seven, preferred the country, trout fishing and bird watching to the demands and costs of city living. We lived on the campus of two prep schools where he taught English. In 1970, he co-founded a co-ed day school in Charlottesville and was its headmaster for fourteen years. The students wore their hair long, called the teachers by their first names and learned together around oval tables in an old house. It was considered “far out” by some and innovative by others.
I worked as a reporter for the local newspaper and taught a journalism course at the University of Virginia. I began writing for national magazines based in New York. I met with editors there and my husband good- naturedly often came along.
In the summer of 1984 I became probably the world’s oldest intern at Ms. Magazine. I wrote short pieces on men-only clubs, women’s images in advertising and the rights of elder gay couples. I cheered for Geraldine Ferraro when Walter Mondale nominated her for vice president. I considered myself a feminist although I was likely viewed as traditional for having married young, had two children and followed my husband’s path.
Long before Airbnbs, I networked as much as possible to find short-term rentals for me and my husband. Anyone who mentioned Manhattan was fair game. I met one woman on a bus and struck up a friendship that would last for decades. I cat-sat for a college roommate in the Village. I stayed in another friend’s apartment on Third Avenue and 90th that he had vacated after taking with him all the furniture except a bed, table and chair. On East 82nd Street, my husband and I rented furniture for a one bedroom. I mistakenly mentioned our rental to a man in the elevator. He threatened to tell the superintendent and have us thrown out. I pleaded that we would soon be leaving and eviction wasn’t necessary. Later we stayed in the West 80s where the bathroom ceiling leaked from the floor above, and there was only a thin moveable partition between the bedroom and the next door neighbors.
On 9/11, I was at my son’s apartment in Battery Park within view of the Trade Towers. My son, having followed his grandfather into advertising, was away. My husband was fishing in Montana.
I saw fire and smoke engulf the Towers and heard thunderous rumbles and crashes. I felt the terror of the unknown as I raced down ten flights and along the Promenade to police boats ready to ferry people across the Hudson to Liberty Island.
Bused to Jersey City, I waited in the heat with crowds of New Yorkers for news of the city. In the late afternoon I followed others to the Path train speeding under the river, back to New York and a deserted 34th Street. I took the bus uptown to a friend’s apartment where I laid low until I could catch a flight South several days later. I remember a feeling of unity on the streets, a sense that we were allies, ready to reach out to each other. Back home a friend asked me if I was now cured of my love of New York. I had actually never felt more like a New Yorker.
During my many years visiting the city, I realized that I needed New York, that I wouldn’t let go of its pull: I needed its approbation, its proof of acceptance and belonging. I wanted to be among its broad, ready mix of cultures and people. I needed the anonymity, the addictive rhythm and energy, the easy talk on the streets, the freedom of expression, the sense of serendipity and youthful possibility.
In the 2000s, I came to the city in search of older, still spirited people for my book, Aging Famously: Follow Those You Admire to Living Long and Well. I felt fortunate to interview the likes of journalist Walter Cronkite, photographer Gordon Parks and comedienne Carol Channing. They were up in years, but still in the traffic. They had kept their drive, creativity and resilience.
In my own later years, going to the city became more daunting. Most recently, I had the chance to stay at the apartment of the woman I had met on the bus so many years ago. I wasn’t sure I could tackle New York again. My husband chose to stay with his garden. But for a few days, I tied up my walking shoes and took to the streets, subways and buses. My stride had slowed but I felt the pulse, the promise once more. I felt at home.
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