It's Just Us Here Now

Each year over 60 million tourists visit New York City. In 2010, I was one of them. 

I spent a week with a few colleagues at Columbia’s Teachers College during the day and toured the city in the evening. We saw Jersey Boys and walked the Brooklyn Bridge to stand in line for two hours for Grimaldi’s pizza. We took a tour of the NBC studios and snapped photos on the top of Rockefeller Center. We walked through Central Park and followed our noses to Levain Bakery for the famous cookies. We stood on the steps of Cafe Lalo, peeking inside to see where Tom Hanks stood up Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. 

Every night, as we walked back to our hotel on the corner of 77th & Broadway, we talked about what it would be like to live in New York City. At the time it was all hypothetical. I don’t know which of those conversations shifted something in me, but by the time we boarded the plan to go back to Seattle, I knew that part of my heart already belonged to New York City.

Tom Wolfe once said, “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” That is true. And I think it’s true because New Yorkers, whether they were born here or moved here, are really good at saying, “Welcome.”

Four years after that trip I would move with Brett and 20-month-old Norah to an apartment just one mile south of the hotel on 77th & Broadway. 

Six years after that I am living in a city with no tourists. 

It’s just us here now. The New Yorkers. 

We’re no longer sharing our sidewalks or our parks with tourists.

It’s quiet. Except for the birds. We can hear them chirping now. They remind some of us (the ones who used to be tourists) of our hometowns and childhood. We wonder, should we have escaped to those places? Some of our friends did. Some of them aren’t coming back. That is a loss we didn’t expect.

We haven’t seen suits or stilettos in months. But we’ve seen our neighbors. We’ve learned their names and what they do for a living. We take turns in the elevators to take care of one another and try our best to show our smiling eyes when our mouths are hidden.

So many doors are still closed, and will be for a long time. I think we’ve accepted this. We’re not protesting because we know people who were severely sick or died. And we know people who fought for them. We haven’t forgotten why the doors are still closed. 

We still open our windows every night at 7:00 though. We’re still cheering for the essential workers. But I think we’re also saying, “I see you over there! I’m here too.” 

We have learned that we have a pace other than go, go, go. We haven’t lost our ability to wander or breathe deeply or linger over a conversation after all. What a relief. 

We miss the people we see regularly but don’t know their names. The security guard at the school we pass every morning who always says hello. The woman we seem to see at least once a week in the grocery store or the coffee shop or just walking down the same side of the street. The commuters on the same schedule who offer a daily nod of recognition. We wonder about them. Are they okay? Are their families okay? Have they stayed or gone? Will we get to see them again? 15,000 is such a high number.

We hate to admit it, but we miss the tourists. We haven’t been asked directions in months. We were delighted to prove the cold stereotypes wrong with a smile and helpful hint. We already knew New Yorkers are actually some of the kindest people we’ve ever met, but it was fun to surprise visitors with our warmth. 

It’s not always an easy place to live, and it hasn’t always been the easiest place to be sheltered in place, or quarantined, or whatever the word for the day is. 

But if I have to be stuck somewhere, it would be here. With them. Apart. And together.

***

This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "Together, Apart".