NYC Mama

THE PLACE CHARACTER

January 3, 2007

Place has been on my mind lately and in my conversations. The place you live is like a character in your life. For some people it’s a key player, for others maybe an extra who just stands quietly in the background. If the suburb we live in were a character in my life, she would be that neighbor who smiles and waves driving by but whose name I never know. And I wouldn’t mind trading her in for a more colorful player, perhaps like Seinfeld’s Kramer who, on occasion, bursts through the front door with electrifying hair.

But it’s not easy to figure out. It almost feels like having to commit after glancing at a few glossy head-shots. Can you ever really know a place until you live there awhile? Not to mention that a majority of your cast comes as a package deal with her, and all of those actors are unknowns who bypass the audition process. It’s a bit of a risk either way. You may regret not changing your place, or you may regret the new place you choose.

I get caught up in living the right life, as though every question in life has only one correct answer. It should be obvious to the casual reader that such a thing doesn’t exist, except in my mind. The only way I can see the right life illusion holding would be if I convinced myself that no other theaters or characters even existed, and I can’t live in that deep of denial. So I’m toying around with giving up that game and living a life that explores a possible path among infinite others. I don’t know how place fits in to that, or how place will pan out. Maybe we’ll trade our place character, or maybe I’ll simply figure out how to get on a first-name basis with the one I’ve got.

BROOKLYN, DAY ONE

March 5, 2007

PEPTALK FOR MYSELF

March 7, 2007

Things feel so pitiful at times that it feels funny. I just want someone to laugh with me about how ridiculously hard the week is. I couldn’t find where Justin put our Not For Tourists (NFT) guide to NYC with the map to the library this morning. So I Googled it, and none came up anywhere near by. That’s funny, I thought. I could have sworn the Brooklyn Central Library was just two blocks away. So I look at the closest one on the map and it’s more than a dozen blocks away and the snow was coming down hard. My stroller wheels aren’t the inflatable tire kind (a must-have here, I’m learning) and were much harder to push through the snow. I know, I thought. We’ll take the bus! So I pulled up the bus maps and schedules, and a kind woman at our stop helped us on. I had no idea how to work my card in the machine, and she was the one who found Amelia a seat in the crowd as the bus pulled away. I’m not sure it actually stopped to let us on, felt more like temporarily slowing down. I panicked about remembering the right stop and got off a few blocks too early. Then, we finally ended up riding the bus home with our lunch leftovers and shopping bags. Tonight I get on to search again after the handyman tells me the main library is just down the street. And wouldn’t you know? There it is, three blocks from my house. No bus ride required.

So it’s a focus on the positive kind of afternoon. Our detour taught us Bus 67. If we hadn’t gone we might have never discovered the Patisserie across the street from the Park Slope branch and I wouldn’t have seen the girl in the lovely plum down coat, who told me she got it at a store a couple blocks away and that they are on sale there now. Then I wouldn’t have taken her advice and gone to look myself, and I wouldn’t have known they had one left in my size (sadly in boring black). I’m ready for arctic conditions. I’m ready for a full-on tackle. It goes down to nearly my ankles. This means it probably won’t snow again after today.

Amelia says the stairs in the apartment building make our new house feel like a castle. That’s better than a dungeon, I think. She likes that she can watch airplanes flying through her window at night. She’s a little rock star.

I don’t know what we’ll do tomorrow. It’s supposed to be cold. Maybe we’ll explore the shops I just found a block north of us. This week is a hard introduction to life here. I never knew human beings had the capacity for such strength until I became a mom. Now I just watch other moms with awe and try not to resent that my partner will never know the half of it.

It’s going to be great, I tell myself. It will be lovely in this apartment when your furnishings arrive, I say. You will love it here. And I try to sound convincing.

KINDNESS IN THE FORM OF A CHAIR

March 8, 2007

In an astonishing act of kindness, our upstairs neighbor, Maggie, surprised us last night with three chairs, a table and a stool with a television on top. I almost cried. No more feeding the baby on the tile kitchen floor. I have a chair! We ordered in dinner and watched American Idol and it was the most normal I’ve felt all week.

Today I went to the Tea Lounge on Maggie’s recommendation, a major mommy hang-out. I met two nice women who told me registration for Pre-Kindergarten is going on now and because the cut-off date in NY is December 31st, Amelia’s eligible to register now for next year. So I came home and looked up the details. This cut-off will have her starting first grade a year earlier than I’d expected, so that’s a new idea to get used to. It’s also a full-day program. But it’s close by, and it’s free. So I’m thinking about it. She dreams about going to school, so I know she’d be thrilled.

Amelia was so tired when we got home at lunch time that she got her lunch out of the fridge, but didn’t touch it. She stumbled into her room with her purple snowboots and red body coat still on, sat on the edge of her air mattress, laid back and fell asleep. She was like a sleeping snow angel. Hopefully we’ll have an earlier bedtime tonight. We started out the week two hours ahead of Colorado, and after the time change this weekend it will be a third hour ahead to get used to.

I can’t believe how much better I feel each day. My new coat is so warm. Our neighborhood has tons of little shops to discover, and I haven’t had a bad cup of coffee yet. Friends call and email to check on me. Saturday doesn’t feel far away.