New York City is my city in a way that Atlanta will never be. Yet, walking the streets of my once hometown, I recognize that I must remain in exile for a little while longer, while I finish raising my children and walking my aging dog along the suburban sidewalks of my current neighborhood. New York is an unlivable city -- too expensive, too noisy, too dirty, too crowded-- too much for our family, right now. But stepping off the train in Grand Central Station, herded along with too many people through the narrow exit to the terminal, I vow to return to this city. I feel the City's gravitational pull as it draws me toward the center of my universe.
My recent visit was too short. I arrived at the tail end of rush hour, exited Grand Central, and crossed town through the Diamond District as the shop keepers began reassembling their displays for the day. I turned right on Broadway into the heart of the Theater District, the brisk morning air charging my spirit forward. I am headed back to my neighborhood, the Upper West Side, as if an invisible tether leads me there.
In the ten years since I left home, the price of a subway ride has climbed to an unimaginable $2.25. I swipe the Metrocard and notice that everyone around me is hooked to a device: Blue Tooth, Blackberry, iPod, iPhone. No one on the #1 uptown train leans against the pole, clutching a NY Times folded into a narrow column. I am forced to supply this visual from my memory. In the crowded car, I am jostled against my neighbors but I do not feel claustrophobic. I look around again, careful to maintain an impassive New Yorker expression. There is an endless diversity of humanity here, and I realize how much I miss this particular form of human contact.
Emerging from the subway, I discover that the audio is the still the same-- the train pulling away from the station, the blaring of car horns, the shouts of delivery men. Mostly, though, my memory is triggered by the scents of the City. Approaching H & H Bagels, inhaling deeply, I feel nostalgia and a longing for a warm pumpernickel with butter.
I spend several hours wandering up and down Broadway, until it is a respectable time for a deli lunch. The healthy diet of my middle age will not permit the overindulges of my youth: I order a half-sandwich, a long-awaited hot pastrami on rye, to be washed down with a Dr. Brown's diet cream soda. The waiter wordlessly sets down a plastic cup of ice, a monkey dish of cole slaw, and a bowl of pickles. I bite into a half-sour; it is crunchy, perfect. The half-sandwich arrives, piled so high that I am sure its caloric content outpaces any full sandwich I have consumed in Atlanta during the last ten years. I have to squeeze it firmly to get my mouth around it. Ultimately, it is my sense of taste that evokes the strongest memories of my life here. I am sitting in a booth in a NYC deli, 1,000 miles from my house in Marietta, GA, savoring the feeling of coming home.
