I’ve spent the last couple of days walking the kid around NYC saying “This is where this happened…or maybe it was there. The building might be gone. I did get drunk a few times at that bar over there, though. I think.”
NYC changes quickly and brutally on a regular basis. Except for Katz’s and Corner Bistro and a handful of other places. I think Rockefeller Center is still around.
What I really want to show my kid is glimpses of me. I wish she could peek through a window and see me young and dancing on a bar.
It’s her town now for the taking. Things will happen in her life here and I’ll never see them.
If she peeked through a window now, she’d see me drinking coffee in a cozy café with jazz on the stereo. That’s not far off from what she would have seen thirty years ago, except I’d be writing in a notebook, not typing something out with my thumbs.
This September 10th will, in fact, be the thirtieth anniversary of my own move to NYC. In 2003, I went back to Boston for a bit to see if things might work with a guy I’d started dating long-distance. Now the child we had, the one I stayed in Boston for, has circled back. Be kind to her, NYC.