They say everything can change in a New York minute. Or was it just Don Henley who said that? Anyway, it feels like everything has changed tonight. It's 3:30 am here in Manhattan and I just hailed a cab on 9th Ave to take Mom to La Guardia Airport and home. Sherry is on the same flight as her to Toronto, with Olin following later this morning in their own homeward bound cabs. We loved experiencing the Big Apple with them and making great and lasting memories. But now everyone is on their way - home. The weather is getting cold here in New York after a week of fabulous sunshine. In two days we too will leave, switching back across North America to California for a few days and then out across the broad Pacific. We have been travelling for a little over two and a half months now. Sometimes when I think back I can't believe the places we've already been and the people we've visited and met. Other times it seems like it's racing by way too fast. Tonight it seems, in some ways, like we are just leaving home for the first time. The farewells and the fall weather are adding a touch of melancholy to that feeling tonight. Saying "see you next summer," just doesn't excite like it did in August. New York was a major weigh point on our voyage around the world. Our first big change of direction. Part of me wishes we, too, were turning our heads 'round towards home and not further out to sea. It's far too early to be "smelling the barn" though. Time to shake the dust off our passports and get moving!
We've shown this City who's boss in the last week. We stepped out onto the crazy, chaotic sidewalks and made it our own. Walking down Broadway this evening to pick up Mom and Shannon at Madam Toussauds, a group of tourists asked aloud on the street corner, to noone in particular, "anyone know which way to Madison Ave?" "That way," I gestured eastward with a smug smile, pretending I was a real New Yorker, born and raised. For a City so full of tourists, it can be an intimidating place to visit. You need to bury the anxiety that rushes over you when you first step outside into canyon-like streets, dizzying noise and a broad, fast moving river of people surging down the sidewalks in all directions. The instinctual response is to go back inside and hide in the lobby. But once you overcome it (and overcome it you must) the real joy in visiting this place is learning how to make it your home while you're here. You need to get lost on the streets and avenues of New York City before you can find your way around. Geting lost is half the fun when you realize that a fair number of those around you are lost as well, in one form or another.
We have seen and done so much here in the last week. As Mom and I took the old school elavator from our 4th floor apartment down to the avenue tonight, I thought back to how aprehensive and excited we were when we came up the same elavator for the first time seven days ago, not knowing what to expect behind the door to apartment 4g. It feels so comfortable now and so sad to think about leaving. We no longer have to catch our breath and gather our bearings each time our sesnes are assaulted by the sights, sounds and smells of 9th Ave. We know what is around each cornner and down each street and can find our way back here from just about any point of the compass. Maybe that means the time has come to move on? Maybe not?
There's too much to see and do here to go into any great detail of our experiences. Even the few bad ones have been rich and memorable. Times Square, Greenwitch Village, Washinton Square Park, Ground Zero, Broadway, the Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Centre, Carnegie Hall, Central Park, Grand Central Station, China Town, the subway, the Lower East Side, 5th Avenue, death defying taxi rides, the Lincoln Tunnel, New Jersey and Alphie's Pub down the road . . . . I could write long paragraphs on each. But as I've learned in the last two and half months, writing about experiences and trying to capture them through the lens of a camera are poor substitutes for simply closing your eyes and imprinting the sounds and the smells, the vibrations and the texture of the air into your subconscious. New York is not a place to visit once and check off a bucket list. It's a place to get lost and absorbed into. A place to love and return to time and again. I think those who come here with a list of sights to see or in search of a souvenir to bring home never truly experience it's rich character. Not trying to see everything, and simply letting the natural tides and currents of the streets and avenues take you where they think you should be is the most fulfilling form of surrender. The sights and the shops and the shows are all molecular bits of what makes New York so special. It's not so much a place as, well, a state of mind.
At 4:30 in the morning as I crawl back into bed listening to the sounds of the City that never sleeps and thinking about my mom crossing the Williamsburg Bridge into Queens in the back of a New York City taxi cab, I'm in a New York state of mind. Thanks Billy Joel. I get it now.