State of mind

I was driving when we hit the road on Friday morning. It's best if I take the first shift, because I get sleepy after lunch and if I don't put myself beside the wheel first thing, B ends up driving all the way to wherever our road trip may take us.

Actually, since the non-driver now has child-calming, snack-handing-out and dropped-toy-picking-up duties as well as being navigator and music-chooser, B was clamouring to switch places after only an hour had passed. But I managed to hold out till we stopped for lunch.

As we pulled out of our development and onto the Beltway, with the children happily engaged in their new colouring books (whoever invented invisible markers deserves a medal), and Billy Joel crooning about how he was in a New York state of mind, I couldn't help smiling. ("I like this song," announced Mabel as the opening piano notes sounded.) The sun hadn't come out yet, but it was dry and crisp, and in spite of the fact that I see less of it every time we go there, I love New York. Something about that concentration of so much life in such a small space, and the buildings that go up and up, and the friendly natives who are always willing to heft a stroller up the stairs or tell you which subway stop to get off at, makes me happy. It's the espresso of cities.

The first time I visited New York (not counting a brief stop-off in 1994) was 2000, when I visited my boyfriend who was studying in Pennsylvania (that was B, if you haven't been following along). He took a Greyhound and I took a cheap between-seasons flight, and we stayed in a tiny hovel of a hotel on the upper west side. We had a bed, we didn't need a/c, and the bathroom was down the hall. That was all we wanted, and it was laughably cheap. We strolled hand-in-hand through Central Park, walked up and down Fifth Avenue, visited Tom's Diner where Seinfeld and his buddies fictionally hang out, tried falafel for the first time, had sophisticated drinks and cheap great pizza slices at 1am, and were all gooey in love. At one point I looked out a window onto a darkening, bustling street and vowed to myself that I'd live in this city some day.

Well, I haven't, and at this point it's unlikely that I ever will. It's more a city for the young, rich, and child-free than the scarily approaching middle-aged, penny-pinching, and doubly encumbered. But I do live a mere five-hour drive from it, and despite the two encumbrances, it makes me happy that we can go back every now and then to see a tiny bit more from a new perspective.