[Writer’s note: This piece contains a cutesy allusion to bad weather. Please note that it was written in August, before we could imagine a storm like Hurricane Sandy and the devastation it would bring. Everyone mentioned in the story was spared from the worst, but all the Westchester women did lose their power for days. We are all fortunate to have one another, city or suburb, power or not. My thoughts are with those who lost loved ones and those who are still suffering. –LS]
We often think of immigration when we think of New York City—Lady Liberty holding her torch aloft in the harbor welcoming newcomers to America. I am one such immigrant, though I did not arrive by ship to Ellis Island, fleeing oppression or famine. Instead, I arrived by car from Canada, driving across the George Washington Bridge. The only thing that greeted me was a traffic jam, and all I escaped was federal sales tax.
Like any immigrant, I strove to make quick connections among millions of strangers. Fortunately I had my baby daughter as the perfect conversation starter; a dog will get you a date on the singles scene, whereas a smiling baby will get you a “mommy date” on the playground scene. I eventually developed a “mommy posse,” which consisted of Alice, Nancy, and Gina.
In a stolen hour between nursery school drop-off and the next activity in our busy lives, we’d huddle over breakfast at the Gotham Coffee Shop and fit in a lifetime of tales from the trenches of early motherhood. We supported one another through infertility, miscarriages, marital problems, job losses, sleep deprivation—no topic was too heavy or too light. With no extended family in the vicinity, I relied on my posse as my go-to emergency contacts for school, camp, and all the extracurricular activities that our slightly over-programmed kids enjoyed.
One soon learns that Manhattan is also a city of emigration, to greener pastures beyond the five boroughs, with names such as Roslyn, Scarsdale, and Teaneck, as people are enticed by the promise of wide lawns, good schools, and a bedroom for every child.
It started as a trickle. The first woman I met at a new mothers’ lunch moved to Tarrytown. Our older daughter lost her toddler boyfriend to Chappaqua and her preschool boyfriend to Syosset. All of the losses were sad, but I was focused on being a new mom and then a second-time mom, solidifying new friendships and trying to get my children into decent schools.
The indignity of a waiting list at the local public school was the final straw for my darling Alice, who, along with another beloved friend, left the city for Scarsdale in 2010. The trickle began to feel like a flood.
I remember one evening at a Spanish restaurant in Larchmont, where Alice tried valiantly to convince me that the suburbs offered decent food, excellent conversation, unparalleled schools, and a beautiful way of life that my family should embrace. All was cozy as we tucked in our delicious paella and were regaled with tales of kindergarteners learning trigonometry. However, when the topic turned innocently to the weather, we heard the less idyllic tales of snowed-in driveways, closed bridges, and downed power lines. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing at Alice’s plans that had gone awry. Never one to be deterred, she still sends me promising Trulia listings in the 10583 zip code.
The remainder of the original posse, Gina and Nancy, are following her to Scarsdale this month. And so the Gotham girls are now the Westchester women, minus one.
“So when are you moving?” they lovingly ask me often. But my family has no plans to follow.
There are new friends, wonderful friends, and more of them every year. My coffee and lunch dance cards are comfortably full. We visit our suburban friends often, joining the throngs of tired adults and hungry children on the Hutchinson Parkway while crawling up to Scarsdale for holiday meals. Being able to escape to their homes on weekends that are too cold or too hot for apartment living makes permanent residence in the city even easier. Still, I miss those days at Gotham and the frequent and close company of the three women who saw me through my early days as a mother and a New Yorker.
So while Lady Liberty greets them, it’s apparently my job to see them off. I stand with my laptop in one arm and a flashlight in the other, waving it at my departing friends saying, “You’ll need this when the power goes out!”
Lani Serota is a mother of two yummy young girls, besotted wife, and celebrity child name enthusiast. When her husband and children are (finally) sleeping, she loves to write.
