As a girl growing up in suburban Toronto, New York loomed in my imagination like Dorothy’s Emerald City. I visited every few years for long weekends packed with Broadway shows and open-mouthed walks down Fifth Avenue, but longed to see behind the city’s curtains, know her secrets, and–as the song goes–be a part of it.
Fast forward some thirty years later, I’m raising two girls in a slightly modified result of the fantastical MASH games I played as a child. I do live in NYC and did attend the graduate program of my choosing, but I did not marry Michael Marcus (the Kirk Cameron lookalike in my sixth-grade class) and I definitely don’t live in a mansion OR a house. The first on the list is well worth the compromise of the last. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel like the awe-struck woman in the play Annie singing the song “NYC,” “Three bucks, two bags, one me!!!”
I often wonder: How do I raise my daughters to feel both at home here and also to realize/appreciate that they live in, arguably, the most famed, wonderful, iconic city in the world?
When I watch my girls during their skating lessons at Wollman Rink, I hear the theme from Love Story in my head as I channel a shivering Ali MacGraw (minus the cancer ptoo ptoo ptoo). The Plaza stands proudly in the background as my little six-year-old-who-would-eat-Eloise-for-breakfast screams from the ice, “We’re getting hot chocolate after, RIGHT???”
We live on the Upper East Side and the girls go to school on the Upper West Side, so their commute involves driving through Central Park twice a day. When I do drop off or pick up, I marvel at Olmsted’s undulating hills and serpentine tunnels. The girls ask from their seats on the bus, cab, or car, “What else do you have for snack?” or “Can I play on your phone?” Still, when there is time to meander or play, they gleefully treat this landmark like their very own Secret Garden, albeit a secret they share with 8 million others.
New York is the best place to move to from just about anywhere because friends and family visit often. I doubt my guest room and sofa bed would get as much use if I were back in the small Canadian college town where I met my husband. And our visitors allow us to experience the city as tourists so we don’t neglect the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, etc.—as it is all too easy to do when you live here permanently.
Some popular sights do become old hat. Bloomingdales is not a sartorial attraction, but a place to buy socks and underwear. We go to Dylan’s because it sells candy, but not because it is “Dylan’s Candy Bar” of Dylan Lauren fame. (E.g. “If you behave while we are buying socks and underwear at Bloomingdales then I will buy you candy across the street at Dylan’s afterwards.”) When we’re at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue trying to fix the latest iPad “incident,” we curse every tourist from Wisconsin who is taking up space at our genius bar.
Flesh and blood icons also abound. We treat celebrities and their children with a proper New Yorker’s nonchalance, at the playground and at the pediatrician. There is one celeb however, who, to me, is the icon of icons. I am so love with Tina Fey that I’m seriously considering applying my second child to the same private school her daughter attends. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of stalking.
The people we meet are endlessly interesting and from all walks of life. One day, my older daughter came home from school saying, “The new boy in class is telling lies. He says his father was the president of (small African country) and owns diamond mines.” I was about to start in on an explanation about wish fulfillment and the need for attention soon after starting a new school in the middle of the year, when I remembered where we live. I took the class list and did a little Googling. “Kiddo, he’s telling the truth.”
My girls have been to more Broadway shows than they have movies, could hail taxis from their strollers, learn tennis at Sportime with John McEnroe swearing a blue streak one court over. But they also desperately miss the minute, filthy backyard from our previous apartment and play soccer on Randalls Island where, if the wind blows in the wrong direction, the methane and sulfur smell from the sewage treatment plant is like something out of Dante’s Inferno. Life in New York presents great challenges, but has great rewards.
They get their suburban fixes occasionally. I remember my little one running towards an empty park in the ‘burbs shouting, “All the swings are free!” She may be used to waiting on line at the playground, but she’s not used to waiting for much else. Later that day, she asked, “Can we go to a restaurant for snack?” “No doll, we don’t have a car today.” “What about a grocery store?” “Same problem. We can’t walk to one.” She clenched her three-year-old fists and wailed at the sky, “I just want to go somewhere to buy food!”
On Thanksgiving, we leave a nearly abandoned Upper East Side and stroll, pull, or carry our girls over to Central Park West to watch the Macy’s Parade from the sidewalk or a fortunate friend’s apartment. This past year however, the little ladies were tired and we were cooking, so we stayed at home. My older daughter curled up with me on the sofa and said, “I am so thankful we get to watch the parade on TV this year.” Ah, well…
My daughters will likely never know my starry-eyed wonder, but hopefully they’ll also be spared my imposter complex. New York City is their home, from the bedbugs to the skyscrapers. They are a part of it and they take it in their stride. Knowing life’s cruel ironies, they’ll probably break my heart and move to Florida or, worse yet, Westchester.
Lani Serota is the mother of two young girls, besotted wife, sleep aficionado (both her own and that of children), and celebrity child name enthusiast who loves a good giggle. When she is not working at one of her three jobs, taking advantage of everything New York City has to offer, or procrastinating, she loves to write. Lani lives with her husband and two daughters on the Upper East Side.
