If you have read my book, Like a Swallow, you will perhaps remember that I moved to the United States, permanently as it turned out, in 1972. I was 18 years old and I agreed to be the live-in nanny to a New York family. But, life is always unpredictable and by the summer of that year I will have resigned my position, or at least I moved away from it for a while, because my parents turned up for a temporary work assignment in New York and I chose to live then with them.
I was at the time very close to my three Polish friends back in Warsaw and the first thing I did when I moved in with my parents was to ask if I could invite the three Polish guys for a visit to New York. This would be a huge deal for them, as travel to western countries was rare in those years. My mother (the decision maker on such matters) waffled, but finally agreed, on the condition that they would help with unpacking, setting up household, etc. My sister was also visiting (she chose to live in Warsaw during all this) and the second condition was that we would all somehow have to fit into the one bedroom in our two bedroom New York apartment. All five of us. The room was not large, but there was a single bed in it and you could pull out a second single for the night, leaving a small amount of floor space for the rest of the group. We managed.
All this happened exactly fifty years ago. The three guys stayed with us in New York for maybe two weeks. We did some touristy things when they weren't charged with helping unpack, and we did some crazy things that only someone in that age category would call sane. (The three were school friends, all in my class cohort, so, as you'll know from reading Swallow, all two years older than me. I was 19, they were 21.)
Time passed. Our lives took us in all different and fascinating directions. There were marriages, divorces, births, deaths, remarriages. You name it, it happened. And then, this year, one of these guys proposed a New York reunion. A 50th anniversary of that infamous visit. They still all live in Poland, in and around Warsaw, though they are by now well traveled of course. Poles tend to travel far more than us Americans.
Did I say that life takes us in unpredictable directions? I'll say it again, just for the record. One of these guys and his wife cancelled out at the last minute. Covid, a death in the family, poor health. Sigh... But the other two, along with their wives who have never traveled to the US before, are still on board. Today we are to meet in New York. They are flying in from Warsaw, I'm coming in from Madison.
The plan is to spend a handful of days in the city together. They will then go to California (one of them has a son there), then fly back to Chicago, where I will again meet up for another handful of days together.
It will be crazy fun!
Or will it? Can people our age be that youthfully spirited as we were back then? How do you look at a city, at travel with friends, at life behind you and maybe a little still ahead of you, when you are no longer merely imagining adulthood?
* * *
I get up at the usual time, give the animals the usual care. We eat the usual breakfast. With my New York City guy, who laughs at the thought of spending leisure time in New York City.
(farmette in September)
(surprise!)
I pack my suitcase. I catch the direct flight we have from Madison to New York. It's Labor Day -- I'm not about to mess with connections if I can help it.
The flight leaves on time and some two hours later we are landing on a cloudy afternoon in New York.
I'm staying at 1 Hotel, which I chose because it's close (a 4 min walk) to where my friends are staying and, too, because it has a room made out of the floor of a University of Wisconsin basketball court. I kid you not. The hotel is overall beautiful and with an environmental focus. There are plants everywhere. I mean, everywhere. It would be reasonably priced if you booked really early (which I did not) and if it were not fashion week in the city (which it is). I tell myself that fifty year reunion/anniversary of this sort doesn't happen often and I open myself up to the possibility of enjoying this strangely wonderful little bedroom on 58th street.
* * *
New York. I have such intense feelings about the place. Like about Warsaw only different.
I've lived in Manhattan on and off and I visited it in normal times and in very weird times. Forget about my friends for a minute. How do I deal with all the history I have with this city? I came here to live as a child, then again as a young adult. In those years, though I did some spot travel to other parts of the US, I mainly lived and breathed New York. To me, there was no America beyond New York. I was shocked when I moved to Chicago and met people who thought New Yorkers were weird and uppity and of another world.
My parents' marriage broke up. In New York. I dragged my Mom out of the city to Madison because she had no where else to go. Eventually I would travel to New York with my daughters. They loved Broadway shows -- we traveled for all the biggies. Then -- and this is the really weird part -- my ex husband lived and worked here in the last year of our married life. I'd come every few weeks to visit him. Well documented visits on Ocean. Bizarre visits really. I walked I think every single street of Manhattan that year.
A few years later, I was back, with Ed, sleeping on an inflatable mattress that kept leaking air. This was in a Village brownstone walkup. He attended to family business, I tagged along and listened and learned.
Do you see what I mean? A crazy history of comings and goings, of breakups and new twists and some funny turns.
I look out the window and I think -- this city keeps messing with me. I seem not to be able to ever fully get away from it.
* * *
My two friends and their wives arrive in New York about the same time that I do. Let's meet up for a beer! -- they text. Well okay, but what's open and by the way, I need some food! It's evening and I haven't eaten since breakfast on the farmhouse porch.
(heading out: 57th street)
My hotel person gives me a list of places that are open despite the holiday. We end up at a bar across the street from their hotel. The place is called Three Monkeys. The best part about it is that you can sit outside, which is good for me because I still worry about Covid. But "outside" means in a plastic hut that extends out onto the street. If a car doesn't switch lanes in time, it will take down the hut and us, its sole occupants along with it. I'm not worried. Traffic crawls here.
But we're good! It's great to see them and I'm totally happy with my quinoa bowl. Shockingly yummy, for being served here in the middle of 54th street.
Despite the hour, we take a walk.
Fifty years ago I took them out on their first night to Times Square. For the shock of it. Today, nothing can shock quite so easily, but still, we are near Times Square and so we go there.
Times Square is crazy. I mean, really insane with all its lights and pixels and people. Is it New York? Well, judging by the crowds here tonight I'd say it certainly does draw people to it. On the one hand you can say that it isn't the real New York. How many people who live here come out to see the street performers and buy the fake designer stuff peddled by the street vendors?
Still, in a sense it is New York as I know it: it's a crazy mix of everything and everyone and you smell sweat and you smell the subway air blowing out at you and you smell pot and people aren't all alike and this is a face of New York that I once really loved -- the fact that people here are all over the place in their life styles and loves and choices.
My friends are understandably exhausted so they go back to their place and I go back to mine and all would be so well except that the internet is not working in my room so there is that headache to attend to. Ah well. Travel throws stuff at you.
For now, I breathe in plants and rub some rocks and pebbles that they leave out for you, some with words on them like for instance NOW. I will spend the rest of the evening trying to incorporate that wisdom into my day. Now. Maybe I'll have a glass of wine at the side. So much to think about! So much to love...
