sometimes i'll take the subway one stop further than needed. because when the F train leaves carroll street it rises above ground and for just one moment i'm fifteen again, riding the tube in london for the very first time. and once that moment passes and i remember where and who i am i look out over the neighborhood. and i can see the church one block down and i can see my tree-lined street and i can see all the corners i'm falling madly in love with. and as i move up and past them i think, be home soon.
it's the little things.
Brooklyn
home, sweet home.
the thing may tilt to the side, but it's light and airy and home and now that my mom's finally seen it (she's visiting for the week and i'd like that some things be done in person) i figured i'd share some photos here. it's been over a month now and i've yet to install the shelves in the kitchen or figure out how to give the windows a really good scrub. i've got no bathmat and no dishtowels to speak of, but i'm hoping to accomplish a few of those things this next week.
there is a sense that twenty years from now i'll look back on this time, fully aware of just how sacred this experience was--so i'm doing my very best to soak up each and every moment.
the journey home {off switch magazine}
In the fourth grade I went to the rodeo with my friend Rachel Keenan. The two of us climbed onto the sizzler, a spinning contraption in the parking lot outside, and just as I turned to complain that it wasn’t spinning and sizzling fast enough, the thing started moving with such force that I couldn’t lift my head from the seat. I don’t know that I’ve ever laughed so hard.
I’m not sure why I’ve been thinking about that moment of late, but I have. And I’ve been thinking about how just after my college auditions I took a cab with my mother to the airport and fell asleep with my head in her lap. These are the moments that make a life. These small, seemingly insignificant moments that only in hindsight can a person point to and say yes, that moment there—that was a really good day.
The night I moved I sat on the floor of my new apartment, boxes everywhere, the bedframe pushed up against one of the curtain-less windows. I was freshly showered, a glass of Oyster Bay Savinguon Blanc next to me, and as tired as I’ve ever been. It was the end of an impossibly long day in which, with the help of my two best girlfriends, I packed everything of worth into a U-haul and hurtled south to Brooklyn, where we then pushed and pulled and dragged all that worth up three flights of stairs into a tiny studio apartment that leans, just a little, to the right.
We did it ourselves, the three of us, Kim and Ashlea and me. And at some point during the worst of it Ashlea made me promise that for the next move I’d hire a company and we’d sit in lawn chairs drinking sweet drinks with small umbrellas while we watched as someone else did what we were doing now. Stuck between the second and third floor, my arms shaking under the weight of a box of books I wasn’t now sure I needed, I gave in: yes, next time, yes—but please God, don’t let that next time come anytime soon.
There were countless moments during the day in which I thought, for sure, we wouldn’t make it—we couldn’t possibly come out the other side. So at the end of it all, that box of books tucked safely away, we each poured a glass of wine, took a shower, and readied ourselves for a celebratory dinner. Even as it was happening, I knew. Even as I watched the girls search through my clothes and put on makeup and laugh, I thought, well, this here, we’re living through the best of it. This is one of those moments. It was remarkable in that hindsight wasn’t necessary. I could feel the moment printing itself on me even as it was happening. A tangible sort of happiness.
I don’t remember much of what followed--what we ate once we finally got out the door or what was said as night crept towards morning, but I do remember that at the end of it all, in those slow and sacred hours when the night is a particular sort of black, the sky opened up and it rained.
A cleansing. A fresh start. A new world.
I moved to New York at the age of eighteen and have spent the subsequent eight years here looking for a home—searching for a place where those moments that make a life—those moments that occasionally happen at the rodeo or in the airport or after an impossibly long day—could accumulate, take root and grow.
The night of the move, Kim, searching through my stuff for a pair of shoes, asked in which box I had put my high heels.
There isn’t a box, I said. I don’t own any.
--because I need some for this outfit, she continued, only to stop, turn her head. What do you mean? What do you mean you don’t own any?
I just—well, I don’t.
What?! She screeched. Why?
Because I don’t like them. Don’t worry about it, girls in Brooklyn don’t wear heels, I finished.
This isn’t entirely true. Girls here wear clogs and platforms and winter boots well into summer months, but heels—the kind of heels that Kim was talking about—you’d be hard pressed to find them here.
Perhaps this is one of the ways I knew that after eight years of Manhattan living Brooklyn was the place to be.
No high heels and an abundance of trees.
Now that I am here in this small neighborhood with which I am undoubtedly, unquestionably, desperately in love I wonder why I didn’t move sooner.
But the thing is, I didn’t know at eighteen that I would be the girl to eschew high heels. Didn’t know I’d be the girl to use the word eschew. Didn’t know I’d wake each morning and make myself a latte. Didn’t know it’d be men with dark hair and deep-set eyes that would invariably undo me.
I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know heartbreak. I didn’t know loss. And I sure as hell didn’t know failure. And without these things I knew very little of myself. It has taken eight years and many, many mistakes to piece together a picture of who I am and what I want.
And it is upon these things that a home is built.
I used to think that the I-don’t-knowswere the point of this life. Which is to say the things that transcended understanding were what gave meaning to this earth-bound existence. But as I get older (and, I hope, a little wiser) the I-don’t-knows don’t hold so much sway. I like not only to love something, but to know why I love it—to be able to say why I love it.
The area in which I live now—the area I will proudly tell people I am building a home in—well, it was love at first sight. And immediately I knew I could explain and give voice to my wonder: the trees—the explosion of green, the Catholic Church one block south, the absence of tall buildings, the front yards and back yards and corner bars, the pace with which I naturally walk here—slower—markedly different from the speed I use to dodge tourists in midtown Manhattan.
Eight years ago I would have gotten off the train at Carroll street and I would have been smitten, but I couldn’t have told you why. I only know now—I can only say now because I know myself. Because I’ve circled back to that girl I was at five, at eight—the one who without fear got on the sizzler—the one who at seventeen chose a conservatory theatre program over an ivy league education—a fearless creature was she: a girl who knew she’d always take trees over concrete; a girl not interested in bright lights or sky-high heels or the cutout of a city skyline; the girl who would grow up to fall in love with a small and diverse neighborhood, who would love the old New York with its cobblestone streets and turn of the century charm.
Eight years. It took eight years in Manhattan to build a home within myself. To forget who I was and what I knew and what I wanted so that I could be surprised and delighted and totally in awe as I journeyed back to myself.
I didn’t move to Brooklyn any sooner because I wouldn’t have known it was for me. The eight year old in me would have known, yes, but I had yet to reclaim her. And now that I have, all I can say is, holy hell was it worth the wait.
South to Brooklyn.
Riding the A train downtown, I think, not much more of this. Today I will pull the money from the bank, today I will sign a lease, and in ten days I will move to Brooklyn. No more frustration at looking up in hopes of seeing the 125th street station, only to be greeted by the yellow stripes of 145th. No more inching past 135th. No more gypsy cab drivers who stand at the mouth of subway offering rides and sidelong glances that distill my womanhood to nothing more than curves and cutouts. No more nine-flight escalators stuck behind the person too lazy or too tired or too indignant to walk down. No more of the slow and silent panic that waiting for the A train in the bunker that is 181 elicits.
And no more of the crowded elevator up to the street when riding the 1 train late at night. No more listening as men speak in a langue they wrongly assume I cannot understand.
I have lived in Manhattan for eight years now. It is a number that both alarms and amazes. Eight years.
In ten days this will change. In ten days I will fill a truck with only the furniture that will fit into a small studio apartment and I will hurtle south. To Brooklyn. The southerner in me appreciates this. Victory by degrees.
It is a quiet place—quieter, at least, abundant in trees and coffee shops, and I am undoubtedly, indubitably, indefatigably in love.
With the beer garden across the street and the Catholic church around the corner and the small restaurant that upon entering my father declared like a small pub in London.
I’ve spent eight years in New York searching for a home. Not just searching for the place, but the meaning of the thing. The meaning of the thing at this in between phase in my life when home is not the people that I’m with—no parents, no husband, no children—because it’s just me. For the time being, it’s just me. And home is…
Undefined. Or unanswerable. Or undiscovered. As of yet.
I don’t know if Brooklyn will feel like home any more than any place before it: 66th Street, 104th, 80th, Washington Heights. But the word of the place—the word of the little pocket I’ve fallen in love with—the word of the neighborhood I’ll soon call my own—I’m pretty sure it’s my word.
And that’s something.
