I Heart NY

The Earliest NY Photo I could find... College graduation...

It's been 15 years since I moved to New York.

Labor Day Weekend 1991.

Last night I was walking home from work and I passed by the dorms where I lived that first year. Not hard, since they are basically across the street from our apartment, but I don't normally walk down that block.

Students were wandering in and out of the lobby, the requisite black portfolios tucked under their arms. A light rain was falling, so no one was really hanging out on the patio in front. A girl and a boy were tearfully kissing and saying goodbye on the steps.

I remember the first day I pulled up to that tall brick building like it was yesterday.

When I think about all the emotional highs (the freedom! the independence! no curfew!) and lows (getting kicked out by my roommates, bitches) of that first year, I still get a tight feeling in my chest.

It was really the beginning of a dream.

I had always imagined what life would be like when I finally got here. Those fantasies made the misery of high school bearable. And the reality was far more than I ever could have expected. Everything was bigger, brighter, more beautiful and more dramatic than I had the imagination to conceive of.

Finally, I was in classes where my clothes weren't too weird. Where people were interested in fashion and art and beauty. Where there were REAL LIVE NUDE MODELS!!!

Finally, I could stay out all night with my friends and then take a taxi up to Tiffany's and eat a danish as the sun came up.

Finally, I could study with a group of students who were as likely to break out in choruses from Les Mis as they were to dress up as a christmas tree for a night of clubbing.

New York that first year was fantastical and it has never quite stopped being so.

Just when I think I am ready to be tired, ready to leave, it tosses up some new miracle or some cosmic joke that leaves me grinning.

I walk down the street in the rain and see the pavement glistening and the skyscrapers evaporating into misty clouds. I see Parker Posy walking her silly dog, dressed in an equally silly outfit. I meet my husband, who is as tied to this city as anyone I've ever met.

I still find it hard to deal with the abject rudeness of some people. I still find the pace exhausting sometimes. I'm sick of the NYU-ification of my neighborhood. I wish we had a bigger apartment, but I acknowledge that we are lucky to have a place that we can afford.

I try to imagine how we will make having a child work - if we are lucky enough to have that happen. But then I see some hippy mom on the street with her little pumpkin in tow and I think 'I can do that.'

I fantasize about moving somewhere else. Seattle, for instance. Even after 15 years, that's where I am from when people ask.

But then I think about not having the subway, the Met, Central Park, the Cloisters. An egg and cheese on an everything bagel from the corner deli. Sushi from the restaurant downstairs. The Hudson River at sunset. People who walk fast on the sidewalk. The meat counter guy at the grocery store who likes to flirt with me. The firemen I walk past on my way to work every day. The cafe crowd at the bistro on the corner, sipping their glasses of wine and smoking their cigarrettes.

I'm not ready to leave all that, or the million other little things that make New York, well, New York. Not yet at least.

In some ways, I think I have changed a lot in the fifteen years I have been here. I've had a lot of lessons to learn. In other ways, I don't think I've changed at all. I'm still Puppy Sarah.

I don't know if I will still be here in another 15 years. Sometimes I think that New York is best for people who want the nightlife and the happy accidents and the crazy rush and crush of people. But then I see the families. I see the older couples at the museums. And I think that maybe there is a New York for every stage of your life, you just have to look for it.

I walked past that dorm last night and I remembered my awe at the view from my room on the 12th floor.

I remembered the first time I went to the Met by myself, to read my freshman philosophy texts with a sulpture of Hercules peering over my shoulder in the American sculpture wing.

I remembered watching the Cirque du Soleil perform, swinging from trapezes over the crowd, at Webster Hall.

I'm looking forward to what the next 15 years might bring.