7.14.14 ~ Back to NYC

This past weekend, after the swim meet, Jason and I took Liam to NYC. We centered the trip around Liam seeing his friends and our old apartment and Columbia and anything else that would remind him of the first (almost) 5 years of his life. There were some things he remembered a surprising amount about. Other things came back to him because they had been second nature for so long - stopping at the building corner instead of running to the curb and pressing the exit button before pushing the front door open when leaving Simon's building. Even though she was away on vacation, Liam also remembered that Ada lived in the same building. He remembered the names of playgrounds and the general direction to walk to get to them and he remembered his friends. It took 14 seconds of shyness to pass before he Simon were playing and talking and interacting like they had just seen each other yesterday. And when we saw William there were a few moments where they stared at each other and then they were off. The year that had passed, was suddenly erased.

That's the way it was for me too. As soon as I set foot in that city, it was like we had never left. Everything was familiar and comfortable. Except for Jason's apartment which was brand new to me. All this time I had never seen the place he returns home to on Sunday nights. His little studio is a typical New York apartment and felt a little like the first apartment he and I lived in together in the city. Before kids, before we were even married. It, like our 72nd street apartment, is a happy, light, and comfortable place. Not like the shit holes we had lived in in Brooklyn and on 108th. In many ways this trip back was like a reconciliation between me and my city. I had grown to be deeply unhappy by the time we moved to Baltimore last year. Our apartment was dark and overrun with mice, I was overworked with insufficient child care, I was with the kids by myself frequently while Jason had to work around the clock, and things were generally just not going the way I expected. Baltimore represented a fresh start and a big change and has been exactly what we all needed. Now, all those bad feelings have melted away, and this weekend I saw NYC with new eyes again. All the life and the people and the delicious food and the kids on scooters and the elaborate playgrounds and the walking and subways and the taxis and the tall buildings and the different neighborhoods and the park and our friends and and and...

Butts...

...are what you get when you hand your camera over to a five year old: