I wrote this for a class last semester. We were supposed to write about coming to New York, and our relationship with the city in comparison to another city we know well. I’ve since been home for five weeks and come back, but this still feels relevant.
I saw New York City and Providence for the first time during the same week. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and my parents and I drove up the East Coast to visit Boston University. It was the first time I’d ever been north of the Mason Dixon. On the way, I made the shy request that we stop in Providence, Rhode Island, to visit Brown University. “Just to see it,” I clarified. Visiting with actual hopes or expectations would have seemed preposterous.
Providence felt like the epitome of New England. The colonial houses rested on the hills in every color I could name. Trees canopied the brick sidewalks. The river walk ran the length of downtown, with gondolas floating by the docks. The campus was full of 19th century, ivy-covered stone and brick buildings that looked like they belonged in oil paintings. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a place as beautiful.
On our way back south, my mom and I convinced my dad that we should stop in New York. We’d never been there, and we were too close to miss the opportunity. We passed through the city, parked in New Jersey, and rode the PATH train into Manhattan (a feat that took us hours to figure out). The train, the first I’d ever ridden, emerged unexpectedly in the cavity of the World Trade Center – my first up-close view of Manhattan. We lingered at the site for a while, then set out to accomplish a short list “NYC To Do” list. We bought my sister a fake designer purse in Chinatown, ate lasagna at an obscenely touristy restaurant in Little Italy, went to Strand Bookstore, walked into the lobby of the Empire State Building (establishing that it was too expensive to go up for the view), and then took a taxi to Times Square.
The taxi dropped us off a couple of blocks away, and I remember rounding a corner and all of a sudden feeling like we were right in the center of the square. None of us spoke. I slowly rotated, taking in the lights. Then I nodded and said, “Alright. I’m done.”
Our New York visit only lasted a handful of hours, but I’d gotten all that I wanted from the city.
The word “providence” means divine guidance or care, which felt apt, considering that only a miracle could have gotten me there. The streets of the city have names that wouldn’t let me forget how lucky I was. Hope, Benefit, Prospect, Power, Angell, Meeting. I spent my first year in Providence crisscrossing the city, walking from coffee shop to coffee shop until I was a regular in all of them. There was an urgency to my restlessness that prevented me from remaining stationary for more than an hour at a time. I walked for miles every day, even in rain and snow, and filled journal after journal on the barstools of café counters. I subsisted on plain bagels with cream cheese and iced mochas. I couldn’t work in libraries, and I couldn’t work in my room. I never got tired of walking. I’d never known a city so well.
After four years, Providence started to feel smaller, and I knew that it was right to leave while I only had good memories to hold onto. I left Providence, spent the summer in Segovia, Spain, and then in Rome, and then went back home to Mississippi. For months I kept imagining myself moving to New Orleans, Boston, Austin, or Washington D.C. I applied to MFA and Ph.D. programs all over the country, confessing only to my parents that the MFA program at Columbia was my top choice. It felt silly to give the idea of living in New York much thought, because I knew how slim the chances of getting in would be.
I got a phone call from a New York number as I was pulling into the Winn Dixie parking lot in March. It was Lis Harris, telling me I’d gotten into the program. I asked if she was serious several times, and then sat in my car in front of Winn Dixie, stunned. I hadn’t received a financial aid award yet, so I didn’t know what to think about the money. And I didn’t know what to think about New York.
I never wanted to live in New York. I was content to see it on TV from my couch as I watched the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving morning and New Years Eve in Times Square (both live and again at midnight when they replay it for Central Time). I knew a lot of people applied to the program because of the city, and I felt weirdly defensive that anyone would assume I was one of them. I imagined New York as cutthroat and competitive, unforgiving and overwhelming. I dreaded the thought of trying to find affordable housing, coming up with enough money to survive, and watching the loans pile up. It’s only two years, I kept telling myself. You can stand anything for two years. This is what you wanted.
I have a spatial memory so acute that it almost feels more like an extra sense. After I’ve been somewhere once, for even the briefest of visits, I have no trouble successfully navigating it again. I memorize maps instead of writing directions, because once I have a mental image of a city’s shape, I feel like I can never be lost.
But New York can’t be memorized in a glance, I kept reminding myself as I studied maps of Manhattan last summer. I could visualize the layout, the arrangements of the neighborhoods, but I don’t feel like I know a place until I can draw my own map with my own landmarks. I’d never lived in a place that I hadn’t been able to memorize in days. I couldn’t imagine how long it might take to know New York.
I came to New York with my guard up. My mom and I stayed in a hotel next to Port Authority while I was moving in. I navigated from the passenger seat, directing her as we drove our Trail Blazer towards the Ikea in Red Hook. I’m a nervous passenger, especially in cities. Traffic got thicker as the skyscrapers of downtown got larger, and my heart started beating faster. I felt a nearly overwhelming urge to get out of the car immediately.
“What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong!” she kept demanding, trying to glance at me without fully taking her eyes off the road. I shook my head, eyes closed, whispering, “Please stop, please stop asking me anything, you’re making it worse, just please stop,” my body shaking as I tried to take deeper breathes.
“Tell me what’s wrong!”
“I need you to stop talking to me!” I was scaring her, I knew. I was scaring myself. I don’t think I’d ever had a panic attack before. How was I supposed to live in a city that I couldn’t even look at through a windshield?
I moved into my apartment the next day. There are wood floors and the walls are a warm cream color. My window is large, with a view of 113th Street. I sat on the floor with a hammer and screwdriver and put together all of my furniture. I hung my maps and paintings of Providence, Rome, and New Orleans on my wall. I set up my coffee pot, and my mom helped me put away all of my dishes. I bought the first full-sized bed I’ve ever owned and slept on an air mattress for a week until it was delivered. I started to imagine that I could feel at home in this place.
Something happened between Providence and now, and I can’t drink much caffeine anymore. I try to deny this fact, and still drink it once a day in small quantities. A few weeks ago, on my slowly progressing quest to find the best coffee shops in New York, I spent $6 on a mocha. I tried to console myself with reminders that it was a one-time treat, that I hardly ever buy espresso drinks, and that I’ll never do that again. I drink most of my coffee in my apartment, because I can’t afford the drinks or the subway rides to get to them. No barista knows my name. I haven’t eaten a bagel in years.
But I’m getting to know New York in a different way. I pick a new place to explore every day I’m not too busy. I walk for hours with snacks, a book, and my 35mm camera. I went to the Union Square farmer’s market every week and watched the peaches and nectarines gradually become apples and pumpkins. I took pictures of the autumn leaves in Central Park, and I watched the first snow through my bedroom window. I have dinner parties, because I love to cook most when it’s for other people. I have roommates that I feel lucky to live with. I don’t feel intimidated or overwhelmed. New York doesn’t feel like home, but it feels like a place where I’m happy to be.
Providence belonged to me in a way that no other city ever had. It will always be the first city I felt belonged only to me, just as New Orleans will always be a version of home, and Rome will always be the romantic notion that managed to live up to my every impossible expectation. New York is an elaborate gift I hadn’t asked for but couldn’t refuse.
There’s a camaraderie I find in all of the people who are just passing through – in the joy on the girl’s face when I recognized her accent on the subway and told her I was from Mississippi, too, and in the jolt I feel each time I see one of my former classmates who shared Providence with me for four years and have somehow found their own way here. It happens a lot. In the middle of Times Square. At a book signing at the Brooklyn Book Festival. In a café in the East Village. In advertisements for a new Broadway show.
One of my roommates spent the last five years in New Orleans, and has adopted it in much the way I adopted Providence. Never have all my worlds collided like this.
For now, I’m happy to hold onto New York until it’s time to pass it along into the next eagerly grasping hands. It’s a temporary loan, and we all know it. Right now I can’t tell you how long the loan will last, nor how hard it will be to let go when it’s over.
