Finding Home II

(Even though it’s a couple of weeks early, this will serve as my 42nd birthday retrospective!)

20 years ago today, I packed everything I owned into a Nissan Sentra and left home, in search of home.

It was an eleven hour drive that started in suburban Cincinnati and ended in Manhattan. It was delayed slightly by a speeding ticket, the first of my life, for driving 82 in a 65 in the last mile of Ohio before crossing into West Virginia. Perhaps I was too eager to move?

It’s not that I had a bad experience in Ohio, far from it. I moved there from Boulder, Colorado in August 1990 and consider it to be unquestionably where I “grew up”. I met my first lifelong friends there, I went to high school there, I learned to drive there, I first voted there, I looked for a job after college there.

On paper, it was an idyllic upbringing. A house, a yard, a neighborhood safe enough that children would play outside unsupervised. A small shopping district a 15 minute drive away. Great schools. Close enough to Cincinnati’s city center that both parents could work there but be home for dinner. Quiet, starry nights. All that.

But for whatever reason, I knew I wasn’t going to be a lifer. I knew I was going back west eventually.

I’d maintained a fixation on Colorado. Even though I moved to Ohio, I chose to continue rooting for the Colorado Buffaloes and Denver Broncos over the Ohio State Buckeyes and Cincinnati Bengals. I filled out “where should I live” surveys that spit out Denver as my top result. It checked all the boxes. I knew I was going back.

If not Colorado, then California. Maybe it was pricier, but it was my style. I’m chill, I’m laid back. That could be home. I’m definitely heading west.

You know where I definitely wasn’t going? New York City.

I’d been there twice in middle school with my family, and I remember feeling utterly overwhelmed. I visited again with my high school friends after we graduated, and again with my college friends one summer, and those trips reinforced the feeling. Literally how can anyone live here? It’s too much, in every way a city can be too much. It was too much to comprehend.

With New York, I focused my energy on something more comprehensible, their sports teams. I loved, loved, LOVED the Knicks. I was such a fan that my friends bought me a Knicks Barbie doll as a graduation gift. And I hated, hated, HATED the Yankees. I hated how they snapped up every big free agent, and I even did a stats class project in college that demonstrated that the payroll imbalance the Yankees created was bad for baseball.

But that was it. Right?

I went to college in Pittsburgh, and I found it to be training wheels for an east coast experience. I don’t know if this is true, but it seems to me that people from the midwestern US consider Pittsburgh to be an east coast city, while people from the east coast consider Pittsburgh to be midwestern. The pace felt faster than Cincinnati, a bit more pep in the step, but nothing crazy. Nothing overwhelming. Maybe this could be home.

Then, two big developments. I started dating someone who was a lifelong New Yorker, and we kept a long distance relationship going after college graduation. Then I got a job offer to work for Nielsen in Westport, Connecticut - just a train ride away from the big city.

Uh oh. Looks like I'm headed east. Time to drive. So I packed everything I owned into a Nissan Sentra and left home, in search of home.

I arrive in Manhattan late at night, and I stay with my girlfriend for a few days, stashing the fully-loaded Sentra in a random parking garage. I hope no one steals, well, all of my stuff. She shows me around the city. We randomly run into people she knows in Central Park. That can happen? It’s still too much, but at least I’m here.

I then leave for Connecticut, taking FDR Drive up the east side of Manhattan. And at this stage, I am awestruck. This is the most incredible, beautiful drive I’ve ever seen. Manhattan to my left, Brooklyn to my right, the East River right next to me, big city energy all around me. Wow. It’s still overwhelming, but I’m finding beauty in it.

I live in Connecticut for two years by myself, in South Norwalk. I looked at a place in Stamford, but I got a parking ticket from the building’s parking cops while I was touring the building. Bad karma. Fuck off, Stamford. I’ll take the higher rent that eats up over half of my paycheck.

My daily commute is 10 minutes. I can come home and have lunch if I want. I’m making money. I meet up with my girlfriend, who lives in New Jersey now, or my coworkers on weekends. I’m making friends. I’m learning how to drive in the NYC area, that you will get tailed aggressively, that people will challenge you to a fight if you flip them off out of road rage. Flip them off where they can’t see you, it’s safer. All in all, I’m having fun.

I visit “the city” every once in a while. It’s still too much, although I can take small doses. It’s still overwhelming, but I’m adapting. We usually take the train in - no way am I comfortable driving there. They’ll eat me alive.

After two years in Connecticut, I’m tired of paying rent. So is my girlfriend. We make a big move. We buy property together. I still work in Connecticut and she still works in New Jersey. The Bronx is equally inconvenient for both, so let’s move there!

We find a place in a neighborhood called Riverdale. Compared to other parts of New York City, it’s quiet. “New York City quiet” is not anywhere else quiet, but maybe it won’t be too much, maybe it won’t be overwhelming.

We buy a “junior four” apartment in Riverdale in July 2006. I borrow my half of the down payment from my parents. This is happening.

I move in first. I can’t sleep that night - it’s too bright out at night. I see my first apartment cockroach. I hear the constant rumble of the 1 train a few blocks away. This is every “small town person moves to the big city” movie ever. I get a parking ticket for not moving my car on time for street cleaning. $150. That’s an expensive mistake. What have I done? How can anyone live here?

My girlfriend moves in a few days later. At least now I’m not alone. We go out to dinner that first night at a Latin restaurant on Broadway, Caridad. The Yankees are on the TV. I still don’t like them, but are they my home team now? It starts sinking in.

We get two cats. We figure out how to regulate the temperature in our apartment, opening the windows in the dead of winter because the heat is too powerful. We live through a bedbug infestation. We hear about co-op board drama from our neighbors.

I get used to the bright lights, the not-exactly-occasional bugs, the rumble of the 1 train. I’ve memorized the street cleaning schedule and know exactly when and where to move my car. I’m even driving into Manhattan now. There’s a higher mental load, but I think I can do this. It’s not way too much. It’s not super overwhelming. I can live here.

The city starts clicking. It’s cool that things just happen here. The constant movement in the city is mesmerizing. Little moments start standing out to me. The time two cabbies at the airport were arguing over who got to take the big group, the one who was there first or the one with the bigger vehicle. The look a stranger and I exchanged on the subway when we noticed someone behaving strangely - “I got you, you got me, in case this goes off the rails”. This city is “ordered chaos”. And I start appreciating that.

The Giants beat the undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2008, and the whole world thanks New York for saving humanity. I’m proud of us. The Yankees win the World Series the next year. I’m not exactly excited about it, but it doesn’t bother me like it would have when I was younger. They’re in the Bronx, too! I have to latch onto something, as the Knicks are bad. Really bad. I’ve been rooting for the Spurs while waiting for the Knicks to turn it around. This may take a while.

In 2012, I am called to serve on a jury for a felony shooting case. It is a ten-week ordeal with constant interruptions, including the devastation of Hurricane Sandy hitting in the middle. I come out of the scenario feeling more connected than ever to my fellow Bronx residents. I did a civic service for my city, and I feel like I truly belong.

Two years later, my son is born in Manhattan. There’s no question that he’s a New Yorker, that he belongs. He won’t think it’s too much, he won’t find it overwhelming.

In 2020, the bottom falls out. A global pandemic. For a while, we’re in the epicenter. It’s an incomprehensibly difficult situation. The hardest year of my life. I have thoughts. But we get through it, those of us who survive.

We were scared, but we were scared together. Fireworks shot off every night, celebrating another day of making it. We got to see, hear, and feel this city die, and then see, hear, and feel it come back to life.

I feel pride for being a New Yorker that I’d always envied when I saw it in others. Before I moved here, I didn’t even know that kind of pride about your hometown existed. Sure, there’s wearing a sports jersey or repping your hometown in a bar argument. But New Yorkers do it different. They feel it different. I feel it different now, too.

It’s not blind loyalty. As much as New Yorkers love their city, they can hate it even more. Nothing brings two random residents together like complaining about the mayor, the weather, or the subway. We’re our toughest critics.

Our politicians are largely useless - anyone who’d actually be good at the job would make much more money doing something else. Guess who that leaves in charge? Our summers are tropical and humid, our winters are gray, and while it’s beautiful when it snows it’s disgusting immediately after it snows. The city is too crowded, and the craziest things can and will happen here. Everyone’s always a little on edge, a little jumpy. You have to be.

It’s objectively a hard place to live, you don’t live here because it makes sense on paper. You have to be a little weird, a little crazy, a little irrational to live here. Or a lot weird, a lot crazy, a lot irrational. What do I know.

But then we flip back to loving this city. As tourist-hostile as New Yorkers are by reputation, I can’t count how many times I’ve seen a local enthusiastically give directions and recommendations to an out-of-towner who’s asked. Route recommendations are quick, but restaurant recommendations go on forever. New Yorkers love their city so specifically that they have feedback for everyone else who sets foot here. Love New York the exact way that I do too.

This city is the global confluence of ideas, dreams, culture, and talent. If you believe in something, or if you are passionate about something - your crew is somewhere in this city.

So after 20 years, I can finally say it. I love it here, and I love it for three reasons.

One, the energy. The city never sleeps, it’s always moving, and I find it invigorating. I’ll always be a bit more tired than I need to be. But it’s worth it. Because if something can happen, it will happen here.

Two, the diversity. This truly is the world’s city. Every language, every cuisine, every special interest, they’re all here. We may not have sports monoculture like other places I’ve lived, but we have every microculture imaginable.

Three, the shared adversity. This city will kick everyone’s ass every once in a while. A blackout. A hurricane. A freak November blizzard. A deadly pandemic. We may have the worst income inequality in the country, but everyone experiences those events together. It humbles us (well, those of us with humility), and it connects us. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Knicks are finally good, and I have season tickets. High school Ronjan can’t believe it. He approves. Last month, we bought a new apartment in the same Riverdale neighborhood in the Bronx. I’m calling it my “forever home”. Because this is where I intend to stay. At the same time, I serve on a jury for the second time. It’s an even more impactful experience than the first time. I’m a New Yorker.

20 years ago today, I packed everything I owned into a Nissan Sentra and left home, in search of home. After all this time, I think I truly found what I was looking for.