NYC and Me

Last week I was in New York City and Massachusetts, visiting friends and family, and attending events at Columbia University. I had planned this particular trip home around the October 2nd Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame Dinner; I had been on the selection committee for the awards, and I thought it would be appropriate to be in attendance at the event (besides, I love black tie dinners – why else does one have a short black dress and three-inch-heeled pumps?). And it would be the first time I would see my niece, Chelsea, as a freshman at Barnard, and frankly, I needed to manage a visit out of the country during the Fall to make sure I was not in violation of the three-month stay rule in France. (I can’t be in France longer than three months at a time without a visa. I don’t have a visa.)

But as I stood in the Nice Cote d’Azur airport on October 1st, getting ready to board my Delta flight to JFK, along with a bunch of other chatty Americans (looking like the AARP crowd), I realized that I was not really ready to leave France quite yet. It felt like I had just arrived; and indeed, it had only been five weeks since I had left Dulles Airport for Nice. But I was scheduled to go, and had a long list of visits planned, things to buy, and correspondence to catch up with (where I wouldn’t have to pay overseas rates for calls or postage). JFK beckoned.

Before I left, Priscilla had commented that she wondered what culture shock I would experience when I arrived in the States. Given my short time in France, I have to admit, not much. In fact, arriving in NYC felt like coming home. Not only was I going there to see people I wanted to see, but the City itself has felt like home to me for a very long time.

My family has a long history in Manhattan: at the turn of the century (1900, that is) my Dad’s family first settled in the north of Manhattan (the part that is currently Central Park), before moving to New Haven and Westchester County; my Mom’s father attended Union Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side; my Dad’s father and uncle worked at Schumacher Fabrics on Lexington Avenue most of their business careers; my mother was living on Claremont Avenue behind Barnard College when she met my Dad (who was an East Sider); and then I went on to attend Barnard, and lived in the City for two years after college. And as a management consultant, I spent nearly half of my ten years in consulting working for NYC clients – and commuting from Washington to work in the City five days a week for them. My ex-husband’s first question, after we decided to separate, was, “Are you going to move to New York?”

Memories of my brief stay in the City became separate postings here. They are numbered, but in no particular order, above.