The Cities we Live In; the People We Become

Last week, I went to New York alone with Dave for the first time since our daughter was born. The weather was perfect, one of those rare 72-degree-in-November weeks that doubles as a window into why New York is what it is—dynamic, unstoppable, amazing. As I walked the familiar streets, clocking in my 15,000 daily steps while popping into every other store with no timeline or stroller to hinder me, I was reminded yet again what I was missing in my current life: the walking, the diversity, the energy of life within a big city that consistently opens you up to new encounters and revelations.  

My relationship with the city I live in has always been more heightened than that of most, driving me to move and analyze and pivot, to never stop seeking the perfect place to build my life in. The cities—New York, Paris, Los Angeles—have always been part of a mental bucket list, an unofficial lineup of places that have been glorified in my mind and I wanted to test out for size. Each one was analyzed with the scrutiny of a relationship: Paris, the passionate yet doomed lover; New York, the love of my life with a masochistic edge; LA the flattest of affairs, pretty on the outside with little substance underneath.

Then came Miami, a city we moved to in an inadvertent way—because it made sense for our family, because my parents are here, because most of my friends had moved here during COVID, and you get more for your money, and children and sunshine go well together, and it’s a relief to never have to stuff your kids into winter spacesuits.

It has now been a year, and I’m genuinely happy. I have a great community, a child who loves her life, and a safety that allows me to walk the streets at night and never worry about break-ins (hello, Los Angeles PTSD!) I am, to indulge in my trite analogy, in a happy relationship. But something is missing. The Feeling, that very particular sense of adrenaline and excitement that I experienced living in both Paris and New York, is absent, replaced by a saccharine-sweet, plastic-fantastic sense of satisfaction. My life is seamless; my problems are either traffic-related or self-imposed; most of life’s mundane inconveniences—the subways, the weather, fellow humans—are almost entirely eliminated. But with them, so are the highs: the thrill of riding a Citi Bike down the West Side Highway, or strolling through the West Village on a warm spring evening, or running to a lunch meeting, feeling like a well-dressed adult rather than a spandex-clad SUV housewife. In New York, I can imagine and be inspired and dream—and, if I really try, I can probably be. This is something I miss almost every day.

I had a fight with Dave about this over dinner at Bridges, the apex of cool New York restaurants known for its comté tarte and chic clientele. I told him how much I miss my old life, and how lucky he is to go back to New York for work every other week. I told him about the friends I had seen and the topics we had discussed, little to do with children and more to do with writing and vision and ideas. I told him how I had ended up charging my phone in a small chai bar on the Lower East Side, where the barista had flirted with me in a way that made me feel twenty-eight all over again, an out-of-body experience that had been cut short by a frantic call about toddler lice from my mom. I told him I still feel twenty-eight at times, as though I’m just playing the part of being a partner and mother, and I occasionally wonder if that will ever change.

I had been open about my existential angst in the past, and yet, this time, it upset him more than I had expected. Understandably, he took what had been meant as a stream of consciousness as a lack of gratitude for everything he had done for us and the life we were building. “You need to grow up,” he said, looking at me with a twinge of disgust, as though I was going to go MIA on him like Olivia Colman’s character in The Lost Daughter. We fought and I, fueled by my twenty-eight-year-old alter ego, strode out of the restaurant and into the darkness of Lower Manhattan, determined to walk home solo.

Thirty-seven years an idiot

Thirty minutes and one ghastly J train ride later, I was standing in front of the building we were staying in, waiting for Dave to arrive with the key. It was Friday night, and crowds of young people were lined up in front of the bar next door. The weather had dropped and the girls, clad in tiny skirts that made me shiver just looking at them, were laughing at the guys’ dumb jokes as they waited to get in. As I inhaled their secondhand cigarette smoke, I could practically feel their insecurity and anxiety, mixed in with excitement for what the night could bring. There, in front of me, was that flip side to twenty-eight that I was relieved never to go back to. I wanted the kids, the family, the life we were building. I wanted all of it; I just also wanted to feel like my old self a little bit more.

The beauty of getting older is that you realize the importance of both acknowledging your feelings and not dwelling on them too much, because you have the bank of experience to know that nothing in life is permanent. After we had made up, Dave and I discussed the very real possibility of moving back to New York in a few years, when our child (or children) are older, more self-sustainable and capable of appreciating the city. We wandered through Tribeca and ate bagels and bought a completely impractical art poster, and I remembered how much I had loved our New York weekends together in that magical fall of 2019, months before the world erupted and our course was reset towards other cities and states. I could see it becoming a routine again one day, but this time with our children alongside us.  

Another part of getting older—and the one that I, perhaps, have the most trouble with—is acknowledging that you can’t have it all at once. While I can’t live in New York, Miami, and the South of France simultaneously, I’m grateful to be with a person who is flexible and somehow always makes things work, and a child who displays an adaptability and curiosity beyond my dreams. So, for now, with a new lease signed and a crazy year to look forward to (more on that soon!), I will lean in and enjoy the sun, my family, and my present, spandex mom uniform and all.

P.S. Since we’re on the subject of inspiring cities and existential musings, I highly recommend you subscribe to my talented friend Jordan Nadler’s newly-launched Substack, Life Confit, in which she recounts her new life in Paris through the lens of cooking. Bonne dégustation!