A few blocks up from my daughter's workplace
When I took a break from writing this blog in 2010, our daughters were both still ensconced in Aveyron. The eldest had started university right in Rodez, and the youngest was in the equivalent of her junior year of high school.
Through a breathtaking chain of events, after just one year of college, that youngest daughter has ended up living and working in Manhattan. She is well into her third year there, and there seems to be no turning back.
She's not in Kansas anymore.
Manhattan. Who would've thunk it? I am a Pacific Northwest gal with no New York-ish connections; I had never even set foot in New York City until a year and a half ago, when I first landed at JFK with something other than a layover in mind.
A starkly impersonal address with a lot of "5s" in it punched into my cell phone.
A humid yellow taxi with a grimy TV screen running the same commercials over and over.
A "turnpike," whatever that is -- I still couldn't give you a precise definition.
I realized, arriving in New York City for the first time, that I was really more of a foreigner there than in Paris.
Yet it so quickly felt like home.
Through a breathtaking chain of events, after just one year of college, that youngest daughter has ended up living and working in Manhattan. She is well into her third year there, and there seems to be no turning back.
She's not in Kansas anymore.
Manhattan. Who would've thunk it? I am a Pacific Northwest gal with no New York-ish connections; I had never even set foot in New York City until a year and a half ago, when I first landed at JFK with something other than a layover in mind.
A starkly impersonal address with a lot of "5s" in it punched into my cell phone.
A humid yellow taxi with a grimy TV screen running the same commercials over and over.
A "turnpike," whatever that is -- I still couldn't give you a precise definition.
I realized, arriving in New York City for the first time, that I was really more of a foreigner there than in Paris.
Yet it so quickly felt like home.
