Take me Back to Paradise City

The time in my life that I would like to revisit would be when we lived in NYC. When was in 5th grade, 2009-2010, my family lived in New York since my parents had gotten one-year teaching offers at NYU. It was the best year of my life so far, thanks to a range of different factors. Some of the biggest influences came from my friends. For starters, I was shocked by the fact that I had friends. The last few times I had changed schools it hadn’t worked out that way. I was also astonished that I had made friends so quickly. Within a record-breaking two months the four of us had formed a band and chosen names from our favorite fantasy series. From then on we were literally inseparable.

We all loved books and were constantly talking about what we had read or what the others should read. One of my friends knew the manager of a local bookstore, and he gave her the manuscripts of unpublished books to read, which she shared with me. My friends also knew all the cool places for 5th graders to go in New York: bookstores, Central Park, the one really good ice cream store, Chelsea market, and so forth. My best friend, Julia, also loved horses and took me to the stables a few times, so I could watch her lessons.

Also, I was literally closer to my family. My grandparents, Jana and Friedrich, lived three blocks away, and my dad’s parents, Grandma Lorraine and Grandpa Leonard, were an hour’s train ride from NYC in Westchester. I usually visited them on weekends, a throwback of sorts to when we lived in Chicago. At Jana and Friedrich’s, we played Scrabble and I practiced my (spoken) German with them. My grandfather also told me fascinating stories about Pancho Villa and the Mexican revolution, a subject he specialized on as a professor of Latin American history. In Westchester Grandma Lorraine would show me her backyard and house plants. She has an amazing green thumb; she grew an ENORMOUS jade plant from a single leaf. I would watch TV - cable TV - with Grandpa Leonard. What we watched was quite varied, anything from sports games, Broadway, or opera, but I always had fun. I especially loved listening to Grandpa’s jokes throughout the program.

And then there was Saturday, also known as “family day.” Every week we found something to do together, which is not hard in NYC. We went bike riding, visited museums, took part in walking tours, saw movies, and once mom and I got to see the opera Don Giovanni at the Met itself!

All in all, I really miss New York City, and occasionally the simplicity of 5th grade life, but mostly I miss the closeness I had with my family, my grandparents, and my friends. During that year, I gained a lot of friends. It was something that I struggled with before then, and has helped develop more relationships now.  But at the time it was a huge surprise to discover that I could make friends, and that people beyond my family actually liked me. I also found everything in NYC exciting and new, doubly so with friends. I remember the year as a kind of bildungsroman of how to make friends, and what to do once one has them.