New Yorker

First Park Slope apartment and yard art.
First pictures on new digital camera bought by renters insurance: late Winter 2000.

First upstate apple picking with Emory, Ben, and Virgil: Fall 2000.

First teaching gig at the now defunct IS 111, Bushwick, Bklyn.
Love note from my ESL students: Spring, 2001.

*Didn't get digital camera until after apt was robbed in late Winter of 2000. Renters insurance is golden!

Ten years ago, right about now, I packed up my sweet little Yoda (Toyota) and drove it by myself from North Carolina to New York City. I had two living spaces carved out for the summer, a part-time job, and a car with my clothes, my yoga mat, a boom box, my cds, my laptop, and basic cooking/eating essentials. I was ready.

At some point that first summer, someone along the way told me that you have to live in New York for 10 years to be considered a New Yorker. As arbitrary as that sounded, I held onto that number, and here I am at the ten year mark.

New York City raised me from a lost twenty-five year old girl into who I am today. I have had two temp jobs, one museum job, and have taught in the NYC public schools for nine years, where I first bore witness to Third World America. I--almost!--have degrees from two universities in this city. I met my husband in a bar on the Lower East Side, had my first baby in Brooklyn Heights, and will have this one in the West Village. I watched the debris from the Twin Towers plaster itself to the windows of my high school in Brooklyn, consoled students whose families worked there, and waited anxiously for my friends to get out of Manhattan. I have done all the drugs I care to do and danced at clubs until it was time to watch the sun rise over the Hudson River. I almost didn't make it to my own wedding because of the Blackout of August 2003. I have done the NYC Marathon and Triathlon. I have been to the weddings and funerals of my peers, attended the bris of a friend's first son, and have stood proud of many of my students who were the first to graduate in their families. The list is endless--so many elements of my life have been defined by my experiences in New York.

I really hope that whomever told me you had to live here for ten years to be a New Yorker was right because that means I'm a New Yorker now, and damn, I love this place.