New York Year 1

New York was the last place I ever thought I’d live. Growing up in Toronto, the word on the street was that Toronto was the New York of Canada, run by the Swiss. If I were ever going to leave Toronto, it would not be for some crime-infested, foul-smelling American city. But Forrest Gump warned us all: you never know what you gonna get. And New York was what I got when the hubs matched here for medical training.

My face was glued to the passenger-side window when we drove into the city last Labor Day. We were going to live in New York! To go “home” meant driving towards the Chrysler Building, not away from it and heading rapidly to the outlet malls on some bus tour with all your parents’ friends and all your friends, their kids.

D pointed out what landmarks he could: the Pepsi Co. sign, the Citibank building in Queens. I figured out Times Square on my own. From my Toronto-centric understanding, it was kind of like Honest Ed’s had exploded over onto ten blocks in all directions including up.

A year later, the thrill of it all has not worn off. New York run by the Swiss or not, I’ve never held my head higher, or corrected my posture faster (because I feel like I’m on a movie set) in Rosedale as I do whenever I happen to be walking across Park Avenue. I still get an absurdly prideful feeling when I tell any delivery person that they’ll be delivering to our home in Manhattan. I’m still not bored of taking the 5th Avenue bus past Rockefeller Center, or driving across the Brooklyn Bridge at night, or running around the reservoir in Central Park.

Of course, there is the nastiness, the unpleasantness and the commuter-ragefulness of New York life. There’s no getting around the stench of urine in sweltering summer-time subway stations. Yesterday I climbed over chicken bones and barf on my way out of one such station. There’s no avoiding the clamor of “DVD DVD! Rolex Rolex!” along Canal Street. There’s no satisfactory explanation for why certain women choose to primp INSIDE the stall, AFTER they have flushed the toilets in the public bathrooms of Union Square when the bladders of the fifteen others in line are about to burst.

Of course, I miss Toronto. I miss Swiss Chalet and almost all the President’s Choice products. I miss good, decent, supermarket-checkout-line chocolate that’s not made mostly of high-fructose corn syrup. I miss the U of T campus. I miss abundant and affordable GOOD Chinese food. I even kinda miss those stupid Marineland commercials. I definitely miss the CBC, CBC Radio, and when CBC radio announces that school is cancelled due to snow. Driving on the Don Valley in early October. Money that comes in different colors--but I guess that's a Canada thing. Oh, apprently no one outside of Toronto knows about Stella Ella Ola!

People always say, “It’s the people I miss most about fill-in-the-blank-former-place-of-residence. Home is where your people are…" People. We’ve got some peoples in New York now. Our two Redeemer small groups. The Village Church girls. The random Cornellians that pop up NO MATTER WHAT DARN CITY WE’RE IN.

As for Toronto—it’s still home home. The burning question though is: how to keep the people connections alive so it stays home? Maybe you can't? Most of my childhood/teenagehood/university people are in Toronto. What will our friendships look like another five years out? I always hated hearing that it’s hard to keep up with even close friends—after marriage, after babies, after moving. What can be done? Facebook is not the answer!!