Kayleigh is a fabulous twenty- (?) twenty-one-year-old (?) gypsy-like yoga teacher from Woodstock, New York. She's great at inversions, drinks six coconut water boxes a day, has lined cat eyes, wears dangling wind chime earrings, and demonstrates a perfect grasshopper arm/chin balancing pose. She's leaving New York and headed to Spain this summer to go find herself. I'm able to do it (grasshopper pose) with one leg, but I can't hoist the other damn stiff one up there to meet it; I need Kayleigh's help. Well, Spain and more interesting things beckon her.
I ran into an eccentric fifty-year-old mother of twins from an original baby playgroup strolling on Columbus and 88th. We were never close as she is a little out of my range of motion and comfort, but I like her. I've gotten used to seeing her around once every nine months. And now, I will not. She is moving to a probable mansion upstate to give her children an idyllic childhood, as Academia calls her. Many other families that we know are headed out. Not everyone is finding a manse, however, many have found lush lawns of green paradise outside of Urbania; I have recently learned that another "best friend" of my daughters' is now planning her own (reluctant) ascent out of concrete. Two fashionisto favorites of mine have found solace in other fashion week cities that have better beaches: Sao Paulo and L.A. "Lucky f-ing boys", I grumble to myself as there is no nearby beach in sight within The City's fried-chicken/rancid-garbage/curry/shit-smelling humidity.
No matter. I'll travel. We're staying here. And as long as I have my two legs and don't need a walking stick to cross Broadway, I ain't leavin'.
NYC and I are happily, comfortably married.
It's a different game, making friends here, or it is at this post-childhood, post-college, post-marriage juncture: in NYC, connections with friends, acquaintances, yoga teachers, et al. is all about convenience; where we work, what neighborhood we live in, who our children play with at school, which yoga center we go to, etc., all determine who are friends are.
Do you have the same life that I do? This question/ultimatum may apply to many outside of NYC, or people with kids, careers, marriages, what-have-yous. But, I don't think so. Meeting friends with this objective in mind means that there will be a lot of different people, and a lot of them different from me. In my former lives - in adulthood - I was friends with whoever felt good. Whoever was funny. Whoever was crazy-interesting. Whoever was talented. Whoever just looked cool. But most importantly, I was friends with whoever most resembled me (or what I hoped was me). Admittedly, things got to be a bit homogeneous.
NYC friends are found via a casual courtship of minute exchanges and few noncommittal get-togethers. Once things are sniffed out and everything is kosher, things blossom into full-fledged, typical friendships with universal expectations and codes of conduct. This 30's-something, established-life, NYC-centric process of friendship keys in to what I love most about this autonomous place: We all walk shoulder-to-shoulder and yet are totally immersed within our own lives and agendas; we have no expectation (or regard) to the person invading our physical space(s). I love that.
I imagine that if you don't absolutely love being on your own, you would suffer incredibly in New York. How one (typically) loses friends here: they move, we move. Sometimes people don't go that far, however, a two mile radius here can feel trans-continental. Urbanites become suburbanites. Temporary big house people race back home to cramped city space. Trailblazers set out to gentrify bad neighborhoods. Disillusioned corporate moneyed folks try to find themselves (again) in Park Slope and other hipster, outer-borough neighborhoods. New money/new-Wall-Street-Bonus folks buy into glass skyscrapers in desirable neighborhoods. Our kids grow up, we grow apart. We go back to work full-time. Jobs are lost and expensive yoga, boxing, personal training classes (and the friendships within) are put on hold. We are just plain busy.
We change here in record-fast moments. There is no time to adjust, or double-think or over-think. We live our lives, people move in and out of them, and our surroundings vary from day-to-day...we stumble upon experiences, we find ourselves, and inevitably, we move on and along. And yet, it's all very subtle. Here today, and imminently, gone tomorrow; no notice or regret. And the door keeps going, 'round and 'round.
