By Emily Morgan
When our daughter moved to New York City right after college – a lifelong dream of hers – I asked her to please call me every night to check in with me. I was concerned about her safety. She was a Midwest kid who was way more used to corn fields and U of M football games.
I was used to knowing more about the places she frequented.
Soon after she arrived, I was on a bus from New Jersey to the Port Authority to visit her. I sat next to a policeman and I spilled all my worries on his lap, like a hot cup of coffee. He was unfazed. “It’s actually one of the safest cities in the country. There is more police protection per capita in NYC than most places,” he reassured me. I’ve taken comfort from that statement more than once in the last 15 years.
Now in her mid-thirties with a husband and two children, she lives happily on the Upper West Side. When I visit, she regales me with all the things she loves. Like Tootie in Meet Me In St. Louis, she opens her arms on a walk through Central Park and says, “Aren’t I lucky to live in my favorite city?”
I have worked through the worries. The safety concerns about her tripping while lugging a stroller up the subway stairs, the grandkids on scooters being swallowed up by the sidewalks’ basement stairs of the local toy shop, the stranger lying on the hippo at the local park, and the bicycles buzzing by at breakneck speeds.
On my visits, I am charmed by the gardens, the natural beauty of Riverside Park, and the regal brownstones surrounded by Gilded Age architecture of office buildings and restaurants. The grands and I explore the Museum of Natural History or float boats in the middle of Central Park. As a lifelong foodie, I revel in the smell of the ethnic dishes from the UWS restaurants wafting through the air on a *fall day. Somedays, we treat ourselves to dinner at one of their favorite hangouts. They invite me to slip into their corner booth for pizza at Osteria Cotta or run to get a shaved ice cup from Maria at the cart on the corner after I pick them up from school.
The stroll to and from school is a community affair where they wave to their friends and their friends’ parents on the way back and forth. They are out and about way more than most Midwestern kids who walk from the school entrance to the carpool line and then into the safety of their suburban garages. Most days, the electric garage door closes before our Midwestern grands get a whiff of fresh air or a sense of neighborhood happenings.
I am aware of the reality that the Upper West Side isn’t perfect (what place is?), but it’s perfect for their family of four.
While walking the kids home from school one day we pass by three sketchy looking men, all smoking pot. “Yeah, that smell is really strong,” says my savvy 7-year-old grand, with a wave of his hand.
I then remember the walks to school with my daughter in our suburban neighborhood where the latent smell of worms after a rainy night would overwhelm us both. Her face would scrunch up in disgust and she would remind me, “Someday I’m going to live in New York City.”
Her someday is now, and I couldn’t be happier for her.
Emily Morgan is a published author and freelance writer who has moved from Indiana and now lives in Williamsburg, Virginia.
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