What a different city New York is with a kid. What a different vacation it makes with a toddler.
Not bad, just different. When you’re used to one thing, and then go back to find another, it’s well different.
The New York we used to know was about all manner of things. Eating well, and in places that if you came with a kid, someone would come over, grab her, hand you a ticket and then stick her in a coat closet. I’m not joking, I think they check their kids in New York.
It was about going to shows and long, lazy strolls through Central Park near dusk. It was picking up and going anywhere you wanted without looking like Sherpas heading up Mt. Everest, or shopping in places where you didn’t have to worry that a little one would dismantle thirteen dozen mannequins and ruin a dress worth more than most cars.
It was about pricey drinks, days that began with beverages super-early in the day, and friends who made drastically bad decisions because of it. I remember one trip when a gallery stroll turned into several stops for drinks followed by nose-poking into some rather upscale and high-priced fashion boutiques.
This friend of ours found his way into a $500 shirt that looked like something out of a cowboy western that had been spray-painted green with cheap spray paint that made it look like cheap velvet. Not only did the excitement of the evening move him to buy it, but it also prompted him to order alterations. That way when he woke up the next day, came to his senses and called in desperation to cancel his purchase, it was too late.
I wonder to this day if he has ever worn that shirt.
Good times.
But you know something? I don’t miss it all that much. Part of me does. Part of me longs to have it back, that freedom to just go and do. To meet up with friends without worrying where the next diaper-changing station is.
Yet, things change, and New York has the luxury of being a city of simple pleasures, filled with all manner of small enjoyments, no matter how mundane. Like a milk shake at FAO Schwartz where my daughter found a way to get so many straws in her mouth that she looked like an oil derrick pumping crude oil out of the ground. That was a sight.
Or the smile on her face as she spotted a duck in a pond in Central Park, and then realized the joy that comes from feeding such a critter a saltine cracker.
It was things like staring out the hotel window overlooking Broadway traffic and waving to delivery trucks. Or making friends on a crowded subway with a smelly dog someone was carrying.
That’s New York. Something exciting at every turn.
It was the look of dazzlement she got while being carried through Times Square with all of its blinking light madness and screaming images. What’s it like to be that age and glimpse something so magical and gaudy for the first time? I want to frame a smile like that.
It wasn’t just for her, either. For me, it was remembering that New York is about the small things, like how the urge for a hot dog can be quenched in an instant on any street corner over and over again, until you run out of singles or room in your stomach. Why is a skinny, over-boiled hot dog that has been sitting in a steaming box of foul-smelling water all day so enjoyable? I don’t know, but I’m hungry.
It was a stroller ride on the Upper West Side like I’ve lived there all my life, and closing out the night with cookies in bed bought in an all-night grocery story across the street.
What a different trip, and what a different New York. But boy was it enjoyable all the same.