Amina’s observations about the neighborhood we share made me think about the nature of finding oneself through our own perspective from one generation to the next. She and I share a neighborhood, but with a few blocks and a couple of well-placed decades in between.
The first time off the A train at 190th Street in my new neighborhood gave me a sense of up and down. For one, I’d never realized Manhattan had so many hills—I was used to the flat, gridded plains below 125th Street—and rolling down a steep incline to my apartment made me realize how city developers had left this bit alone. I was also experiencing the vertigo of being out of a decade-long marriage and realizing that glorious freedom could mix with hard loss. My new building also reflected a tale of two worlds. On the west side was a sheer stone cliff topped by Fort Tryon Park, where a now-fancy restaurant sat. I couldn’t actually afford to go to that restaurant, but it made me happy to know it was there.
When I exited the building out the east side, I was on Broadway, where salsa music vibrated the pavement. There was a health-food store that had been there, according to the lady behind the counter, for two decades. There was a tax place next to a bodega where a card table sat and men played dominoes. I was home. Not because I knew anything about dominoes, but because I felt community. No one knew me, but everyone still smiled. For the years I lived in that apartment, I grew to understand how to live in different sides of a situation, whether it was outside my window or inside my heart. I could get dressed up and climb the hill for a pricey dinner or slip on my flip-flops and cross Broadway for a batida; could plan my future as solo or make a date with a new possibility.
Recently I took a walk up in my old neighborhood, having moved a bit south a few years ago. A beer bar had replaced the tax place. The bodega was boarded and a sign teased a new restaurant coming soon. But the health-food store was still there and a card table of domino players was outside. A lot had happened in the seven years since I’d lived there but the core remained the same and I realized how the stories that form us are available in the streets we walk through every day.