Full Circle

When I was a child living in Larchmont NY my mother would often take us on the commuter train into Manhattan. I would fight my sister for the window seat and press my face against the smelly double glass to see as much as possible. I especially loved Harlem. I examined the boarded up tenements, fire escape windows, clotheslines and people from the moving train, trying to gather as much as possible from this secret world before the big black tunnel. I was fascinated, enthralled and I wanted more. It was a city of miniature tenement houses and we were speeding by from a high and all too safe vantage point.

After we arrived in Grand Central Station I would take in the dark oily machine smell of the train tracks and the sparkles in the platform. The smell of newspapers. The sounds that echoed. The cold air. Everyone was rushing. For me New York City was all about scent. The smell of black vinyl in taxi cabs, roasted chestnuts on street corners; New York City was an amusement park for my nose.

We would be all dressed up to visit to my step-father's gigantic midtown office. There was a switch board operator and lots of cool posters on the wall and a row of men at drafting tables. There was a distinctive comforting smell of ink and new paper, the same one that is in my office today.

I realized the other day that I now live in this very neighborhood, in the doll house tenement city I spotted from the moving train. I still look up at the windows and fire escapes but now I live here. I talk to my neighbors, walk with them, share bread with them and know their names.