Finding Home
An East Coast Road Trip
“True freedom is not just the absence of harm; it is the presence of opportunity, creativity, and fulfillment.”—Cicley Gay, Board Chairwoman, Black Lives Matter
We just got back from an east coast road trip and I am both full and spent. The first leg of the trip was spent in Manhattan, traipsing from Midtown to the subway to visit various boroughs, and the last leg was spent road-tripping through Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. The east coast in the summertime is beautiful, y’all!
While in the small towns on the east coast I was surprised to see an abundance of Pride and Black Lives Matter flags fluttering in the breeze, both outside storefronts and homes. I know a lot of the east coast is liberal, but seeing these symbols, especially in rural towns and even more so during these times, was heartening. Typically when we travel through small towns I feel a bit wary, but not this time.
I kept picturing myself living in a quaint house near the water in Maine or on a grassy hill in Massachusetts, and then I remembered that it was summer. Winter on the east coast is not my calling. I’m built for sun, not snow.
New York City was and is one of my favorite places to visit—so much culture, art, food, music!—but it is not a place I could live. Not just the frenetic pace and endless cacophony of sounds, but man, the grime. The smells! Plus, I caught a nasty cold on our fourth day there, which I swear I picked up from the subway and kinda immunized me to the allure of the city. Central Park, the Village, the Brooklyn Bridge; my kind of city. Times Square, the subway; this Victorian child is too fragile. Nevertheless, fun was had!
We caught surprise live music at dinner in Midtown one night, a man at a piano accompanied by a drummer taking requests. They gamely performed everything from System of a Down to Panic! at the Disco to our requests: “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan and “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus. A sweaty, drunk man in the audience wearing a blue dress shirt sang along to seemingly every song, hand over heart, eyes closed.
We watched turtles swim and ducks fight (or mate, or perhaps both) in Central Park. We saw Hamilton on Broadway, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, found a completely gluten-free Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village (to all my fellow GF-ers: go to Senza Gluten and get the lasagna, you’ll thank me later!).
The Village was electric; NYU students high off recently graduating (and I’m sure various substances) filled the streets in kitten heels (I can’t believe those are back) and miniskirts, getting celebratory tattoos. We found an arts and crafts fair in Washington Square Park where kids lined up to meet a YouTube star (I have no idea who he is), a woman dressed as a fairy danced to music from a boombox on a blanket, and an old man named Kelly wearing a “Pro America, Anti Trump” t-shirt fed dozens of pigeons—and a few squirrels!—from Costco-sized bags of seed. Two of our brave traveling companions, inspired, joined Kelly in feeding the pigeons, palms full of seed, birds lining up their arms. Only in New York!
Hamilton, which I’ve been wanting to see for years, nearly brought me to tears but left me wanting more, something I can’t name. Perhaps because the excellent orchestra—where were they, below the stage?—was so loud I could barely understand the words the actors were singing, perhaps because I was coming down with a cold. In the play they sing that New York is the greatest city on earth, a common refrain that I believed in that moment, their voices swelling to the rafters, a glorious rendition of the creation of this country.
There’s a part in the play when it’s said, “Immigrants. We get it done,” and the audience erupted into cheers, applauding and screaming at the truth of this statement, at the horrific timeliness of it. How immigrants have always shaped this country, made it better, and how immigrants have always been blamed, ostracized, forcefully removed.
This country. The promise, the vision, the project we call America. It felt bittersweet to immerse ourselves in the history of this country while living our current reality. The fight for freedom then, fomented by (some) men who owned human beings as they cried out for liberty from Britain. The fight for freedom now, disguised and distorted by those in power but felt and lived by those of us who know there is a world more beautiful than this one, a world where we are all truly free.
We visited a friend in New Hampshire who recently built her dream home in a copse of trees overlooking Mount Monadnock, a tranquil place where the wind in the trees sounds like ocean waves. The peace and beauty of that place felt like freedom, a welcome reprieve from the city. But it also felt like an escape, not like real life (not for her, of course, but for me). To live apart and away from what I’ve seen, what I know to be true, didn’t feel real. I want to be somewhere that feels real. Not the city, and not the private idyll on a hill.
Where can we be that incorporates everything we’ve lived and seen and know, where we can generate peace and freedom, where we know our neighbors and create community, where the pace is both not like a boiling pot of water and not like a placid lake?
Within.
Wherever we go, there we are. I was in my fragile body in the boiling pot, in the placid lake, and though I felt betrayed by my body when I got sick, though I worried about finding something I could eat that wouldn’t hurt me, though I resented the smell and noise or my feet felt tired from walking nearly 20,000 steps a day, I realized that I was at home. In my body, I am home. I can be the boiling pot or the lake, no matter if I am in it or not.
Radical acceptance is what I had to practice, from falling ill to dropping my phone down the endless depths of the Amtrak train toilet. (Yep. That happened.) We went to Walgreens; I stocked up on all the ‘Quils. We went to the xfinity store; I got a new phone. I lost some of the photos I took on the trip—not enough iCloud memory—but R had similar photos. I coughed and my nose ran, but I had Fisherman’s Friend drops and travel tissues. I needed to rest, so I did, missing a day of the Met and the New York Public Library, the only two places I really wanted to go. There’s always next time.
Not every problem has a solution. Not every ailment has a remedy. But I could meet what was handed to me, every time. I just had to rest, and then, keep going.
The Friday Finds
Action. Ask your members of Congress to co-sponsor the Equality Act. The act “would secure federal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in housing, employment, education, and public places nationwide,” as well as expand “protections for women and people of color.”
Listen. “How It’s Gotta Be” by Nectar Woode.
There’s nothing I can do (there’s nothing I can do)
It’s how it gotta be (it’s how it gotta be)
I wish it wasn’t true (I wish it wasn’t true)
But nothing comes for free (nothing comes for free)
I wanna make a change (wanna make a change)
Find a little peace (find a little peace)
I’ll look out for you (I’ll look out for you)
If you look out for me (if you look out for me)
Watch. Here I am again, not-recommending a show: Sirens, a limited series on Netflix starring the always-brilliant Julianne Moore and rising prestige TV star Meghann Fahy. The show started out so strong, revolving around a strained sister relationship and the mysterious allure of a rich white woman doing rich white woman things, but the ending was so abrupt and random that it felt like a completely different show by the end. If this is truly a limited series with only one season I can’t recommend it, but if there’s a season two in the works, I’m hooked enough to keep watching.
Read. In another departure from my usual fare, I listened to the audiobook of Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, and was surprised to find myself feeling a deep sense of empathy for the guy. Sure, he’s rich from his family’s centuries of colonizing, he’s made questionable or even deplorable choices throughout his life, but hearing what it’s like inside a gilded cage made me appreciate my (relative) freedom. I also appreciated his candor—the guy holds nothing back!—and though I was bored by some parts, like his time in the military, I was riveted by the malicious intrigue of castle politics, the bittersweet memories of his mother, and, of course, his fairytale romance with Meghan Markle, now Duchess of Sussex. An escape with gravitas!
Thank you for being here. See you next time.
In solidarity,
Emma