Moving Forward
The old poster hung in a room dedicated to old subway advertisements in the underground New York Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn. I smiled because the old poster reminded me of my mom.
“Dude, it’s rude. Tone it down,” it read.
The text was accompanied by an image of a cellphone emitting sound waves. Many of the advertisements in the subway station-cum-museum addressed the scorned practice of speaking too loudly on the phone. This was why, on a recent December morning, I thought of my mom.
My mom, Jenn, 50, has short blonde hair, perfectly white teeth, and enviably pore-less skin. Her hearty laugh rises above the din of a crowd. When she vehemently agrees or disagrees with something — which is often — her throat-heavy voice can be heard from several rooms away. She has a perennial outdoor voice. Her preference for talking on speaker phone — at home and in public — only seems to amplify her already commanding tone.
During a November 2021 visit, she strolled down Bleeker Street while blaring a live meeting from her oversized iPhone, which she nonchalantly balanced in her hand like a tray.
“Mom you can’t do that in New York,” I whispered to her.
She her phone off speaker. I detected a slight eye roll.
My mom would thrive in New York. She is loud, mean when she needs to be (and when she doesn’t), and steadfast in getting what she wants. The fact that I, painfully quiet and quick to apologize when a stranger bumps into me, am her daughter astounds me. That I decided to move to New York City in 2018 to attend NYU makes even less sense.
The day I moved into my freshman dorm in Manhattan’s East Village was at once mesmerizing and excruciating. My mom arranged the plywood furniture to her liking and straightened out the bed linens she had allowed me to pick out as I marveled at the view of the Freedom Tower catching the late afternoon sun. My room was on the twenty-fourth floor.
She looked around contently after her work was done.
“Okay,” she sighed with a slight nod of her head.
Her eyes glossed over with a thin film of tears. My throat and sinuses felt the painful pressure of a repressed sob. We embraced for a long few seconds. I weakly smiled as she headed out and softly closed the door behind her. The second she was out of sight, I lay on my twin bed, wept violently, and took a three-hour nap.
I was reminded of this day, too, while visiting the Transit Museum. Toward the main exhibit’s entrance stood a transparent pillar with three layers: one of blood-red, mucky clay; one of course sand; and one of peat.
“This is a representation of the materials found in core boring,” the inscription accompanying the pillar read. “Core boring tests the ground so that diggers knew what they will be up against.”
After boring a hole, those building the subway would lower dynamite into the cavity, blow it up, clear the rubble, and get to work.
Moving to New York was my version of igniting the dynamite. I made the journey to the big city despite my timidity, fear, and chronic avoidance of confrontation. The skyscrapers and refreshing frankness — and frequent rudeness — of passersby contrasted sharply with the ranches, winding mountain trials, and neighborly camaraderie of my hometown of Genoa, Nevada. But I had to get to work.
I often told myself in my late teens as I was deliberating about where I should attend college: “If it scares me, that probably means I should do it.”
Thus, at 18, I lay in the rubble of my decision in my dorm room, my new home. I wrestled with the uncomfortable realization that my childhood had ended. My home in Genoa was no longer mine. From then on, I would only be a visitor.
I called my parents three times a day during my first few weeks on my own: once in the morning before class, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening before bed. The frequency of my phone calls has since decreased to a few times a week, but I still check my phone every few hours to see if they have called. I still need to hear their voices. When I travel home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, my eyes still reluctantly fill with tears on the drive back to the Reno-Tahoe International Airport. And yet I still feel plugged in when I am in New York. I know I belong here, at least for now.
New York is a rich environment for a curious mind. Its collection of museums, restaurants, neighborhoods, and academic institutions belongs among the world’s best. It is a hub of learning. I recently took advantage of one of its many learning opportunities at the Horizons Conference, which was held in early December of 2021. Horizons gathers leading therapists, researchers, doctors, and scientists to discuss psychedelic-based therapy, a topic about which I have been fascinated since high school. Learning from leading experts in a field I care so much about was exhilarating, a testament to why New York was where I needed to be.
I hailed a cab at the New York Academy of Medicine, on 103rd street, where the first few talks had taken place. My driver, Haim, was a grandfatherly Israeli man with wispy white hair and web of deep, friendly wrinkles. He asked me about my family, why I moved to New York. His feedback consisted mainly of “Correct, correct” and “I understand.”
The city glittered against the dark winter sky. Christmas lights and decorations added to its beauty. Haim had not been back to Israel for two years, he said, because of COVID.
“I want to wait to go back until all this settles down,” he said in his heavily-accented, methodical voice. “I want to get the boost — eh, booster — this weekend.”
We made our way down glitzy Park Avenue toward the West Village, where I lived.
“Yeah, I miss my family too,” I admitted. “I get homesick often.”
I thought about the pillar in the Transit Museum then. I had seen it only that morning. There seemed to be so much more rubble left to clear.
“But you’re making your own life now,” Haim said.
His words settled like the pulverized concrete the subway builders inhaled over a century ago.
He was right. It was time to get to work.
