There Is Just Us

The only time I ever feel like I really belong somewhere is when I am home with my partner and three kids. “Home” is a word laden with so much meaning, too much, mainly because it has no permanence for me, and because it has multiple interpretations. I don’t have a childhood home where I grew up in to look back on, and at this point I don’t even know if I have a country to fall back on in times when I feel completely disjointed. My heart jumps between oceans and seas, pulled into places that no longer look the same as they do in my brain. People identify me as British from my accent, which despite 31 years living outside of the UK I have not lost, but I’ve always felt as British as I feel French. Nowadays I feel more of a mishmash of everywhere I have been rather than a strong tie to one country, even if it is the country where I was born, and where generations and generations of my family members lived and died.

I moved to New York City in 2005. Before that there was rural England, town England, The Netherlands, city life surrounded by mountains France, a year in Israel, a few months in California, and London. I moved from Streatham, London, to Spanish Harlem in NYC, by way of the Lower East Side. I’ve been in this country for 14 years now, longer than I have lived in any other country. I never asked for French citizenship, even though I am eligible and France was home to me growing up, because it didn’t ever feel necessary. I applied for Canadian citizenship because I could, even though I had never set foot in Canada at the time, and had no ties to the country at all. Canadian citizenship and my multilingual skills gave me temporary status in the US, a status laden with so many restrictions, while my permanent resident application inched through years, decades, of time. Nowadays I am pondering on whether I should apply for US citizenship. Do I want it?

Pondering on it, not because this country feels like home, and not because I have fallen in love with this country, but because I want my US-born children to feel safe. I had a difficult, long, and very depressing immigration process that involved a lot of tears and heartache, and also choices that I may not have made if I actually had had a choice. My children’s father, my partner in life, is also an immigrant, and although he is native to these continents we call America, doesn’t come from Norway, or any new “desirable” country name the current president decides to tweet about this week. I often think about the concept of the “good” immigrant and wonder what you have to “be” to fit into that mold. We probably don’t fit into it, neither of us really wanted to be here, we just ended up in NYC, and fell in love with the city (and very much later with each other once our paths finally crossed). I think about citizenship because for one I am finally eligible to do so, but mainly because I don’t want my children to have to worry about us, or be separated from us, now or ever. I know what it feels like to not be allowed to live in the same country as a parent and siblings, and it’s not something I plan on revisiting, ever.

Is citizenship meant to feel like a transaction rather than actual belonging? My blood is undoubtedly very English and Welsh (and apparently Scottish), but I feel like a mix of England, The Netherlands, France, Israel, NYC, and now California, with a little bit of India thrown in, and a lot of Polish heritage, collected through my mother’s second marriage to a man I called Tatuś for part of my childhood. I love parts of all of the countries I have lived in, but do I belong to any of them? I have no idea.

Living for New York for a large part of my time in the US made it easy to pretend I lived on an island slightly apart from the rest of the country, skipping between relocations of England, France, Mexico and Israel faster than it would take me to walk two blocks on my beloved Lower East Side. Languages were everywhere, it was never too difficult to find a shakshuka that tasted like my uncle’s or a packet of Walker’s crisps, or even a perfect French omelette that reminded me of time spent in late winter on the slopes of a mountain in the Alps. I spoke French as much as I spoke English and while I still felt out of place in certain parts of my life, I was able to rectify that by quickly running to Orchard St. Of course I missed so many things from all of my different homes, but NYC made it easier to consolidate all of them together under one roof. That was the beauty of the city for me: I could be at home with parts of my multiple homes and feel like I belonged for a while.

Belonging... Is that not something that we all crave somehow? The need to belong with someone, to belong somewhere? For so many years I prided myself with the statement that I never belonged anywhere except NYC (or the Arava desert, or Grenoble, or Empingham, or Paris, depending on my mood). I would however still be plagued with days, weeks, of deep yearnings for home, a home that didn’t exist anymore. But I belonged on the street I worked, and I belonged amidst my ragtag group of friends from all over the world. I didn’t think I craved that sense of belonging until I actually came close to feeling like I belonged somewhere.

NYC was in no shape or form a bubble. Not for us immigrants anyway. For me it did often feel like I was hovering between the US and Europe, but I was fully aware of what was going on in the world, in the country. I always have been. It felt safer somehow, you could disappear into the streets and be swallowed up by the city’s protective arms. The only airport where I never had problems in when coming back from abroad was JFK. Every other border control has been a story I would euphemize to those around me because I was embarrassed, upset at letting myself be treated like that. Niagara Falls and Phoenix were the worst. Border control agents are obviously trained to diminish you as a person, reduce you to tears, to saying things in a tone of submission despite your intents to remain stoic and strong, and to make you feel guilty even though you are not. Guilty of what? Wanting to go “home”? In the end you really start to wonder why you are fighting to be there so hard: is it worth it?   

My own personal answer to that is that it was, because I met my partner, another immigrant but from a very different part of the world, and we have three amazing children together. We have made our own home together, here. Neither of us feel at home anywhere anymore, after years of living in places we never quite imagined ourselves living, but together we are home. Our children are growing up American, and Mexican, and Native American, and English, and French…  Isn’t that what America is anyway? We already make the US great, no need for an orange-faced despot to tell us the opposite.

We haven’t lived in NYC for a while now, and it’s harder for both of us to find the same sense of belonging in our current city. But still, it’s “home” for now. We still don’t know where to find fresh tamales first thing in the morning, and I have given up on finding HP Sauce anywhere accessible, or a proper pain au chocolat, but they are just minor inconveniences, aren’t they? I miss the sense of family that we had in NYC, the sense of community, and I doubt we will ever find the same here. But our “home” in NYC has changed, moved on, and evolved too. As you can see, home really does not have permanence for me, except when it comes to my family.

And belonging? It’s a fleeting sense. I feel it during certain marches and rallies, surrounded by other people who I know have a similar sense of floating here and there, digging in roots in a new place. It’s a feeling that starts in my stomach and rises, ending in spontaneous tears as my voice becomes one with other voices. But then we disperse, and that feeling is gone. It pops back up again here and there, a smell, a voice, a thought. It never will be a permanent feeling, but always a surprising one. Oh wait, I belong here in this moment!

There is nothing wrong with never quite feeling at home, never quite belonging to a place. As human beings our nature is to keep moving, to explore, to find each other. Borders are arbitrary and unnatural, barricades are really just a last ditch stand against our nomadic drive. There is no “other”, there is just us.  

Home - A Collection of Poems

Last year, after With Spring Comes Hope came out, I started the long task of compiling my next collection of stories and essays. Named Of Hearts and Sea Glass, it went through several different identities until I realized it needed to be put aside for a while until it made more sense to release it.

After Ludo was born in July last year I went through a time when I couldn’t stop writing. While I have always written a lot, I literally felt like I was overwhelmed with ideas and thoughts, words were flying around my head constantly, stories born in the early hours of the morning through the haze of my sleep deprived mind. I made lists in order not to forget the themes I hadn’t had a chance to get to, and wrote and wrote and wrote. November rolled around and suddenly the fog descended, and while I continued to write, I struggled to make it through each day in one piece, wondering where my energy and my natural positivity had gone to. I used to drink my depression into the abyss before motherhood, but now I kick her away with more permanent measures, one of those being to slow down and accomplish one thing at a time. Rushing through another collection of essays that are a huge part of me became too daunting of a task, and one that required a stronger mental capacity than I could offer at that point.

In the meantime I unpacked my box of journals and miscellaneous writings, and as I read through I started to think back to the collection of poems I had haphazardly compiled in 2016, shown to probably two people and then hidden away again. I’ve never been confident about my writing, and I still get the shivers every time I share something I have written on social media. It’s not a question of actually being worried about what others may think, or the thought of someone calling me out on some inconsistency in an article, I’m really not bothered about that. Most things that I write are a part of me, and writing has always been my preferred form of expression, easier than speaking in any case. And every time I write I feel like I am exposing myself to the world, when all I really want to do is hide away from it. There are also levels of intimacy involved. A thought piece on something like gun control, or racism, or feminism doesn’t worry me so much when I put it out there: I am very much confident in my opinions and also open to being corrected if I’m full of shit. Then comes the more personal thought piece or story, death or sobriety or depression, and the ones on motherhood, strong and fragile. After that come the short stories, and then finally poetry. These words that I stitched together in one frantic swoop are lifted from an experience, sometimes a moment, sometimes a long period of time, and transposed into a string of words and punctuation. And even though I have a graduate degree in English Lit I have never followed traditional poetry rules. I know for some that is of utmost importance, and if that is your preferred form of poetry you will probably not enjoy mine. A kind of freestyle, a freedom in writing that I love, and an interpretation that anyone can have. That’s why I have always loved poetry, what it means to me may be completely different to what it means to you and what it meant to the poet.

I will always remember being assigned a poem by Louis MacNeice in my second year at university, and feeling that dread in my stomach at the prospect of having to stand in front of people and dissect the poem (the speaking aloud being the problem not the dissection). But I read the poem (Sunday Morning) on the tram on my way home and in the 20 minute trip had scribbled 4 pages of ideas down. MacNeice, Auden, Plath, Hughes, Yeats, Sexton: from that moment onwards they opened so many doors in my mind, and pushed me to believe that it was OK to write poetry that didn’t resemble classic poetry. Those random things I had seemingly thrown together in my journals could possibly be considered poems, even if the meter didn’t match the sonnet and rhymes were nonexistent. But I have always considered myself a writer but not a poet, so I continued to have random bursts of poetry inspiration, just to hide them away, forever.

But then I decided that it was time. It was time to dust off the poems and give them new life. I picked up the ones I had previously compiled and then painstakingly ran through my journals, typing out all of those others that were hidden in the pages. And then I thought that a few of my newer pieces had a place amongst the poems too. I had a different title in mind but it never felt right, and then suddenly I noticed a general theme that runs through my writing appearing again, the theme of looking for home. So the collection became Home, and after a few more additions and subtractions, a few more commas and a change of font, and a lot if hesitation the collection is ready for you. Well it will be in a few days!

Here’s a little peak inside my collection... Some of the poems were written in 2000, some in 2017, and all the rest at some point in between. I can tell you exactly when and where each and every one were written, in a place that I considered home right then. So here you go… Home. I hope you enjoy this new collection, and thank you for reading.

Where Is Home?

Where is home? I don’t know, it has changed so many times over the years. Sometimes it changes over the space of a day. You know, home is here, or home is there. Home is everywhere! But where is home really? I spent many years wondering this, yearning for somewhere else, nostalgic, homesickness just another part of my everyday emotional pool. I put my hands in, try to wash it away put there she is, wrapped around the reflection of the New York skyline or the Vercors mountain range. I close my eyes and there it is, my old boulangerie, the smell of freshly baked baguette right there in my nose. Or sometimes it is the bar on Orchard Street, the sounds in the walls when you walk open the doors, cool air, dried glass rings, the comforting smell of old beer that never goes away. Other times it is the churchyard in England, moss-covered tombstones, and names that have long since been forgotten by most. And then I imagine myself walking barefoot down the hill to the little beach on the Mediterranean, a mile or so from Nahariya, a few more from Akko. Home was leaving one home and landing in another, even when I had never been there before. Home was a suitcase in one hand and a cigarette in another, $200 in a bank account and a new life wherever I laid my head. Home is and will always be where I feel safe, happy, and with those I love.

The smell of rain on the warm pavement in the middle of the summer, a couple of swallows flying for cover into the eaves above my bedroom window, and the sound of the breeze rustling through branches and leaves, that is home. England in the summertime is home. Right there in the village where there is one main road and a few smaller ones, and two churches, the bells ringing on Sundays in time for the morning service. England is also the little room at the top of the building, with the grand staircase leading down to the rest of the apartment, cooking smells coming from the kitchen, the fire crackling in the living room. Home is the warm, thick quilt on Nana’s bed, watching television in the evening because I was allowed to stay up later than my sister. England is also living in London on next to nothing, writing poetry on my lunch break in Putney by the river; dreaming of Israel and California while wandering through the streets of Streatham. England is my first home, the home where I was born, and where I have returned to many a time. England is the comfort, the warmth, but also the grey and the dark. England is living as a working class family under Thatcher in the 80’s, but England is also rolling hills of green beauty and old, old pubs with real ale.

The unseasonably warm breeze cutting through the November air, leaves falling red, yellow, brown to the ground, but still t-shirt weather when yesterday we were in winter coats. Home is the Mistral whistling through the mountains into the valley, a city where the blue sky is tainted by brown pollution, nestled down between different mountain ranges. Vercors, Chartreuse, Belledonne: that is where I am from. France is nights spent sitting on the statue of Berlioz singing songs with a bottle of rose in my hands, hand in hand with my best friend, running through the cobbled streets causing havoc. Home is ivresse, home is warm bread and brie, ravioles baked in the oven, and countless espressos sitting outside en terrasse, no matter how hot or cold it is. Home is the relentless snow in the summer, and the snowcapped mountains in the winter. Home is opening your window shutters every morning to be greeted by the foot of a mountain, looming up into the sky, faces in the rocks, trees that turn with the seasons, somewhat oppressing, mostly a safety blanket. Never a real sunset on the horizon, sometimes I missed that, but those beautifully dramatic thunderstorms made up for it twice over. Dancing in the rain, happy faces, a kind of freedom from everything. Home is teenage years and metal and grunge and goth and friendships that last forever. Home is the most beautiful language in the world.

The smell of 5am in the spring, early morning jogger passing late night last caller, city that never sleeps: that is home. New York City, the place where so many dreams go to die, where so many dreams go to shine, is my home. A decade of decadence, a decade of wonder, of ups and downs and squiggly all arounds: a home that I never expected, but the home that I always craved. So many boots worn into the ground, uptown, downtown, Brooklyn, Queens, bridges and tunnels and subways and ferries. I can still find my way there blindfolded, the city sounds music to my ears. City sounds at night put me to sleep now, silence keeps me awake, ears craving the soothing sounds of sirens and cars, loud beats and voices travelling below my window. Home is the smell of laundry, bakery, trash, and stale beer all on the same block. Home is where love waxed and waned, and finally fell straight. Home is where my daughters were born, where the eldest took her first steps, and where life took a different turn. New York City: city where I lost and found myself over and over again, falling, crawling, standing up and walking tall. Home that haunts my dreams and my daydreams. Homesickness is the strongest with this one.

And now, home is here in this little city, capital of such a big state. Boiling hot in the summer, damp in the winter, wedged between desert and mountain, I suppose it is home. Home because we have a home, and home because my family is here. I still wander the streets like a stranger, one foot on, one foot off; looking for places we can make our own. We live in the bustle, but it is quiet, and we walk everywhere, every day. Past the Capitol where laws are passed and protests are held, through the gardens where each tree proudly displays a name and a history, up, up towards the real bustle, figuring out where we belong. I have known Sacramento on and off for 17 years and she appears to be struggling. Growing, but not fast enough, streets a mess of new and tumbledown, not enough room for the residents, K Street an image of the US that no one wants the world to see. Old Sacramento has my heart; the rumble of the wooden sidewalks as the stroller rolls over the slats, Evangeline’s beckoning us inside, memories of centuries lingering in the alleyways. I learn to love you, new home, the place where my son was born, but we will not be staying, our plans have many more horizons ahead of them.

Laced in between those homes are other homes, temporary stays that became more permanent, and forever etched into my mind. Barefoot walks to the edge of the moshav, running around the kibbutz at night… The little house in the suburbs, the place where I learnt what prejudice really meant, being spat on because I wasn’t blonde and didn’t speak Dutch. Biking to school, rain or shine, learning a new language in the space of weeks, months, little brains like sponges, watching, absorbing, listening. I still smell the Prasad in India, the overpowering smell of flowers on the tomb in the early morning, a perfect quiet, no one to bother me while I wrote and sketched. Sterilized water in containers outside of the rooms, perfectly crafted vegetarian meals, and people from all walks of life, a moment in time, ships passing through the night. That balcony in Barcelona, summer moon shining through my cigarette smoke as I listened to Cat Stevens and dreamed about coming back home, because those streets reminded me of home, of France home. My life is formed by a pattern of homes, all tracing backwards and forwards, down hills, over mountains, with many, many flights between them.

One day we will make our home somewhere else again. Another country, maybe one I have never resided in before, maybe one that I already call home. The wind has a tendency to turn and cast me off into all types of directions, heart first, the rest following right behind. If there is one thing I have learnt it is to never wait for something to happen, instead one should grab ahold of it and not let go.

Home and the Heart

I will always remember the first snowfall of winter, that sudden peace all around, snowflakes creating a barrier against the usual city sounds. I would watch and wait, hoping that it would settle fast, so that I could make the first footsteps in the snow, a satisfying crunch in those soft layers of snow. There is something very special about that first snowfall, magical nearly, everything is slower and less sudden, and a soft glow emanates around the city, silence. By the time February arrives the snow has become an inconvenience, piles of blackened ice-snow packed up against sidewalks and eyes searching for the first signs of Spring, but back in December the snow is just magic. Have you ever been snowed into your apartment building? I have, quite literally, and had to wait for friendly outsiders to dig us out. New York City may be a huge city but it is on the cusp of so many elements, and sometimes lets Mother Nature unleash herself all over the population.

That includes hurricanes. We were warned but never really believed the hurricane would hit us straight on like a ton of bricks. Hurricane parties, all snuggled up in our homes or local bars and then BAM, the power disappeared, only to return over a week later. Tunnels and streets flooded with salt water, houses destroyed by wind and rain and waves and fire. Utter destruction. There was a huge shortage of gasoline, cars would line up for blocks and blocks near a gas station, drivers sleeping in their cars, waiting for a tanker to hopefully arrive. We walked a lot, thinking about friends and family and strangers who were a lot worse off than we were, hoping that we would be able to go back to work sooner rather than later, collecting food and clothes for people who had become homeless overnight, losing everything in the process. A hurricane is no laughing matter, no matter the category, and can cause massive damage in the space of minutes. I will never, ever underestimate the power of Nature again.

I sometimes did very stupid things. I went up to the roof of our building when the storm was hitting the hardest and stood there screaming in the wind. There were piles of loose wood on the roof and I could only stand up by holding on the railing with both hands. Exhilarating but so, so stupid.

My feet still walk through the streets, blindly following the routes that I would take day in, day out. Up the steps from the J train stop on the corner of Essex and Delancey, along Delancey, turning north on Orchard. Popping into Le French Diner (the original one) for a coffee or lunch before heading into 200 or Taqueria for work. Walking around the neighbourhood in Flushing, listening for the sounds of the ice cream truck and wondering when we could move back to Brooklyn again. I can close my eyes and look up, up, up to Empire State Building, see the reflection of the sun in the Chrysler and then stomp down, down, downtown towards my Ludlow and Orchard again, ready for anything that the day or night would throw at me. I can still smell all the city smells so vividly, the trash, the Laundromats, the fresh food frying from carts on the street. The subway smell, one that you never forget, and definitely not after 11 years of taking it up and down, east to west, west to east, north to south and all the way back round again.

Spring always arrived as a surprise, but a well-awaited and old-friend surprise. One day you would be complaining about the bitter wind in March and the next windows would be opened and the fresh, sweet air would bear tidings of sun and longer days and blossoming magnolia trees. Winter coats and scarves and hats took the backseat of the closet again, replaced by dresses and cardigans and my everlasting Fryes, stomping through the city streets season after season, bar after bar. Spring always brought hope and happiness, bright lights and better times, beaches and lazy days exploring new places in the city, photographing walls and people and buildings. I always moved house in the spring, from the Lower East Side to Spanish Harlem to the West Village to Brooklyn. Only my last move happened in the winter, between two snowstorms at 34 weeks pregnant. There was more of a rush with that one, the rush to create a new family home in the city we all loved so much.

Good news and bad news, life and death, friendships born and friendships disappearing, all moving parts in the whirlpool that is life in New York City. For such a little island that is Manhattan, there is a lifetime of discoveries and happiness, sadness and changes to come across, a death on Broadway leading to a marriage on 116th and a birth on Avenue A. Scars created by heartbreak and sadness, healed by ointments created from love and joy, an army of people always by your side wherever your feet took you to. I have never felt as at home as I felt in New York, from the moment I saw the skyline in my cab ride from JFK, and the moment I said goodbye to the skyline 11 years later. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of the city, of the streets, of the smells, of the memories, of the friends. I think of the many mistakes, and of all the better things that I did. The stories are coming along, I sometimes worry I will forget them and then I remember that I can’t forget nearly a third of my life just like that. So while I shed a tear writing this, I also feel so inspired and renewed and know that once a home is found, it always remains home, no matter how far away your feet are, pieces of your heart and soul remain, even if all of the buildings have disappeared…

Rockaway Beach in the summer, hungover or sober, year after year. Those waves, that sand, the Sand Bar. That humid air, unrelenting, but never bad enough to actually wish for winter. Enough to wish for sunset when the breeze would brush the hairs on your arms ever so slightly, live music sounds coming from bars and clubs and open windows, strolling down the busy streets, smoking cigarettes and chatting about love and life and dreams. Midnight would turn into 5am and sometimes artificial joy would turn to black, but other times 5am meant pulling the gate on the bar and grabbing a sandwich and tea at Sugar on the corner. Going to bed when the sun was rising, or already risen, was a normal activity, waking in the early afternoon, ready for the next adventure. Walking across the Williamsburg Bridge was always a highlight, touching the skyline with the tips of my fingers and reading the words etched into the ground and the walls along the way.

And summer always turns into autumn, September bright and beautiful, perfect beach weather because everyone has gone home, and those of us who don’t work normal hours or normal days can enjoy the peace under the sun. The sunset seen from the roof, skies of fiery red and pink and purple and yellow, casting a glow over the city, one last gasp of natural light before the city lights illuminate the sky again.  Camera in hand I would walk and walk, capturing everything I could see, year in year out, through-out the seasons, memories in my head, on my screen and hanging from my walls. Beautiful city you will always be mine.        

Here and There

An Angel Passes By

Autumn's Place

Of Instability and Growing Roots

Ramblings: Moving Again...

Two years ago Cesar and I started our search for an apartment together where we would start to raise our family. It broke my heart to have to move from Bushwick after nearly seven years there, but there was really no way we could afford to pay the rents there with the way they were rising. It would have been doable if I hadn’t been pregnant with the intention of taking 3 months off work (and there is no paid maternity leave in the service industry… I was lucky that my job was being kept open). Anyway, I wrote about how we ended up in Flushing here. And it ended up for the best because I didn’t go back to my job and ended up working on building up my freelance writing career while being a stay at home mum with Luna.

I’ve grown to love Flushing tremendously. It took me a while, but now that we are really settled and have found “our” little places, like our two favourite diners, our bagel shop, our preferred supermarkets I’ve really started to consider our neighbourhood home. We’ve made friends at our different locations and I always stop in to different places for a quick chat when we are out and about. Through trial and error we found the best take-out places and I still have some Indian places to try out. I also love our apartment. It has been both Luna’s and Aurora’s first home, the place where Luna said her first word and took her first steps. The apartment is a good size, and while exorbitant for a 1 bedroom in most places in the US, very good rent-wise for NYC. It’s not all perfect, it’s an old building and we’ve had issues with cockroaches coming through the pipes and I’m sure there is a mould problem in one of the walls (even though the super assures me there isn’t). Our upstairs neighbours have no regard whatsoever for the fact that they live above someone and they sound like a herd of elephants screaming at each other 24/7. (Seeing as I can hear them screaming and throwing things at each other all the time I sometimes really wonder if I should call the cops, but I don’t want to be that annoying neighbour). I’m being serious though – I understand the sounds of their kid running around during the day and maybe early evening, but the stomping, screaming and throwing things after midnight? Not cool. Especially after he came to complain about our music at 4pm one day (it wasn’t even loud). Also I think he may be a little evil and treats his wife terribly. But anyway, apart from a few issues we have been perfectly happy here. We are on the first floor which is great for getting the stroller in and out of the apartment, especially with groceries, and our windows look out onto the courtyard so we don’t really get any street noise coming in. That also means that the apartment can be a little dark, especially in the winter which does bother me a little, but nothing a few well-placed lamps can’t fix.

So, anyway, our lovely neighbours moved away in the spring and the landlord spent about 3 months completely renovating their old apartment. Around the same time that they started showing it to prospective tenants (October) we received our lease renewal form. Our lease isn’t up until January 31st so I was a bit surprised and when I actually read it I thought I was having a nightmare, or at least in sudden need of glasses. They were raising the rent by over 40%!! Granted this place is great value but definitely not worth just under 2 grand. The apartment is old, the appliances are on their way to being ancient, the kitchen floor is peeling off and the bathtub is probably from when the apartments were first built. Our apartment is rent stabilized, but we have what is called a preferential rent agreement, where the landlord provides the “market rate” for the apartment and then halves it for this “preferential rate”. Now, if I hadn’t been 7 months pregnant and we weren’t in dire need of an apartment when we signed the lease I would have researched it a little better. I guess hindsight is a bitch sometimes, but anyway, moving on. According to certain information I found thanks to some of my and my friend Meg’s research, we could actually fight it, but neither Cesar nor I had the energy. (Something to keep in mind if you are presented with a preferential rent agreement in your lease).

So we decided that we were going to find a better place, maybe two rooms. There aren’t very many affordable places in NYC anymore… Cesar went to look at a couple of areas in the Bronx and we were pretty sure that was where we were heading, and we already knew we were going to have to pay more for anything we looked at. And there was the eternal issue of having to save enough to move… At least one month’s rent and one month security, which is fine if you aren’t living paycheck to paycheck, not so much when you are struggling. But then our building manager asked us if we would like to stay in the building as a few apartments were being vacated, would be gut renovated and then put on the market again for $300 more a month. My initial thought was “eff off!!”, but once we actually discussed it we realised that it would be cheaper than getting a new place elsewhere, because an extra $300 every month for a year would be equal or less than all of the initial moving costs!

So, in January we will be moving 4 floors up to a place full of light and no upstairs neighbours! I’m well aware that we are now going to become the annoying neighbours upstairs with stomping kids so we shall be putting rugs down in the hope that it will help somewhat! I’m excited – they have done a great job on the finished apartments… New electricity set up, new bathroom, new kitchen, new floors. I’m excited for the light and the view over this part of Flushing, and also for the little fire escape where we can start a little herb garden. And no need to change doctors and routines. It may be a little annoying trekking up and down 4 flights of stairs with 2 small kids but we will deal with that. I’m planning on locking the stroller under the stairs – I don’t see how it could be a problem as it won’t be a fire hazard or in the way. I’m looking forward to moving into a place that is going to be brand new and clean and light and bright! No need to scrub the bathtub and tiles with bleach just to see the black mould return within a few days. (I had a bit of a moment back when I was 38 weeks pregnant with Aurora and decided to scrub the entire bathroom with pure bleach. It wasn’t very smart).

So we are good for another year, but how much more feasible is living here anymore? When I weigh the pros and cons of moving elsewhere, like Northern California, the pros have begun to outweigh the cons. Yes, I wanted our kids to grow up in the city I have learnt to call home, but now it’s become more important to me that we can afford to rent a little house with a back garden and enough space for us all to have space. Room for Cesar to work on his construction stuff and artwork, room for me to work comfortably on my writing and room for the girls to run around and play freely. We would also love to adopt a dog. As I’ve said before, as long as we are altogether it doesn’t really matter where we are anymore. And I’m so used to missing places that it should make missing NYC easier! Loving living here hasn’t stopped me from missing France every single day.

So that’s where we are now. Moving and saving and making plans for the future. A lot has changed in less than 3 years! Still in our castle-like building for the next year, but who knows what will be home after that!

Ramblings: Adapting

The other day, out of the blue, Cesar asked me if I ever get lonely when I’m at home alone with the baby. He works long hours and has a 90 minute commute each way, so he is often away from the house for 12-16 hours at a time. The question brought me back to the early days, about two to three months after Luna was born, and I started to compare that time to today. I don’t feel lonely at all today. Sometimes I don’t actually feel there is enough time in the day to get everything done! With looking after Luna, writing and delivering assignments on time, keeping the house somewhat clean and tidy, grocery shopping, and cooking food, I sometimes wish that I didn’t get so tired by 11pm and could work later into the night on my own personal writing! It’s not like the old days when I could subsist on a few hours of sleep a night; with breastfeeding and running after a very active 8 month old all day, I need at least 4 hours nowadays. Not that I get much uninterrupted sleep yet, but that’s another story… When I feel I need more adult interaction, or just a change of scenery, I make plans with friends, go into the city or call someone. Friends come and visit and I love to go out on visits myself. Luna is a real city child, she loves the subway, loves interacting with other people and is comfortable hanging out in the Ergo all day, sitting in restaurants and walking around.

When I think back to 5 or 6 months ago I know I felt a little lonely and isolated at times. If I had to do it all over again I don’t think we would have moved to a neighbourhood we didn’t know at all, in the middle of the worst winter in a while at 34 weeks pregnant. There was so much snow and I was still working 50-60 hours a week so we never really got to explore the neighbourhood before Luna was born. After the 39th week it took so long for me to waddle anywhere! And then during those first few weeks after Luna was born I was way too sleep deprived to even care about conversing with anyone. Cesar was working upwards of 80 hours a week and when Luna was about 2 months old and I started feeling normal again I suddenly realised that the days would often stretch out. I would try to go to the city when I could but there were so many days that it all seemed too tiring, or it was too hot, or Luna was cranky. We would go for walks in the neighbourhood, go to the Rite Aid around the corner or the Chinese supermarkets and made friends with the people working there, just to have an actual conversation with an adult human being. Some friends came to visit; others kind of disappeared off the face of the earth. Nothing wrong with that (the latter), I’ve been in the same position before and probably not made as much as an effort as I could have done. It’s part of life.

In hindsight those few months were really all about adaptation. I went from working in a busy restaurant until I was 39 weeks along to being at home with a tiny baby in a neighbourhood that I didn’t know. I was used to running around at work and talking to many people every day. I was used to spending all my time with Cesar, at work and out of work. Orchard Street was sort of like a family and it was a little strange not seeing all the regulars on a daily basis. I didn’t miss going out, I didn’t actually really miss anything, I was really just trying to adapt to my own new life. Spending more time with other friends who have children, getting into a new kind of routine, figuring out how to find time to be able to write and freelance. Getting to really explore Flushing and actually learn to love living here. You can only imagine life with a newborn, but you never really know how it will be until you are living it. And even then it has a tendency to change every week! And you just learn to relax and adapt accordingly. The emotions, the worries, the laughs and that love that is unlike anything you have ever felt before.  Of course, like with anything, there are still some days when I miss the hustle and the bustle of working in a restaurant, but on those days we make a quick trip into the city to visit everyone, and by the time we get home I’m happy to be home again.

I’m still me. I still like the same things, dance to the same songs, read the same books and wear the same clothes (although maybe a size or two larger). I still have the same thoughts and dreams; they are just a little bit bigger nowadays! On top of everything I was before I am now a mother too. And it’s the most amazing role I have ever had to live. But it’s not always easy, and if anyone ever feels lonely or isolated contact me and I will be over as soon as I can, or call you for a chat if you aren’t nearby. Sometimes we all just need someone else to talk to <3

Ramblings: The Tales of Flushing

Union St & Northern Blvd

This time last year I was walking around Bushwick, where I had lived for the previous 5 years, working on the Lower East Side and didn’t even know I was pregnant. Now I live in Flushing, Queens with Cesar and Luna and our cat Joey Ramone, and just realised today that I haven’t actually left Flushing for the past 4 weeks. It’s not that I don’t want to travel with Luna, the opposite; I was taking her on the subway before she was 5 weeks old, and she’s been to Brooklyn and Manhattan several times. It’s just that it’s been so hot over the past few weeks, and the idea of trekking into the city with a grumpy, hot baby hasn’t been a priority. And now that she’s going through an “I don’t want to nap EVER” phase the idea is even less appetizing. The stroller is too hot and too annoying on the subway. The carriers I have are wonderful, but they also get too hot (even the mesh one), and seeing as the last place Cesar wants to go on his day off is back into the city, travel plans assume it would be just Luna and I, so no one to hold her if need a break. So anyway, that is the explanation of why I haven’t left Queens for a while.

Mosque on 32nd Ave

We moved here for several reasons, but mainly because we found a good sized one bedroom apartment on the first floor for a relatively good price in terms of NYC rents. We liked the neighbourhood and the amount of parks and the quiet area we would be living in. It’s about 15 minutes walking distance from the bustle of the Main St subway stop (right at the end of the 7 train), and our neighbours are a wonderful couple who have lived here for 30 years and who share their delicious cooking with us on a weekly basis (I need to start baking again so I can actually repay them for their generosity). All I knew about Flushing before I moved here was that it was where the nanny in, well, The Nanny, grew up (and if you are French or grew up in France you will know that series off by heart as it was on every night for years on M6 around 8pm). Also, to be completely honest, I was 28 weeks pregnant when we started looking for a place and didn’t want to spend too much time on the search. I was pretty much ready to move anywhere.

Parsons & 33rd

I love people. But I also love my alone time. I love my daughter and I love my boyfriend. But being a first time mother can be a little isolating even for the toughest of us. Especially if your significant other works a million hours a week in the city (plus now that you live far into Queens there is a long commute too). So there are some days when I really crave interaction with other adults. Actually, not any other adult, but people I know and who know me. Phones are great, especially nowadays when you can FaceTime, and visits are great too, but I can’t expect people to always come out here (although a couple do on a very regular basis and that is also great). It was actually easier to be out and about when Luna was tiny, now it’s a little bit more difficult as she gets grumpy much, much faster. And of course the heat doesn’t help either! We’ve had some ups and downs this past month, so all plans that I have been trying to make with myself to go on visits outside of Flushing towards more adult company have been a little thwarted, what with doctors’ appointments and sleep regressions and sleep deprivation. So it’s been a month of Flushing really, and I’ve actually enjoyed it. I've also kind of enjoyed the "alone" time too, it has given me a chance to reflect on a lot of things, to discover more of where we live and to really focus on Luna and life as a stay at home mum. There are some days that I wish we hadn't moved out so far, just because of Cesar's commute time and also because I don't always have the energy to go to the city or Brooklyn to see friends and catch up, but it would be even more of a struggle if we had a smaller apartment and a higher rent! I think once Luna gets past this long-lasting growth spurt and the weather is a little less hot it will be a whole different story!

One of the many beautiful houses tucked away on the streets of Flushing

I love that I can take Luna for a walk around the quiet streets, looking at pretty houses on our way to one of the parks and not have to deal with the noise and the smells of the city. Wandering down Parsons Blvd you will see a church or temple or mosque for every single type of religion and denomination, the blue and white tower of the mosque contrasting with the angry thunder clouds and the Buddhas sitting peacefully in the garden, watching over the street. We often go to Bowne Park to look at the turtles in the pond and the osprey that likes to relax by the fountain, and then walk back through different streets, gazing at all of the different houses and making up stories about how they came to be and who lives in them. I say we, but in reality it’s really me making up the stories and telling them to Luna. Or when Cesar is with us, us making them up together and telling them to Luna. One day after a long walk in search of a specific tattoo artist and Mexican food (we weren’t actually looking for the latter but came across it) we walked past a house that then made us think of an imaginary world which one day may well become a children’s book, or books (which I want to start writing before I forget about it). All based in the streets of Flushing, Queens.

Buddha Garden

All of this Flushing is the Flushing you will probably never see if you don’t live here. What most people know is the area around Main St, the last stop on the 7 train. It’s the second Chinatown in the city, probably bigger than the one in Manhattan nowadays (although I personally haven’t measured to compare) – so many shops and people and more people and cars and more people. It’s loud and full of not so great smells and people who stand in your way or who don’t walk fast enough. But it’s also full of the most interesting shops and restaurants and market, a mix of Chinese and Korean and Vietnamese and Indian and American. It’s like a mini city within the bigger city, a place contained within itself. Citifield is within walking distance (if you don’t mind walking 30 minutes), as is Flushing Meadows Park. Corona isn’t far away, neither is Jackson Heights, and it really doesn’t take longer than an hour to get to the Lower East Side from Main St. Suburbs within the city, somewhere very different to where I have been living for most of my 10 years in this city. I don’t love it or hate it – it works well for us for now and I find it to be a very interesting place. We have our friends at the local deli, and everyone knows Luna at the Rite Aid round the corner. The ladies at the Laundromat know us by our name and I actually find it kind of fun doing our laundry there (I was dreading it after having had laundry in our unit for 6 years in Bushwick). Cesar loves his chicken wings with beef fried rice from one of the Chinese places down the street and I love the samosas and mattar paneer from the Indian spot not far away.

Dragonfruit!

One thing I do miss is the lack of “regular” supermarkets and the complete lack of “organic” markets. There is however, an overabundance of Chinese supermarkets (3 within 2 blocks of our apartment). These places are really great for produce (and super cheap too), rice and noodles, beans, tofu, but not so great for everything else we want to eat (pasta, cheeses, yogurts, tortillas, bread, hummus etc etc). There is a Pathmark about a 25 minute walk away, but there are no smaller shops around where I can pick things like that up altogether all at once. I do miss Mr Kiwi for that! I’m going to have to be more proactive about making lists and getting everything that we can’t get around the corner in one go as opposed to planning on the fly. I have to say that there are some of the most interesting things in some of the supermarkets… The other day I saw a tub of live toads, right by the crabs and lobsters. They were large toads too! Do people eat toads?! How do you prepare a toad? Toad stew? Toad legs?? Steak and toad? I really must look this up!! Hmm yes it appears that toad is a delicacy in Cantonese cuisine. Yum. (Not! I’m still very much a vegetarian). It’s a pity Chinese cuisine is not on my list of favourites because I would be in heaven if it was. It’s also a pity that I am a vegetarian, a pity I could never stand meat or fish, especially fish, as the array of fresh fish on display is pretty amazing. I do love tofu, but I can’t even eat that right now as it disagrees with Luna!

Noodles. No idea what they are made from

I should probably branch out and try some of the “different” things that are on sale in these supermarkets. I really want to try dragonfruit as they are so pretty, but I have read that they are pretty bland in comparison to other fruit so I don’t know if it is really worth it. I’m sort of a picky eater (I love fruit and vegetables and grains and beans and nuts but I dislike meat and fish and anything squishy or slimy or of strange texture), and that’s fine when you are cooking for yourself, but not when you are cooking for others, especially not when I really want to teach my daughter to have an array of tastes. My pickiness actually developed with age – I used to always eat everything on my plate whether I liked it or not, and as I grew up I just removed things I didn’t like from my diet. It IS a very healthy and colourful diet though (when you remove the chips and the chocolate and the pizza). I’m not planning on introducing solids into Luna’s diet until she’s way past her 6 month birthday, and even then it will be slowly, but I think it’s going to be a lot of fun (stay tuned for stories on that). I will just let Cesar do the meat and fish introduction when the time comes. Maybe I can make her mashed dragon fruit with a side of pureed lychee? No toad for a few years though!

Church on Northern Blvd

Anyway, I digress, back to Flushing! I love that I can walk around and bump into the same people over and over again. I’ve always loved creating a little neighbourhood for myself, wherever I have lived (which is why I feel like I never really lived in the West Village even though I was there for two years – no old-time neighbours, no friendly shopkeepers apart from the deli down the street, no bars or coffee shops that I wanted to hang out in – I spent nearly every waking hour on the LES). I think we are somewhat finding our spot here in Flushing, but I also feel like it is temporary; this is not where we will be living for more than a year or so. There are some things that I still find a little intimidating here, for example, I walked into a salon advertising “Nails” outside and everyone turned around and stared at me – for some reason I just bolted back out of the door. Maybe I will just do my own pedicure. Or maybe I will just go right back again and just ask if they do pedicures (next time I get a chance to have a break). Or when I walked into the supermarket with my camera in the stroller, ready to take photos of toads and turtles and dragon fruit and sour melons and ended up taking sneaky photos with my phone, as if I was going to be escorted out if I showed people I was taking photos. Yes, I can be a little strange, I know.

Turtle soup?

One thing that I really need to get used to is that people are quite rude here. I’m used to New York, I’m just not used to being pushed out of the way or nearly driven over every time I go outside! I’m now pretty vocal when anything annoys me, but when we first moved here I was very pregnant and it used to shock me how nobody had any manners when it came to interacting with others. One experience will always be impressed into my mind. Back in February I was still working till late at night and there were a few weekends when you had to take a shuttle bus to Mets-Willets to get the train. When I was with Cesar it was fine, he made sure I didn’t get trampled on, but one evening I was alone and found myself being pushed by a crowd, most of whom were men may I add, and when I turned round and asked people to stop pushing as I was 8 months pregnant and because there was a young child in front of me I got insulted by a man who just pushed even harder. I really wanted to punch him so hard that I broke his jaw but refrained from it. But then a lovely lady waited to help me off the bus when we got to our destination as it had stopped at the same level as piles of black snow, which gave me hope for mankind again. It was just the whole “if we push harder then people will move faster” attitude that have found seems to happen in other places too. Not everyone is rude of course, but I do avoid Main St as much as I can, and use the side streets where you can find the most interesting of shops and restaurants. I especially like walking along 37th Avenue, it’s an excellent work out with the hills, and doesn’t get as congested as Roosevelt does. Oh and when you get to the highest part there is such a nice view of Manhattan!

Toad in the hole?

There are many other places I would like to explore while we are here: I want to see more of Flushing Meadows Park, especially the Unisphere. I walked through the Botanical Garden with Luna and my mum last week, but the bridge to the Corona side of the park was closed off due to work, so that plan was foiled. There must be a way to walk there! I also would love to walk all the way up Parsons Blvd to the Whitestone Bridge park as there should be some great photo opportunities in that spot. I want to go to the Farmers Market and get all our fruit and veggies there over the summer. I would love to join the Y and take Luna to a water baby class (I suppose I could do that anywhere, but the Y is really only a 5 minute walk from our home). I should also look to see if there are any fun mommy and me classes around here, as it would be nice to meet other mums who are going through the same things (3 month sleep regression hell anyone?). I will look into that once I’m not so tired (we are back on a wake up every 2 hour at night schedule… I’ve been promised it will get better again).

So, yes, after the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem, the West Village, Bushwick I now live in Flushing. I wonder what will be next for us…