Always A New Yorker

As I walked the hallways of Westbeth today, I felt like a New Yorker again. Westbeth isn't exactly like the rest of New York with its cosmetic surgery type buildings. I've waited a long time to hold my son, past the hallways where I used to roam only this time with Claire Bassett, a long time friend and neighbor. The hallways as usual were desolate and poorly lit. With ivry pointing at the colored doors and saying the colors in both Hebrew and English, I was sure the mind was falling; it was too surreal.

Yep, I felt like a twelve year old New Yorker all over again. Well, maybe fifteen or so.

I know that Claire felt that way again. She said, "Dorit, I can't believe you're a mom. I look at you and I see a fifteen year old."

In a way, she is definitely right. The seventeen years of living in Israel are as rural as they come and it's not my birthplace. My mom and dad of America is New York. And I'm starting all over again. but this time, I left my suitcase of ideologies somewhere else and the fifteen year old NYC girl has her night out instead of cleaning poopy diapers and reading bedtime stories to Ivry.

This year I am not committed to any lifestyle or identity. But I and Claire have grown to appreciate the dimensions of the walls and apartment sizes, windows, directions of apartments, people we both knew growing up and people whom we stayed away from, all in the heart of Greenwich Village. This is where it all began. Pulling each other on skateboards, playing catch and disturbing the neighbors, me a bespectacled teenager, and Claire, a intuitive forever questioning teenager. We mold our likeness as we learn all the nuances that made us 'tick' as kids. I believe that is part of becoming full circle.