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Fitting in

Sister 3 asked me the other day how New York "fit." What she meant, of course, was how I fit with the city. Did it overwhelm me? Did I feel lost in it? Could I see myself returning to the Big Apple?

Quite simply, was it too big for this small town Texas girl?

No, it wasn't. Not at all. As I told Sister 3 (and I can't believe I used the rom-com "Sweet Home Alabama" to illustrate my point), I fit back home on the farm AND I fit in NYC. (For "Sweet Home Alabama"-illiterates, there's this scene where Reese Witherspoon's character, who has left her small town and made a success in the big city, is talking to her ex in a pet cemetery about the fact that she fits into both her old life in rural Alabama and her new life in NYC. Trust me, the scene is much more romantic - and apropos to my life - than I've just described.)

It was a strange feeling this summer, but New York City felt very small, even tiny at times. Maybe because it's landlocked. I could walk from the western border of the island to the eastern border. There were only so many streets that ran from the north to the south - around 230 or so. I could take the subway from the southern tip of Manhattan near Brooklyn to the upper tip right by the Bronx.

From Riverside Park, where I used to run every evening on the banks of the Hudson River, I could actually see New Jersey - a whole other state.

See, NYC was small, especially compared to the expansiveness of Texas I'd grown up around

As a kid, I would climb up the TV tower at our house, jump to the roof and climb to the very top peak. On clear nights, I could see the lights from all the surrounding towns - all 30 miles away.

NYC may be big in terms of population, but to me, it just seemed like a tiny little island. Not near as big and scary as a North Texas pasture that goes on until the horizon.

Posted by Lara Richards at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)