April 2018: Maps
I’ve been thinking of drawing a map. It would be a map of all the landmarks of my youth, all the moments where my former self stands in the shadows of my present self walking by. This morning on the bus we passed by the tall brick police building where I went the second time I got mugged. There’s the cafe on Avenue A that’s gone now, the one where I sat, skinny and twenty four, waiting to the dark haired woman I had a crush on to come and meet me for our date. There’s a fluorescent storefront on Fifth Avenue near the Empire State Building where I bought a pair of boots one winter, knowing they’d be flimsy at $40 but too stubborn to care. It's random, but I always recognize where I've been.
This week I walked through the main concourse in Grand Central and glance at the time piece in the center of the busy room, where I waited for a girl from Boston, both of us meeting one another for the first time. I’d forgotten that we’d met here, in this place neither of us had any real purpose for, except that it was a beautiful room you could stand in for free. She recently wrote to me on Facebook to ask if I knew what had happened to the building tattooed in graffiti, the one across the street from the P.S. 1 museum in Queens. She didn’t add the clause, that it's the building where we snuck up to the rooftop to marvel st the skyline and kiss for the first time. I used to be so bold, walking into unlocked buildings and climbing the stairs like life had no consequences.
It’s gone, I told her, sharing a link to a sort of obituary of the building, back in 2013. She lives in Barcelona now. We saw each other a few years ago, when she was in New York for two days. I was only able to carve out a small lunch break in which to meet her. So it was that I gave her directions to the nursery school where I worked. It was my job to answer the doorbell when it rang, to buzz parents and children in. There was a window in front of my desk, but to truly get a good look at who was ringing the doorbell, I had to crane my neck, which I usually did while reaching for the buzzer. On this afternoon the lobby was busy with caregivers, toddlers. The buzzer rang and I looked up.
I hadn’t seen Adela in ten years, if not longer. She didn't post to social media in that way where her face was a constant. I honestly hadn't seen her, and to see her now, out of context in the daily realm of the nursery school, hand on the door as she waited to be buzzed in. She turned and saw me through the glass, and we both grinned, our faces mixed with shock and excitement. Up until recently she had been my longest relationship, each of us taking the Chinatown bus from one city the other to spend the weekend together. Now she was here, ten years older, standing by my desk amongst the hubbub of the school. There were glue sticks and children clamoring by, the phone ringing, someone's forgotten lunch in a floral lunch bag on the counter top.
"This is Adela," I said. Not that anyone I introduced her to knew what that meant.
I only had a half an hour for lunch. We got burritos and sat on a park bench in one of those strange industrial slices of park, some shrubs and flower beds jammed between the skyscrapers. When standing in line at the hole in the wall Mexican place, she nodded to the margarita slushy machine. "Are they any good?"
"Oh," I startled. It was like she was the last person from my past, the only one I hadn't seen. Everyone in my life knew I was sober. Everyone close to me knew why. "I don't drink anymore, actually."
She laughed. Then her face changed. "You're serious."
"I am."
"I can't imagine you without a drink."
I raised my eyebrows. It was warm for April. I was glad the sun was out. I hadn't expect the tender strings in my heart to stir at the sound of her voice, the way she squinted when she laughed, how she was taller than me. And I hadn't prepared for the bewilderment of my own sobriety. I'd spent more time in my life sober than I had drinking, by now. Except with her. When she knew me, I was so different.
There was no challenge in her voice. I sometimes worried that alcoholism would appear in someone else, possess them, charm me into drinking. It was like a fairy tale way of understanding addiction. Waiting for the wolf in girl's clothing to smile in just the right way.
The thirty minutes went fast. She told me about Barcelona, about the girl she was dating who just went back to Scotland. "How's your family?" I asked, like remembering beloved characters in a book I'd read a long time ago. I'd never met them, but I knew them. One brother, her parents divorced. Loving. Far away.
I told her about Emily. I told her about my family ("two kids!" she laughed, when I told her about my brother now). She walked me back to the nursery school, and I was dizzy with the strange pull of two worlds, the spell of seeing someone I'd honestly never expect to see again. Here, in my every day. I sometimes walk by the restaurant where we had our first date. I know the address of the apartment where I lived when we met, up on Lexington Avenue. Even in Boston, once, I wandered down the wrong street looking for a coffeeshop and was slammed with the sense memory of having been there before. It was the campus where she lived when we were dating. Another block I'd never expect to see again, but once I turned, I knew. I could see me young, naive, heavy with my bags from New York, ringing the doorbell, taking a step back, looking up into the cold night, waiting.
What if I collected all the paper doll versions of my past self, gave them each their own little dioramas? Could I keep all the things forever, then? Every mistake, every nostalgic night, every address? A map of my youth wouldn't provide direction, but it would provide a living document, a storybook, of everywhere I've been. Sometimes I just crave the perspective. Two weeks ago Emily and I won lottery tickets to see Angels in America on Broadway, and as we held hands, making our way down the tight aisle to our seats in the gilded theater, I thought, is this why we live here still? I'll never color in an entire map of this city, no matter how long I'm here. Recently I only cut the same path, over and over again, worn down with routine. That's why it always gives me a thrill to see my past self in a doorway, a bar window, a boutique, a park bench, a bodega. Layers upon layers upon layers. It gives me faith for the future selves I haven't met yet.
xo,
c
p.s.
* The 100 Day Project starts on Tuesday, April 3rd. I did this on a whim last year, choosing 100 days of creativity, and it was such a lovely experience. I bought new crayons and watercolors and sketchbooks and clay and basically anything I wanted to be creative with, and I made time, five minutes here, an hour there, to draw, to make things. The parameters of the project can be anything (100 days of drawing faces, 100 days of collage, 100 days of meditation, 100 days of blue, 100 days of poetry) - I still haven't decided yet what my 100 will be. But it's an experience I wanted to pass along. <3