Life After 50

It feels like I have lived several lives, but I didn't start living until 2 1/2 years ago. This is how is all started.

Long before I actually left for New York, I was imagining what my life would be like. I thought about everything from where I would live, to what my apartment would be like, to how I would dress and who my friends would be.
I saw myself living in a combination of Meg Ryan’s apartments from Kate and Leopold and You’ve Got Mail. Like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffanys, there would be a fire escape on which I could gain access to the apartment below or above where my gay male best friend lived. I would have a stoop where I would sit on summer days. My apartment would be on an upper floor, because unlike apartments in Texas which are seldom more than 2 stories high, it would have an elevator. It would be located on the east side, midtown, although, Gramercy Park or Chelsea would be okay. There would be a great deli on the corner and a small grocery store with a wonderful produce section across the street. The subway would not be on my block, but not more than two blocks away. A wonderful old couple who had been married forever would live across the hall from me. They would teach me everything I needed to know about living in New York. In exchange, I would pick up a few things for them when I ran errands or help them get to their occasional appointment. They would invite me for dinner once a week, and sometimes there would be a single friend they wanted me to meet.
Due to the fact that I would be taking as little as possible with me to New York, I would for the most part have to purchase a whole new wardrobe. Everything I bought would be totally New York, although I wasn’t sure exactly what that was. When I returned to Texas for an occasional visit I would feel totally conspicuous in my new clothes. I would never wear less than a two-inch heels unless I was running Saturday morning errands or taking Kharma to the dog park. I would of course have a purse to match every pair of shoes. Best of all, I would own multiple coats. I have as most people in South and Central Texas always owned three coats; a raincoat, a long coat and a short coat in neutral colors. My first coat purchase would be either cobalt blue or red.
My new friends would not be unlike most of the friends I have now, but there would be much more exciting things to do with them, going to; the ballet, the theatre, weekend trips, happy hours at places with great atmosphere. As a result of all the evening outings, my evening wear would outnumber my day wear for the first time in my life. I would even find it necessary to own an extensive wardrobe of high-heel shoes and dress coats in an array of colors.
I found it increasingly difficult to fall asleep at night with this romantic vision of my new life dancing in my head. The only thing that stood between my and this exciting new life was 2000 miles.
“Why,” I ask myself, “would a 52 year old woman whose whole life has been lived according to Murphy’s Law want to sell everything she owns and move 2,000 miles away from family and friends. Why move to a place she has only visited twice and one of those visits had been 30 years ago.”
The first time I visited New York City, I was 21 years old. A traveling companion for a friend of my mother’s whose own children had no desire to see the world. Lucky me. I didn’t know it then, but I realize it now, that I was seeing the city, not through the eyes of a tourist, but through the eyes of a future resident. I even told Clara, the lady I was traveling with, that I wanted to live here someday. She responded with something like, “Your mother would kill me.” But anyhow, I wasn’t so much interested in seeing the Statue of Liberty of the Empire State Building as I was in watching the people. Anyone who has ever spent much time in New York or who lives there can spot a tourist a mile away. They stroll. They stop mid-sidewalk. They look up. They walk side-by-side blocking the sidewalk. They don’t have to have a camera in their hand or a subway map to stand out as a tourist. So it was easy to pick out the residents, and to watch them. There was just something about New Yorkers that I was drawn to. I wanted to be one of them.
Almost 30 years later, my youngest daughter gets accepted to Fordham University and the dream was alive again. So I applied for a teaching position. When I told my Elyse, my daughter, that the New York City Department of Education was interested in interviewing me, she told me in no uncertain terms that if I moved to New York, she would stay in Austin. Apparently the reason for applying to schools that are 2.000 miles from home is to be on your own, not have your mother follow you. She did permit me to visit, once. I spent a week in March visiting her. Almost from the moment we set foot outside the hotel the first morning, the old feeling came back. Some people might think that the week’s worth of freezing rain and snow might have convinced me that New York was not such a great place to live. It didn’t.
I was secretly thrilled when my daughter decided to come home after her freshman year. I knew she was miserable there. But, just because she was back in Texas did not mean the DOE was no longer interested in me. In fact they were sending someone to Austin and wanted to interview me. I went. They offered me a job. I accepted it.
A dream 30 years in the making was about to come true. I’m not sure what I was expecting to happen. What did happen was what I should have expected. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. At the end of the year when a normal people would be packing their bags and heading home, I was looking to stay.