Country Girl/City Girl

Books of Wonder, 18 W. 18th Street, New York

I’m going to the city.  It should be nice.  I’ve visited cities often enough that I don’t freak out about the traffic or get flustered by the onslaught of sensory input, but I certainly notice that it’s different from my quiet country existence.  I prepare myself to see lots of people and tall buildings tight together.  Exhaust and bakery scents will mix with the rainy sidewalk smell.  There are likely to be limos and beggars, pretzel guys and high-heeled women with small dogs.  I expect gray, and a little shop where I can buy a paper of safety pins for my loose skirt, and black hole entrances to parking garages.  In a long, narrow coffee place, important strangers will talk loudly, and I’ll find a church with quiet candles lit on the side.  I expect to feel anonymous among millions, and also welcomed.  Once a busload of New Yorkers passed forward their spare change to cover the fares for me and my little kids when we boarded unprepared.  I’m still thankful.

Cape Cod, June 2011

Recently, by contrast, I spent a couple days on Cape Cod where I took walks alone along the shore.  Absence of people stretched toward the horizon, magnifying the lapping noise of the water, encouraging me to indulge my imagination, to get lost in my mind while my feet moved forward over black seaweed and sand.  I went over a lip of land to find a wider beach and seals offshore.  Wind filled my ears and I became the discoverer, the first and only to ever find this continent.  I wanted never to return.

If you’re in NYC this Sunday, come stop by Books of Wonder, where I’ll be reading and signing from 1-3 with my friends Leah Cypess, Jen Nadol, Caitlin Kittredge, Kate Milford, and Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban.  I’ll be the one with sand in my sneakers.