manhattan transfer

Many thanks to S’ sister, who, by getting married there, gave us a reason to spend four glorious days in New York. We were a little worried about the Atlantic crossing with the boys – based on past experience – but it was, if not pleasant (when is air travel, ever, these days?) a non-event in both directions.

Outside the events of the wedding, our trip seemed dominated by transportation and architecture. With only four days, there was a lot of getting from place to place, and it was amazing how the landscape – the “built environment,” as they say – kept changing so dramatically within a relatively small footprint. It’s so much more kinetic, so much more dense than Paris. It’s the energy and the density that binds everything together, even as the buildings range from human-scale brownstones to industrial refurbishments to the skyscrapers which seem to belong in New York in a way that is just stage setting almost everywhere else. Maybe it’s the island. We availed ourselves of cabs and car services for our many trips across the boroughs – a slightly guilty luxury for us, and a huge treat for G, who rides in cars so rarely over here in Paris. Everything from the seatbelts to the locks to the automatic windows was endlessly fascinating. We were lucky to wind up with all our fingers and everyone still in the car. The car window was also a great vantage point for viewing all the other cars and trucks and things that go – New York being also, as a two-year-old’s eye will tell you, a paradise for motorized vehicles of all kinds. B just took it all in as usual, importing with him the French philosophy of “rester zen.”

I had wondered what it would be like to be back in the States after being gone for so long, but New York, a city I love, made for a soft landing. I’d been warned that things might seem diminished, tacky, or just bizarre, that I would be aware of how much we still owe to Europe in the way we make cities and how much doesn’t translate well in the crossing. But it was all just wonderful. New York, if anything, looked better than the last time I was there – the weather, the people and the place were all pulling out the stops in terms of charm. People smiled and greeted us regularly on the street, even as they all seemed sort of good-naturedly busy in a way I realize I have missed. Europe does so much so beautifully, but it doesn’t bustle. New York’s noise and brusque friendliness were a bright counterpoint to Paris’ peaceful reserve, and the new seemed less to clash with the old than just to be pleasantly different.

The wedding itself was in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which by all right should seem like a big, faux-Gothic pile, but instead, with its sped-up, jumbled history, owns the several city blocks it occupies as if it has always been there (it has certainly always been under construction). So when my beautiful sister-in-law stepped out from behind the construction screen covering up the better part of the central nave – as if she had been playing a game of hide and seek and just stopped in to get married – with the noise of the glorious cathedral organ erupting behind her, it didn’t seem at all like an imitation of European architecture or religion, but more like a magnificent re-imagining. Like New York just shrugged and said, “This is the way we do it here.”

(Or maybe it’s just that everyone’s vision is getting blurred. Only the week before we had been in a 17th century French church for the baptism of an American baby by an African priest. Everything in French, and no one was speaking their mother tongue). I cried at the wedding, of course, and had to wipe my eyes on a diaper, which was the only thing available.

The reception was in the fabulous, peeling Elizabethan hall next door, where we danced the night away and took turns holding all the babies. We saw so many of our family and friends we could hardly process it – a whirlwind. It left us wanting more. So that part of it, at least, it makes it a little easier knowing, as we do now, that our time in Paris is rapidly coming to an end and we’ll be going home soon, for good (well, for awhile). I haven’t wanted to write about it yet – I’m not quite ready to finish things up here, but who really wants to hear my sorrows after two very full years of getting to live in Paris? It seems unsporting to be sad.

Anyway. At the end of the wedding reception, the bride and groom, who had doubled back to pick up a forgotten bag, were accidentally left behind by the car service and without a way back to the hotel. So my sister-in-law stepped into the street in her wedding dress and hailed a cab. The startled cab driver said, “Is this for real?” and when they said yes, he gave them a ride for free. My sister-in-law gave him her bouquet. The whole time we’ve lived in Paris, I’ve felt like that cab driver. But it won’t be so bad to be back.