Diary of a New Yorker: One Week in May

I developed my bi-monthly cold on the flight back to New York from the wedding, while watching Far and Away (10/10 top tier film. Will never not love). Got home and crawled into bed where David, who was out on the after-school activities shift, had pulled back the bedcover and left out a hot water bottle and Lemsip. It was the nicest thing I ever saw.

A gorgeous summer’s day. After dropping the kids to school in their new Dunnes gear, I tapped a woman standing beside me at a pedestrian crossing on the arm because I simply had to tell her how nice her perfume was. She was dressed all in black, with her hair pulled back1 and minimal makeup. Makeup any man would describe as natural and any woman would recognise as expertly and painstakingly applied. She was delighted with the compliment and in a thick French accent (but of course) told me it was Diptyque Fleur de Peau.

Dave and I grabbed a Cinco de Mayo lunch in Rosa Mexicano and after school, I treated the kids to ice creams, eaten on the steps of the Museum of Natural History.

“You’re the best mom in the history of moms” they told me.

“Really?” I said, fishing for an elaboration on the compliment. “Better than Jesus’s mother Mary?”

“Definitely”, said the 6 year old. “Did she even ever do anything fun with Jesus?”

“I don’t think so”, I had to admit. Definitely never bought him ten dollar ice-creams after a $50 playing-in-the-muck class in Central Park anyway.

On Wednesday, I failed my driving test.

I took the 5 year old for her annual check-up. She is now 98 percentile for height and weight (one percentile down from last year). I must have met 100 other kids her age by now. Who are these 2 other kids taller than her? I’ve never met them.

Thursday’s activity is gymnastics and it’s dreamy because both kids are in the same class and parents don’t have to participate - you just take a seat on the other side of the glass wall of the gym, and look in.

The kids came out for a water break at one point and the 6 year old told me they’d just done 5 laps. “I know, I was watching”, I said and she said: “No you weren’t. You were on your phone every time I looked”. What I said was 100% a lie and what she said was 100% true. Modern parenting! It’s too much! The level of engagement expected is constant. Constant engagement. I have to be allowed to sit down and look at my phone once in a while! Even if they’re watching TV, they want me to watch it with them! Like I said, it’s too much.

We walk home and I’m feeling grateful that we have hobbies nearby and the kids are exercising and the sun is shining and the temperature (18 degrees) was perfect and we can hear live jazz in a park as we pass by.

A friend living on the west coast texted to say he was in town and we passed a few messages back and forth trying to arrange a coffee when he said he had a reservation at Minette Tavern, would I like to go. Would I like to go! I joined him and his two friends in Minette where we all had the burger and he said he was bidding on a house in Dublin because he is moving home in August.

“Oh no way!”, I said, “I’m so glad we’re moving home the same time!”

“No, August 2027”, he told me and I asked why he was buying now and he said because he’s panicked he will have nowhere to live and why was I not panicked and what was my back-up plan. I asked what he was going to do with the house for a year if he gets it and he said he didn’t know and I asked could we live in it and he said yeah and I said there’s my back-up plan: sorted.

We woke up to videos of a property for sale in Dublin that our friend viewed on our behalf this morning and then we bid on it.

While Dave took the kids to basketball, I said I was going to do errands and I did plan to do errands but decided the job most in need of doing was to get a blow dry so I went for one in Nordstrom but not before stopping at the Diptyque stand first for a spritz of Fleur de Peau. If I like it after wearing it all day, I might buy it in duty free on the way home. Yes, the person having a good think about whether they buy a $150 bottle of perfume is the same person who this morning bid (checks bank account) entire life savings on a house they’ve never been in.

We go to a barbeque of friends in the suburbs and the kids cry that they would love to live in a house with a yard and we say soon, children. Soon, and for the rest of your lives.

We travel all the way to Brooklyn for breakfast in Little Purity, a diner recommended by two separate Brooklynites in the comments of this post. It’s great!

Afterwards, we visit the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and Prospect Park Zoo.

I notice the parents in this corner of Brooklyn differ to the parents in our corner of Manhattan and while in a playground in Prospect Park, David comes up to me and says “These are not my people.”

“I know”, I agree. “Any parent sitting on a bench is reading a book. I feel like a philistine here on my phone. Though I am”, I begin to add…and then I cannot get the words out because I am laughing so much: “I am sitting here…writing a Substack”.