Southbound BQE
After days that drug on like weeks filled with hours passed like heartbeats, you tell a barely-conversational cabbie at JFK you’re headed to Brooklyn. And then - only then - do you breathe easy.
He shoots onto the Van Wyck on ramp with the same familiar rush you feel at 8am when you get off at your subway stop. Like shot out of a barely open door at Union Square or 42nd Street or Broadway-Lafayette or wherever it is the miracle of a life in New York takes you on a gainfully employed day, his lead-laden boot swaps as suddenly between the gas and the brake as your heart from soaring to despair in the weeks since you left New York.
Those two weeks were packed with wonder. Thousands of kids showing their ingenuity and discipline in wayward American corners like Philadelphia and Ann Arbor. The heartstopping kick of a sonogram on a Macbook screen. The steely acknowledgement of a veteran soldier freeing another 13 year old from certain slavery. The confident swagger of a ten gallon clad cowpoke who just squared off against Silicon Valley and won handily. The reunion of a half dozen comrades who had their careers cooked in a crazy crucible some six years earlier now each leading the best teams of their careers, producing the finest work of their lives. The whistle sounding the final cement on the foundation of a crew that have taken their own command of their destiny. The choke of a grown man who just discovered just how important his enterprise could be in this world. And laughter - near endless - shared by the unlikeliest collection of humans yet assembled, whose community was not so much born but bred, not so much intended but necessary.
The peaks and valleys of those weeks you were away were as high as the skyline across the East River and as low as the tunnels bored underneath it. You’re southbound on the BQE mere minutes from home with Manhattan laid bare before you and then - again, only then - are you home.
Not when you drop your bags at the top of the stair of your steep-ass walkup. Not when you tug loose the mail crammed into your turn-key box. Not when you pour a glass of whiskey. Not when you let your self fall open-armed into your still-unmade bed.
You’re home when you look New York dead in her face and she looks back at you. And she smiles, so slightly, acknowledging your return and reminding you with her twinkle that no matter where on this Earth you go and no matter how great the works you do out there are, she’ll always be here. And there will always be more you can do.
No matter where you go on this life like a rocket, you’ll never get too big for New York.
You smile back, but only for a moment, when you realize the cabbie missed your exit.
