SCAD Artemis 2015

I’d rush out the door at 9 a.m. when I had to be at work at 10 a.m. I always arrived at 9:45 a.m. Always. Some people would make playlists just for this commute.

Businessmen would use their briefcases to push into the doors first.

Near the end of July, my mother, a native New Yorker, visits me from Florida. I pick her up at Penn Station. She’s easy to spot. All the other fifty-somethings are wearing those gaudy, floral tops, fake jeans, and russet leather loafers. Not Debie Leadbeater.

She’s sporting a black tee, loose-fitting jeans, and Nike sneakers. She could pass as Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter with her petite nose and delicate mouth. Her wildly curly jet-black hair bobs up and down as she runs to me, grinning uncontrollably.

“Hi, Mommy,” I say to her.

“I missed you so much. I met this really wonderful couple and we talked from Florida to Maryland. Where do we go to get home?”

We take the E uptown and then transfer to the G. My mother loves crowds. And waiting. She actually enjoys attending the Fourth of July firework shows and staying for the finale and then having to wait for hours just to walk the hundred yards to her car. She gets a kick out of walking around Disney during its peak season. People fascinate her—usually people who are nothing like her. She doesn’t get social classes. While visiting me in the city, we use the subway constantly. That’s okay with her. She loves sitting back and watching as a woman fervently creates bouquets of found roses to sell or an elderly man covers songs

by Otis Redding. Sometimes we ride the train for 30 minutes. Other times it’s over an hour. Her smile never falters.

On the fifth day of her visit, we spend a good portion of it on the G train. As we get off at my stop, swimming through the sea of people to get to the ground level, she stops and sighs.

“I love the G train,” she exclaims.

Everyone comes to a halt. Some people glare at her, others roll their eyes. One teenage girl in a green “Ohio is for lovers” shirt giggles. I quickly get us to the surface before anyone can tell us the five reasons why they hate New York City’s public transportation system.

When I think about walking through the city’s streets, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby comes to mind. In the scene where Nick Carraway is visiting Tom’s apartment in New York City, he talks about being in the living room with everyone but observing it from afar. He’s “within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” That’s exactly how it feels when you’re in this city.

Until you step on the subway.

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