It’s 3 pm on a balmy November afternoon, and I get a call, “If you could hypothetically move to New York City and have a job, would you take me up on the offer?”
It’s 3 pm on an oppressively hot August afternoon, and I get a call, “When you fly back home, what do you want for dinner?”
There’s a specific rhythm that my heart begins beating when I’m feeling any sort of anxiety or nervousness; A three-count that slowly builds into a crescendo of sweat and awkward laughter. It was with my clammy hands wrapped around the handle of a carry-on that would make Lisa Frank proud, and the comforting thump, thump, thump in my chest, flight 1476 took me to my new home, Brooklyn, New York.
I took a year off of school and became a live-in nanny (think a domestic au pair) and watched a little boy, Roscoe, from the time he was 3 months to the time he was 18 months. My college career was put on hold, and I spent most of my days listening to an endless loop of Opus No. 1, while I changed diapers and went to babies and books every Thursday. Honestly, my life had taken a sharp turn into uncharted territory, both literally and figuratively. I lived with a couple, the wife who I’ve known since childhood, and became a part of their little family. Much like a 9-5 contract, I had set hours and had the opportunity to get everything out of the city I could.
My days were filled with snot and spit up while my nights are filled with skylines and serial dating. I would watch Roscoe from 8 am to 5 pm, and on Wednesdays, I would spend the evening with the little boy and his brother while the parents had a date night. It was obviously amazing creating a bond with such a young life, but experiencing a marriage firsthand, that wasn’t your parents, was also educational. I got to see how they approached love and work, and their ideas of a relationship were often ones that I had not considered. For example, they made it a priority to have a date night and spend time together. They also understood that a person can love more than one person, but marriage to them was the consideration that they were making a choice to be with one another and actively worked to love one another.
Edward Snow once wrote about the uncollected poems of Rainer Maria Rilke as works that have “…the sense of an alternate aesthetic informing it, easing distinctions between finished and non-finishedness and allowing poetry to take shape with minimal concern for openings and roundings off.” This past year has allowed me to become less concerned with how things will close and, instead, I became more concerned about the lessons I’ve learned and how they’ll help ease transitions. I found that the biggest thing that changed after spending time in the city, and changing the trajectory of my college career, is that life has become less of a color block and more of a gradient.
I miss the city every day, and I am truly blessed for the opportunity that I was granted. If you ever have a chance to do something that makes the butterflies in your stomach start to fly, I say do it. Do it, and do it with reckless abandon.