A good friend has suggested I find an apartment in Brooklyn. In spite of my numerous protests, "I can't move back to Brooklyn," he doesn't get it. After all, the borough (that was once a city of its own), is tres-cool, more Manhattan than Manhattan. But, he's from suburban New Jersey; what does he know about being a street kid from the boroughs?
I think you have to have left a Brooklyn childhood to understand that moving there can feel like going backwards. In logical terms, it doesn't make sense, because I love being from Brooklyn. The street dialect I picked up while playing ring-o-levio and walking up the Avenue with my girlfriends pretending we were the Ronettes, is a language I often revert to. I will always be a Dodgers fan; I will always fondly remember the numerous hula-hoop contests I entered (and often won!).
But, I can't go back to Brooklyn.The tracts of land my family and I dwelled hold an echo of fear about the greater world. From the time I was nine, I rode the subway alone to my parents' store in East New York. By twelve, I went downtown to the Fox theater. But...I rarely went to New York (as we called it), nor did my parents. Brooklyn represents closeness to the earth, familial beliefs--even though those beliefs stretch all the way to Eastern European shtetls.
Most of my childhood and teenage friends left Brooklyn a long time ago. They settled not too far in Manhattan, Queens, Rockland County--and one, who went the furthest--landed in Philadelphia. But "not too far" is a state of mind. To my mind, they got away. (There is one errant friend who cannot leave her beloved Park Slope.)
I wish I could move to the Slope without it being a "back" kind of thing. That would be much easier than scouting out someplace new and foreign. It seems I am always leaving Brooklyn, even though I moved away seven years ago.
Followers
