(sinto sua falta)

I wrote them a thank-you limerick in September of 2008, after I had spent 5 nights on their squashy futon, within the sunny enclosure of their garden apartment. They made me cream cheese pizzas and guacamole, and I made them eggplant Parmesan and zucchini stuffed with Gorgonzola, and we sat beneath their twinkle lights under a fuzzy New York sky. There was a moment, I remember, with Jeni and Joe across the table from me, a bottle of Merlot between us, during that initial visit, that I knew that I wanted to move to New York. Brooklyn, actually. It just had to happen, it was obvious. This would be my home, they would be my home. Jeni wondered how our paths hadn’t crossed any earlier, and I laughed and told her that two years prior I’d swaggered into their wedding at Villa Terrace quite late and so was ushered into the front row, right next to all the grandparents. Then we realized that all three of us were Scorpios and all hell broke loose, clawing at each other with our pincers and whatnot.

The morning before I stepped out into the swinging streets of the city, my stomach tied up at twisted, Joe and I had coffee, he told me to walk up to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and have a peek at what I’m about to dive into head first, and he gave me brand new copies of the NFT. He told me only real New Yorkers carry this around, and so I did. Now, nearly two years later, the pages have become soft from wear, corners dog-eared and the black covers faded.

As I wandered through small, sagging apartments and tall, scraping high-rises in search of my own apartment, I became discouraged. Either it was perfect but too expensive or just the right price and I would get whistled and hollered at every time I walked in the front door. I almost left for home without an apartment nailed down, trying to imagine how long Joe and Jeni would let me stay on their futon, when their broker pedaled by on her bike, and Joe shouted to her, asking about any openings in the area. She yelled back in a thick Brooklyn accent, “Come to my office in an hour.” Five hours later, I’d signed a lease for a sunny one-bedroom in Cobble Hill. A few weeks later, after he stood in my brother’s wedding, Joe helped me move the heavy stuff around 99 Butler, and took me out to celebrate. Jeni became an instant sister to me, helped me paint my living room walls pumpkin orange, gave me beautiful jewelry to adorn my earlobes and fingers with, helped me become my New York self.

Months and weeks passed, season toppled over season, and we became somewhat of a band. I watched Joe perform a heart-wrenching rendition of this gem, and I sang a duet or two with Jeni. With a winning combination of cartwheels and accordions, our performances outweighed any Blue Man Group concert. And they even let me wear their Christmas bird as a hat once or twice.

They were there when I won the bags tournament at Union Hall, and there to help me distribute small farm animal toys to Janeane Garofalo when we met her outside of her show. They were there with me at the Iron & Wine concert at Terminal Five. They were there when I needed to laugh and cry and they were there to count my push-ups, and to encourage me to do more. They met Mark when I was in love and they loved him too. They met Peter when I was in love and they loved him too. And then they immediately hated them both when my loves broke me down. They were there when I got my first real job and loved it and then were there to hear about it when it wasn’t quite so nice. Presidential Debates, Superbowls, Thanksgivings, Packer games, triple-threat birthday parties, new babies and engagements in Wisconsin, they’ve danced me through it all.

Instead of blathering on about the bygone memories of my Jeni and Joe, what needs to be said is that these two masters of charisma and jazz have completely changed me, and brought me into their lives with a kind of openness that only comes with family. Anyone who knows them knows what I’m talking about, and anybody who doesn’t know them, well, you’ll have to tumble with the tumbleweeds on over to Santa Fe, where their next great adventure is about to commence.


In Portuguese, the literal translation of the phrase “I miss you” (sinto sua falta) is “I feel your absence.” I can already feel the hole in my life where Joe and Jeni were, and I have a feeling I’ll be texting this phrase to my New Mexican friends often, almost as often as I’ll be sleeping on their adobe futon in Santa Fe.

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From E.B. White's "Here is New York"

-The residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending on a good deal of luck. No one should come to New York unless he is willing to be lucky.

-New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation.

-There are roughly three New Yorks: the first is the New York of a man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter – the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is last – the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s highest-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements.

-Manhattan has been compelled to expand skyward because of the absence of any other direction in which to grow. This, more than anything, is responsible for its physical majesty.

-Mass hysteria is a terrible force, yet New Yorkers seem always to escape it by some tiny margin: they sit in subways without claustrophobia, they extricate themselves from panic situations by some lucky wisecrack, they meet confusion and congestion with patience and grit – a sort of perpetual muddling through.

-New York, the capital of memoranda, in touch with Calcutta, in touch with Reykjavik, and always fooling with something.

-The collision and the intermingling of these millions of foreign-born people representing so many races and creeds make New York a permanent exhibit of the phenomenon of one world. The citizens of New York are tolerant not only from disposition but from necessity…If people were to depart even briefly from the peace of cosmopolitan intercourse, the town would blow up higher than a kite.

Fancy

dinner at (Elsa's) Bar 89: check

pinot grigio at Lure Fish Bar: check

movie at the Angelika: check

sample sale steals x2: check

old woman in a thong: check

cab ride across town in rush hour traffic: check

Brooklyn Lagers at McFadden's: check

girls night on Smith Street: check

earplugs: check

smoothie: check

Brooklyn Heights Promenade: check

bagel on a stoop: check

giggly New York street corners: check

sandwich in Central Park: check

crazy skaters & dancers: check

Carnegie Deli: check

Ray Bans: check

Dylan's Candy Bar: check

Blue Ribbon Bakery: check

stroll through Greenwich Village: check

A holiday weekend with one of the most amazing women in my life, a role model and a warrior, an inspiration and a true friend, a reminder in manner and in way of my beautiful mother and grandmother alike, a handful of laughs, love, and family: check.