In NYC again, and Hearing the City in the Key of Daddy

My reunion with New York City last month came after a Covid-imposed, 20-month hiatus. I bet many other people visited the city this summer, after the same anguished separation.

But in my case, I re-emerged in the city (rising up from the train platform below the ground) after another kind of hiatus. 

I was back in New York for the first time since my father had fallen ill.

Perhaps that wouldn't matter, except I realized my father embodies Manhattan for me (my mother gets Brooklyn in all of its colorful, fairy tale glory). 

Growing up, I visited the city with my parents countless times -- afternoons at the museum, overnight stays at Midtown hotels, visits to family in Brooklyn -- and I memorized stories of their newlywed days in Manhattan when they would buy their meat at Macy's. I divided Long Island, where I was born, in two: the families with roots in the city and the people who rejected that New York was the alpha and the omega.

I was visiting Manhattan for a short research fellowship at The New York Public Library, and on the train ride to Grand Central, I felt that rasp of excitement, that frothy giddiness I’ve known since childhood when the destination is New York and the method of transit is the train (“This is the train to New York, making stops in…”). Watching Harlem through the train windows, I felt as though I was eavesdropping on people’s lives.

I had hoped no one would be over my shoulder, accompanying me as I walked the streets of “The City.” But I knew better. In my heart of hearts, I suspected my father’s voice -- his impressions relayed through his signature expressions -- would provide a soundtrack, regardless. New York's vibrancy -- its urgency -- was made first manifest through my father's stories. The tales of strolls along the avenue and visits to fancy hotel lobbies long gone and staying out all night, the excitement of it all painted on his face and vibrating through his voice. He grew up in one of those Jersey cities just on the other side of the Hudson for whom Manhattan is your backyard, if you happen to have the center of the world out back.

Mike, Leo and I were staying in Midtown, which probably only exacerbated the sensation of walking in my father’s footsteps since that was the precinct he'd haunted before it was inundated by tourists -- that area and anywhere near Lincoln Center or the museums uptown, including the Frick. 

(The Frick would be just any New York museum, mind you, but it will remain forever precious to me because that's where the Hans Holbein portrait of St. Thomas More resides. After I studied More in high school at St. Anthony's, my father become obsessed with tracking down where he’d seen the famous Holbein portrait. He finally figured out it was at the Frick. Who would care? But he did – so I do. When I finally visited the Frick some years ago, I stationed myself in front of the portrait as if there were a kinship between myself and the painting almost as keenly felt as a normal relationship.) 

Each morning last month during my visit to New York, I had to toggle between our hotel on 50th Street and the New York Public Library, so from 50th down to 42nd every day, and from Third Avenue over to 5th.

No one ever walked that expanse more joyfully, more studiously than I did, all the while with the singular voice of my father plying me with memories. I was hearing the city in the key of my father.

(I was also hearing the voice of my Uncle Joe because I believe he was the one who had me memorize the order of the non-numbered avenues east of 5^th Avenue: Madison-Park-Lex. As I walked, I unwittingly repeated it like a little mantra.)

Even certain words in my head are rendered in his voice, like cab or taxi. (Not surprisingly, they form a key part of a New Yorker's vocabulary).

The way my father always talked, it was like the exhilaration of the city rose up from the streets, was contained in the streets. I could hear him mapping out routes to various places, on foot. And to this day, what I like best to do in New York isn't attend a concert or eat at a restaurant or grab drinks -- it's simply to be in the streets. Walking through New York is a passion, an instinct. I slept badly the first night in New York but if I had the whole day to roam, that would be no problem. When we went there as children, my father walked with a long, brisk stride that we struggled to duplicate.

It’s that same old story I've written about before: loving something that someone I love urged me to love. Think about that for a moment. It makes for an extremely potent, poignant obsession. I have dozens of examples, from the literature of James Joyce to jazz music to walking fast (“city walking”). I love all those things because he has loved them. And it’s like a double web of admiration and love, far more than simply stumbling upon them on my own. I don't get to decide if they are important -- they simply are, whether I like it or not (Memoir 101).

On my way to the fellowship, I found myself mesmerized by the buildings along the route -- which I varied every morning and afternoon going and coming from the library. Some of these buildings were known to me via Daddy -- the Helmsley Building, for example, which punctuates Park Avenue like the grandest period imaginable, or the Waldorf Astoria. Others I don't recall his mentioning but he'd surely know them, like the art deco GE building on Lexington, whose lofty spires mimic radio waves (the building had been built for RCA).

At the hotel, I instinctively tuned the clock radio to WKCR, noting in my journal, “It feels right! Jazz = NYC and Jazz = Daddy." I wrote about loving the Columbia University radio station for CNN, in fact, in an essay about my father earlier this year. Listening to the jazz marathons, as a teenager, via the University of Phil Schaap.

Something else was taking place in my mind while I prowled Gotham: the spontaneous organizing of details and anecdotes so I could relay them – relay them to him. But now there’s not much point. He is not well, and the best measure of that, perhaps, is the dearth of questions. He doesn't ask any now.

Half of the joy of traveling the world these last two decades has been contained in the act of telling Daddy later -- or even during, via phone calls! -- where I was going and what I was doing. And then fielding his pushy questions. In this case, they might be: did I make it up to the Met? What were they showing at the MOMA? Had I ever been to the Cloisters? How crowded was the city? (Adding, "What you ought to do..." because he always knows what I ought to do).

I recently found an old diary entry that read, "It's sad and perhaps also funny that what I most want to know in the world cannot be Googled." A friend said I should have a t-shirt made with the saying. Maybe on the back I could list some of the questions.

Has my dad ever been to the Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library and if so, what did he think of it? Also, what's the most beautiful library he's ever visited?

Does my dad know the GE building?

What does he remember of the construction of the Twin Towers?

What's his absolute favorite spot in Manhattan?

I suspect my favorite spot will now be wherever I hear his voice the loudest.

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