The time eventually comes each year — usually in early October, but it varies, depending on the weather — for me to gather up all of my sandals and slides and summery shoes and put them in a box or a bag at the back of my closet, and to take out all of my boots and loafers and “only with tights” shoes and dust them off and array them under my clothes once again. It’s like a reunion: “Suede t-strap Mary-Janes! Nice buckle! I missed you guys! So, what’s new?” I get all excited to tromp around in my wintery footwear again, an excitement usually greeted by a sudden and entirely unwelcome Indian summer heat wave that forces me to continue with the Birkenstocks for another week, but after one of those icky dank days that can’t decide if it’s cool or warm so I spend the whole day yanking my sweater on and off and grumbling about global warming, the heat finally subsides, and then there’s that first perfect autumn day, a day so clear and crisp that the air seems to have facets, and I wake up and see the cats sleeping in a heap, which they never do unless it’s a little too cold in the apartment, and I hop out of bed and revel in the shivering dash to shut off the alarm clock, and as I head for the shower I inform the cats, “Jeans weather!” I shower, and then I happily dress in my cool-weather uniform: black t-shirt, black turtleneck sweater over that, jeans, fuzzy happy black socks with a fuzzy happy vegetable pattern on them (oh, shut up — so I like fuzzy happy patterny socks. It’s not a crime), and an ancient pair of black lace-up brogans. The brogans, exceedingly cheap probably-not-real-leather shoes that for some lucky reason feel like slippers to my notoriously finicky feet, get stiff if I don’t wear them every day. The not-leather gets all rigid and chafey, and when I first put them on, I have to walk around like Boris Karloff, lurching about by putting my foot down precisely flat on the ground with each step, until the shoes warm up and start conforming to my feet again, and only then can I take a stride like a normal person and enjoy how heavy my feet feel compared to when I’ve got sandals on.

How did it feel to come back to New York? That’s how it felt.

So much written about New York City over the years, glistening overwrought prose, tough tight metaphors involving music and animals and jewelry, and it’s probably the first time anyone’s equated the city with a pair of old shoes, but it’s the best I can do — it’s familiar, it’s my size, and yet at first it didn’t fit quite right.

I came back from another country, too, not just another city, but that’s a difference I started to notice as soon as I crossed the border. The American flag is everywhere, for one thing — on the side of every building, in the window of every business, flying from the antenna of every vehicle on the Thruway, snapping in every faint breeze between here and Buffalo. I’d last set foot on U.S. soil on September 12, before the flags had had time to multiply, and I don’t know why it surprised me, but it did, maybe because the American flag is in the end rather garish in design. After three months, I’d gotten accustomed to unassuming red-and-white with a modest leaf. (The leaf, too, is ubiquitous, a shorthand for the Canadian flag, tucked into a McDonald’s logo or used as a period to punctuate “Mr. Sub.” But it’s small, the leaf, and it’s not the whole flag. The American flag doesn’t have an abbreviation for itself; it’s the whole stars-and-stripes kit and caboodle or nothing at all. The red-white-and-blue lapel ribbons try, but it’s not the same without stars — too French.) At one point on the ride home, I found myself behind a Buick Regal with a flag fluttering from each of three antennae and a much larger flag draped across the rear windshield. I didn’t know what to make of it, quite, although I did draw an obvious parallel to myself about that one flag impeding the driver’s ability to see. It’s nice to see that unity; it’s part of our idea of ourselves as a nation that, by banding together, we can defeat the forces of injustice, and whether or not it’s true, it’s a belief we need right now. At the same time, though, it put me in mind of the debate from a decade or so ago about whether we should add an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the burning of that flag. I didn’t agree with it then, and I don’t now — not because such an amendment would circumscribe freedom of expression, although I suppose it would, but because the flag is a symbol. It’s an important symbol, particularly at times like the ones we live in after September 11, and “proof through the night that our flag was still there” has given many Americans the strength to continue in times of great fear — but a symbol isn’t the same as the thing or things it symbolizes. The Twin Towers symbolized something, too, after all, and the difference between what they symbolized (American financial might) and what they actually existed as (two buildings where thousands of people worked) is critical, and heartbreaking, and apparently of little concern to those who destroyed them, and failing to understand that difference is dangerous. It’s a grand old flag, a high-flying flag, don’t get me wrong — but I hope we don’t start using the flag as our own mental shorthand, thinking that it stands for itself, thinking that flying it is enough, thinking that the job of thinking is done. Mortal men and women run the country, the same as before. The flag is used to cover coffins from time to time, the same as before. Too much symbolism and I get itchy.

Take the posters with the American bald eagle shedding one perfect patriotic tear. (“…Please.”) Give me a BREAK. Do you know WHY the bald eagle is crying? I’ll TELL you why the bald eagle is crying. The bald eagle is CRYING because developers punted it out of its nest to build CONDOS and it has to flap around on the field at baseball games to MAKE RENT, and as if THAT’S not enough, every time the United States gets into an altercation with another nation, the eagle sees itself trotted out on these STUPID JINGOISTIC POSTERS because it doesn’t own the rights to its own likeness, and it sits in the zoo and thinks to itself, “‘Land of the free,’ my feathery ASS,” and Uncle Sam comes by to visit all, “Sorry dude, I tried to stop them,” and the eagle’s like, “Bitch, call my lawyer already and QUIT POINTING AT ME,” like, I think that WE PROBABLY GET IT. On the way back a week ago, G Force and I saw a women’s fleece top with flags and Uncle Sam hats and crying eagles all over it. We also saw a “Don’t Mess With U.S.” suction-cup doodad with a fighter jet on it, and a bumper sticker with two guns wrapped in an American flag and “God bless the Second Amendment” in fancy Declaration-of-Independence-y script. I mean, on the one hand, yes, three cheers for the United States. On the other hand…I collect snow globes, so, you know, it’s clearly not a taste issue, but that kind of thing…yuck. “I think we should go back to Canada.” “Me too. Grab a Diet Coke and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Patriotic expression is good and worthy. I just need time to get used to it at this pitch, I guess. I need time to get used to the Manhattan skyline, too. Before, the city at night had three clusters of tall bright spots: one centered around Riverside Church at 120th Street; midtown, of course, with the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings as the anchors; and the Twin Towers downtown, which together looked like a giant gate from certain approaches on the Turnpike. Now, it’s just the two. It looks wrong. The balance is off. Coming up from I-280 in the wee hours of the morning, I found myself staring at downtown from the car, for longer than I should when trying to drive, trying to figure out where the Towers used to go, straining to see where they…aren’t. “I think there, next to that greenish one.” “No. Farther over. Where that helicopter is flying over?” “I don’t know.” “Me neither.” Already, I can’t remember where they belonged. And curving around past midtown on the Lincoln Tunnel approach, I knew something else on the horizon had changed, but I couldn’t put a finger on what. “Well. The Towers.” “No, not that. I saw that already. Something’s weird, something else.” We wrangled the cats upstairs; I looked out my window while G Force used the bathroom, and when she emerged, it hit me. “It’s on!” “What’s on?” “The Empire State Building! They turn the lights off at midnight every night, except for that ring at the top that they leave on so planes don’t hit — uh, don’t run into it.” “Yeah.” “So, it’s three-fifteen right now.” “Yeah, it’s on all night these days.” I peered up at the lights. Red, white, and blue. A giant nightlight left on for a city afraid of the dark. Gave proof through the night that our town was still there.

I loved my time in Toronto. I miss my spot on the couch at Wing Chun’s house, and Glark’s gas alerts, and Toque’s United-States-shaped cookies with clots of sprinkles on them to denote New York City, and pretending to berate Toque for not also baking a little Alaska and a little Hawaii. I miss pints with Q and endless coffees with Bstewart and Lex. I miss my parking space, even though it always had used condoms littering it. I’d just gotten the local Starbucksians trained to have the grande in a venti cup ready for me, just begun to learn the city; it seemed like a shame to leave so soon. But damn, it’s good to be home. I walked into the corner deli for the first time a week ago and the ladies at the counter mock-yelled at me: “Hey doll, look who it is, we thought you moved to Jersey and didn’t say goodbye!” The guys in the post office, all hunched over and dreading the December rush, waved to me as I stood in line. So much honking, so many people, the elevator’s busted for good and the doormen all have new haircuts and the worst bagel on the island still tastes great. I don’t know how people can leave here and know they won’t come back. I couldn’t stand not to know how it all turns out. I’ll always come back.

They left a light on for me, after all.

December 3, 2001

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