Why I Love New York City

Okay, let's talk NYC for the millionth time. Home of my bloodline. Home of Broadway. Home of everything I love and everything I hate. I can't imagine a life without the city. For instance, the possibility of being born somewhere like Oklahoma is something I cannot even begin to conceptualize. I believe it's because I wouldn't be me without New York City. I asked my friend once if she could see me living in London, because they've been (hi niko!), and they said no. I was too New York for it. I remember that, out of all the mindless conversations we'd had, because they're right. I couldn't be anywhere else. To be myself I'd have to be in New York. I'm not sure why that is, how that is, the science behind it. I just know if they took me away, a part of me would be missing. Me and New York City are inseparable.

My great-grandmother, my Nonna, came here in 1912. By here I mean Brooklyn, washed up on the shores of Ellis Island. I've never been to Ellis Island, and the thought of it overwhelms me. Stepping in someone's long dead footprints is eerie. However I carry that eeriness with me anyhow, because everyday feels like that, living a life she didn't have. I think about her when I wake, when I cross the Brooklyn Bridge, when I look out onto the sea, when I close my eyes at night. I imagine her on the moon, humming Italian lullabies. My father said her english was distinctly poor. A fumbling mix of her dialect and accented English, that's what he said she sounded like. You see, we came from Torre del Greco. Another place I've never been. Southern Italy was poverty-riddled back then, the way most things were, and my grandmother was only sixteen or so. She boarded the ship in the harbor and did not turn her head back, she set out for America, and that's how we lived. If she had stayed, would we have starved to death? Was an American death better than an Italian death? I couldn't tell you. I wrote a lullaby one night, in her name. It went like this:

(Brooklyn Lullaby)

Swallow a star , It won't get you , very far / there's a boat , in the harbor , to take you , where you are / there's moonlight , on your window ,  Just as , You swore / Non aver paura , There’s a night , In your heart , A foreign , City lure / There’s a fish , In the harbor , Dead , Before the storm / Your mother , Is not here , Any longer , Where is , she buried? , The morning , That you left / Sei vivo, Una ragazza , With a tear , In your skirt / A child , All her own , Away from home / Sleep now , city angel , There is love , To be known

It's a kind of silly melody with crappy thirteen year-old rhyming, nonetheless it has me thinking. I see my grandmother amongst constellations and the earth on it's axis. I watch her billow in the Central Park wind, I hear her melodies every-time I walk down the street. I hear her language in the halls of my home and her dreams in my own head. I see her in old portraits suspended upon the wall, the old pennies stored away in the corner-store register. I see her every-time I take a good look at humanity, and realize we're all seeking one thing. Freedom. She came here because she was promised a place of freedom, of food, of work, of rest. Isn't that all we've ever wanted? Our immigrants are the realest face of life. To move is to be human. That is something unexplainably beautiful to me. She traveled for a place to call home. She found it here.

So, why do I love New York City so much? It's a relevant question indeed. I try to explain it someone who's never stepped foot in Brooklyn. I fail every-time. Honestly, the more I think of it, I don't even know why myself. Perhaps it's because this city raised me, this city cradled me in it's womb and spat me out. This city took me apart and put me back together again, and it will many times over the years. This city created me and everything I come from. This city harbored my bloodline when they needed it, when they were starving, when they had nowhere else to go or return to. I owe my soul to this place. I have such immense faith in the direction America can go, what it can become -- because what other home do I have, except this one? Where else would I go? What else would I do without it? This political climate is horrifying. It's brutal and fascist. I stand with the left because immigration has never been a crime. This city is meant to shelter, not kill. I stand with the left -- with this country -- because expression is human nature and humanity cannot be silenced, because all people are people with beating hearts, because those who take cannot give. They will not win.

I love New York City because it gave me everything I know. It taught me how to love and how to hate. It'd take me dead or alive. They're the same to me, when I'm here. This article is not simply a love letter to where I came from, but also what that place is becoming. I want to thank Mamdani, genuinely honestly thank him face-to-face with all my heart, because New Yorkers cried out for help. For the first time in decades, someone listened. He heard! I've only been alive 15 years, but I've watched this city crumble to it's knees and rise back up again. My father has been watching it collapse under itself for 60 years. Now, there is light ahead. Isn't that beautiful? To have someone who loves, genuine honest love, for where they came from? I think so. The fans in the subway, the shoveled streets during the infamous snowstorms, the chisme app, the free childcare. Can my grandmother see it now? What she came here for? Something lasting, something like wings upon her back? Across the Atlantic she made her home. Here her home must stay. I love you, New York.