An Affair To Remember: Toasting To Love That Lasts

I've been in love with this city for a long time. Of course, there are days, when the city upsets you, but that's like with any relationship - you love 'it' one day, you 'hate' it the next day, but at the end of the day - you know, why this 'relationship' works for you and, most importantly, why you are in this 'relationship'. 

New York City has been my 'boyfriend' for as long as I remember, or, to be more precise - from the time I've arrived in the city with just two suitcases, back in 2001. 

Having lived in some of the best and big cities in the world: Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Los Angeles... - none of these cities felt like home, but NYC always did. It's the city I'm 'toasting' my love for every day of the week, one way or another. 

It's interesting how I've never ever subscribed to any of the local publications living in a city other than New York, as if I wasn't really curious about knowing all and about the city I lived in, but in New York City - I'm, actually, looking forward every month to receiving my New York Magazine and every Friday to read my New York Post - [New Yorkers would understand me, when I say it's very important to read the notorious - and so New York! - Page Six]. I'm just so damn into everything that's going on in the city - even after having spent so many years here. It's a magic feeling.

What inspired me to write this post is the fact that my parents are visiting me in the city, who have been staying with me for a week. Not a day goes by when they don't complain about something, but only because they are too 'old' to deal with the New York 'stuff', having lived in small, quiet, nice towns in the past 20 years or so. Meaning - they can't understand how I can live in a small apartment over a bagel shop with a non-stop traffic behind my windows. My mom worries I don't sleep. My dad worries, my apartment is too small for what I pay for it. My mom worries that the life is too hectic and the scene is too 'single' in the city. My dad worries, I beat myself up at work to afford the lifestyle I want to afford in New York. And both of them agree with each other that New York is so not a 'family' city. But all I can say to them - consider me being lucky not to be living over a Chinese take-out shop and my windows not facing the Time's Square...

But then, when we go out at night and walk around my neighborhood: three blocks away from one of the most beloved places by the residents - the Central Park, 4 blocks away from the riverfront, with my yoga studio around the corner, an express subway lane to my work and with a great variety of restaurants, entertainment and shopping places within a few feet away... my parents get the point. All I can say - I sleep more soundly in this tiny apartment that fills up with the smell of freshly baked bagels every morning at 5am, than I've ever did in my huge apartment near the beach in Los Angeles. That's all I'm saying... A few more months and I'd be able to recognize the flavor of each of the Tal's bagels that draw long lines of the locals each day of the week. Welcome to my long-lived love relationship!