A New York Elevator

Things have been tough around here lately. It’s nothing new but I have been missing home keenly over the past few days, or maybe even weeks. It seemed like I had turned a corner after the holidays, but anxiety has been creeping back. And I sometimes find myself so disoriented that I need to stop and breathe for a few minutes before getting on with my day. I had never experienced this so strongly before, this feeling that everything around me is like a movie set, a décor where my own role is not clearly defined. It struck me at dinner the other night. My daughter wasn’t home, but looking at my three boys, and their dad, hunched over their bowl of pasta in the half-dining room, half- kitchen I haven’t quite gotten accustomed to, - I felt dizzy for a second and had to close my eyes.

How come I find myself here, thousands of miles away from home, married to this American man, in a house full of rambunctious children? When just over fifteen years ago, I would have been found alone in some dark library stacks, writing for hours on end without any distraction – those blissful days before the iPhone -, in a remarkably driven quest to submit a seven-hundred-page dissertation on time. Nothing could have deviated me from my path. Except for breakfast and dinner with my husband, I would be bent over my laptop all day, merely distracted by a random New York Times article, every two hours or so. When today there is Instagram, and Bluesky, and all the quick news websites, and still, yes, Twitter, despite my best efforts. Whatever can feed my rage and indignation these days. It appears I have become addicted to outrage, and I don’t like myself for it. But also, I do not want to be sleepy while the country I just moved back to is taking us on a wild ride to God only knows where. With the result that I am being pulled in a million different directions, none of which feel like home. The Whatsapp notifications, the news, my children’s incessant requests, the world going to seed. I have frankly been quite lost and yearning for a place that would feel like home. A farmhouse’s low beamed ceiling, a faded couch, a fireplace somewhere, maybe. I imagine the French countryside, even though I never owned a place there. That place would be waiting for me, always available, until the day I die.

Instead, I find myself in this big American city that I used to love but which seems so foreign to me now. And so, I’ve been feeling the urge to make lists again. Lists of places I like, or sometimes even love, even though I forgot. I walk around and make mental notes. Anytime something looks good, or feel good, I grab it like a starving child and keep it around for future gratitude practice. Gratitude can feel hard these days. But here is what is on my list, for future usage:

The clean, sparkling light, a brightness I would never see in Paris in the Winter, or even Spring. Sometimes I have to shield my eyes, and the sun has barely appeared on top of the buildings.

Walking back home just after sunrise, when I have dropped off my boys at the school bus. I dreaded this when we first moved, and would avoid it at all costs, preferring to shlep the poor children in two buses across town, just to gain twenty minutes of sleep and avoid the stress of having to call the elevator at exactly 7:09 am, teeth half-brushed, toast half-finished in sticky hands. But I have come to enjoy being out in the cold when most people are still waking up. It feels weirdly satisfying to be walking home in a puffy jacket by 7:20 am, children already dispatched for the day.

On good days I will have the house to myself and indulge in Ingrid’s delightful 30-minute meditation on Zoom. That yoga place has also been a Godsend.

Walking down my street with the Hudson River behind the trees, a reward for living in what must be the windiest corner in the city. We hear the wind howling at night, sometimes in a scary fashion. It can be quite cinematic in a Wuthering Heights style, but I am still not entirely sure it belongs on this list. At least don’t ask me on a cold December night.

The doormen greeting us anytime we enter or leave the building. Especially J., who always has a kind word for my boys, puts our lighter packages in their arms for them to carry up. This winter he would ask my six-year-old every day, if he had his gloves. A few feet before the building, my boy would start pulling his gloves from his pockets and would not walk inside without having them on. That little game was a delight to this aging mother’s heart.

That is something I would not have had in Paris, and which I missed when we first arrived. I think I mentioned it somewhere already, but our small lobby felt so eerily quiet. We would rarely see anyone, and when we did, they would usually not engage in conversation, limiting themselves to “bonjour”, or “bonsoir”, usually nothing at all. Except for the American woman, daughter of a famous film maker whose name appeared on the New York Times flung by the door on the weekends. She seemed to live alone with her daughter, a sweet little girl aged seven or eight. They were both always dressed in warm, colorful outfits that were a ray of sunshine on dreary November days. My children liked to see them, complained that it didn’t happen often enough. “Les Américaines”. They were the only echoes of a not-so-distant past on West 86th street. The children missed our doormen, our elevator, the small talk with the 90-year- old downstairs neighbors and her bright orange nails.  

Our crew seems more muted this year, old ladies more discreet. One of them died earlier this Fall. We had never met her. But there was a notice in the elevator. And the next day, at the library, when I was reading the newspaper, I came across an obituary for a writer who had died at age one hundred in her apartment on Riverside Drive. It was her. Such a coincidence, it was enough to delight me for a few days and make me feel like the move was worth it. Recently there was a picture of a dog who just passed. My boys were convinced we had seen her several times. I couldn’t tell; we see so many dogs. And I couldn’t see the owner’s face, either. But she loved her dog enough that she posted a short obituary, with pictures, in the elevator. Another thing that would never happen in a Paris building. People keep to themselves. There would be nowhere to post a notice to begin with. And the elevator would be too small to accommodate any other soul than me and half my children.

So, there you go. Another thing I like here. Those New York characters I was once so fond of. Dating back to the room I rented in a sprawling, shambolic apartment on West End Avenue in the West 80’s - I was always partial to the West Side, even as a freshly arrived twenty-three-year-old clueless French girl. The owner was in Greece for the first six months. But sometimes her best friend would show up and take us roommates to get pancakes at City Diner. Her name was Tina, and she was actually a man, with bright red painted nails. A rotation of temporary tenants would be in and out the door. I never used the kitchen, where roaches covered the dirty dishes that seem to have taken up permanent residence in the sink. I had my own little fridge, and microwave, and knew better than to venture out. To me it was heaven. I was so far away from home, in a city where one can be as anonymous as one wants. What seemed like perfect and absolute freedom.

How come today I am so freaked out? I would give anything to be back in a tiny, unfriendly Paris elevator. With all the inconveniences, and my parents nearby. All the things that felt too familiar when I moved back there almost three years ago. It felt like I was retiring, twenty years too early. And now I would like nothing more than to be that grandmother, surrounded by old friends, chatting away in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

I know this will pass; I should just breathe through this stubborn homesickness that can keep me away from what is here and now, including my children. In the meantime, I have just been able to cook some very basic stuff. Whatever-is-in-the-fridge stuff. With leftover chicken from my "Dorset salad", for example, and sad-looking wrinkled grapes abandoned on my countertop (what happened to the children who would request a new bag of grapes every two hours this Fall?), a salad from the second volume of The Silver Palate Cookbook. I had forgotten I even had those books. I only thought of them because of the chicken, and the grapes, and the random memory of that chicken salad. I don’t even like chicken salad that much. But it felt very American somehow, and a tribute of sorts to another lifetime. Strangely enough, I think I got those Silver Palate books that year I was living on West End Avenue, avoiding the kitchen at all costs. They must have had that vintage Upper West Side vibe I was after back then. Sadly, the vibe doesn’t quite sustain me the way it did. But for now, it will just do the job. Without the celery, because I can’t stand it.

 Chicken Salad with Pecans and Grapes

From The New Basics Cookbook, by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins

Ingredients

3 pounds , skinless chicken breasts, well rinsed and patted dry

3 cups of water

1 chicken bouillon cube

1 pound of seedless green grapes (red is fine)

1 1/2 cups pecan halves

1 cup diced celery

1 cup chopped fresh dill

1 1/2 cups sour cream

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

2 bunches of watercress (any greens are fine)

Dill sprigs, for garnish

Serves 8

The recipe calls for the fussy steps below. To blanch the chicken, you can also just bring chicken stock to a boil with a bay leaf or two, then when the water is boiling, turn off the heat and let the chicken sit in the water for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Arrange the chicken breasts in a single layer in a shallow pan.

Bring the water to a boil and add the bouillon cube.  Stir to dissolve.  Pour enough bouillon in the baking pan to just cover the chicken breasts.  Lay a sheet of cooking parchment or aluminum foil over the chicken to cool in the liquid; then discard the liquid.

Shred the chicken into bite-size pieces and place them in a large bowl. 

Add the grapes, pecans, celery, and chopped dill, and toss well.

In a separate bowl, mix the sour cream and mayonnaise together.

Toss this into the chicken salad.  Season with salt and pepper. Cover, and refrigerate for 2 hours.

(optional) Serve on a bed watercress or other salad green, garnished with dill sprigs.