On Oct. 8, 2007, Paul and I hopped in a car loaded with suitcases, a litter box and two cats and made the half-day drive east to move to New York.
A few things have changed in the last five years. For one, the cats are no longer with us. For another, the Cincinnati Reds are in the postseason this October instead of the Cleveland Indians.
And, of course, we know our neighborhood much, much better. Before moving to New York, we had been to Bay Ridge two or three times -- and one of those visits was to pick out the apartment we still live in today. Now we've lived in Bay Ridge longer than we ever lived in our house in Galloway, Ohio, after we got married, and I know this part of Brooklyn better than I ever knew the west side of Columbus.
Since I wrote the post a couple of weeks ago about the supposed invasion of Midwestern hipsters to Bay Ridge, along with the animosity I didn't realize that some residents seem to feel toward us outsiders, I've put some more thought into whether I'm yet a New Yorker -- or could ever be one.
I'm proud of how much I've learned about Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and New York City in the last five years. I don't have the native knowledge of how the neighborhood and city have changed over the years, but I feel that I'm a part of the fabric here. In a city where so many people are from somewhere else, I can hold my own.
But maybe you can't be a New Yorker until you decide that it's your home forever and always. That was never the case for Paul and me. Sure, our original plans of staying here only a year or two got expanded, but we've never considered retiring here.
New York is home now, but it's not home forever. I think that means that no matter how long we stay here, I'll always be an Ohioan first with only a small fraction carved out for the New Yorker in me. And even that, I'm afraid, will begin to fade all too soon.
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