Distance is Relative

When I met O., I was living on the Upper East Side. He lived in the East Village. Our apartments were 76 blocks from one another. By car that translates to less than 3 miles, but in terms of (fastest) public transportation, that amounted to a 5 minute walk + a bus + train + transfer + another 5 minute walk = 45 minute commute. By Manhattan neighborhood math, this is considered not close. By Manhattan standards, we had a long distance relationship.

Dating O entailed planning ahead, packing bags for the weekend, lugging around the next day’s wrinkled work clothes, gym clothes, and any other foreseen necessities. I often complained that I felt like a beast of burden. When my lease was up for renewal, O asked me to move in with him. I’m pretty certain it was largely motivated by the welcome idea that we wouldn’t have to have yet another conversation about whose turn it was to do the bag-toting.

O has lived in Manhattan all his life, most of which time has been spent below 14th Street. Whenever our conversations veers towards the notion that we one day move to a larger apartment, what we are really talking about is whether the rental rates will force us to leave Manhattan for a land far away and across a river. To Brooklyn, for instance.

This weekend, we found ourselves trying to get to Red Hook for dinner with friends – 8 miles from home. Train stations were under construction, an electrical “situation” was forcing re-routes on multiple lines. We hailed a cab. The driver wouldn’t go to Red Hook. We hailed another cab, and then spent an eternity in bumper to bumper traffic trying to get to the Brooklyn Bridge. We watched the taxi meter tick away while we made progress at the rate of an inch a minute. Our frustrations amplified as the time that we were due at our destination came and went and we hadn’t even left Manhattan.

In the middle of this, I thought of my sister in Maui and her proclaimed woes of traffic in her little North Shore town. I thought of her decision to move back to New York.

I thought of how I can’t wait to have her back here. I daydreamed: We will meet in Central Park for a run; we will window-shop in Soho; we will sip afternoon cocktails in a cozy French bistro on a lazy Sunday; we will get stuck on a train platform due to “an earlier incident,” and we will miss the start of our foreign movie at Lincoln Plaza.

I thought of these things as O and the driver volleyed directions back and forth to one another, each getting more heated with yet another wrong turn.

My sister has been living 5000 miles away from me for five years. I want her to be glad she came back. I’ll start by not making her travel to Brooklyn. At least not for a while.