Michael Tirado

Son of Suburbia

“What am I forgetting?”  That question inspires one of my least favorite feelings in the world.  Why?  Mostly because it’s hard to forget something and remember it at the same time.  Regardless of my precision in packing four bags to last exactly four days, no more, no less, as I make the final trip out the front door, I know that something will be left behind in suburbia and never make it to the second location of my life split in two – upper Manhattan, Harlem, to be exact.  This week, it was my red and blue Captain America headphones.  Walking to class along the path of St. Nicholas Park is going to be brutal…

            Allow me to backtrack a bit and explain what it is I’m talking about.  To capture my situation perfectly in one sentence, I suppose I could say I am a student at City College in Manhattan and a resident of Staten Island.  Usually one of the first questions I get when I release this information in conversation asks if I live in a dorm at college.  My answer is short, but very specific – “four days, and I go home Thursday night.”  The reason giving such a specific answer is so important to me is related to my sworn oath to never refer to my dorm as “home”:  Quiet, residential Dongan Hills on Staten Island reserves that title until the day my family and I pick up and move.  However, in a given week during the school year, the time I spend at college is greater than the time I spend on Staten Island.  By now I’ve completely adjusted to living in two places, but when I began to do so it almost felt as though I wasn’t staying anywhere, I was only in an uncomfortable state stuck in between living at home and living at the dorm.  Yet, I still feel as though I have two separate lives – one as a student and one as a son/brother – but both undeniably New Yorker.

            Before I continue(in case it isn’t already clear), I should state that my preference between Staten Island and urban-style New York City is easily Staten Island.  Quiet and spaced out neighborhoods, having the choice to walk, drive, or take public transportation easily, and my favorite things, wide streets, are aspects of suburban life I never want to be completely withdrawn from.  This should explain some percentage of my desire to evacuate Manhattan and return home every single weekend.  I don’t hate the city, but I love Staten Island.

            Anyway, back to where I left off on my journey out the front door.  With my bag of clothes, supply of food, backpack of electronics and books, and guitar case, I feel ready to switch to life number two (minus that feeling of forgetfulness).  After answering a hundred questions from my worrying but caring mom, I say goodbye to her, a younger brother and sister, an enthusiastic dog, and a cat, if he happens to be walking by.  I mentioned that my familiar suburban neighborhood is on the list of reasons I look forward to coming back – these five are another reason, and they remain at the top of the list. 

            I shut the door and walk over to my sixth family member, who is graciously waiting in the car to drive me through three different boroughs to get to Harlem.  Being the oldest kid in the family means I’m the pioneer – first one to go to college, etc. – and my parents have spared no effort in ensuring comfort isn’t something I’ll be lacking.  We start off the shortest segment of the drive in Staten Island – we pass the park I used to play in as a child, which now seems so much smaller (and less exciting), drive up to the main street spanning Staten Island, Hylan Boulevard, and join the cars making their way to the Verrazano Bridge to cross over into the urban boroughs.  The bridge always has been a sight suggesting home for me – I can see it from my window and on my way back into my home borough from elsewhere in New York.  After gazing out over the water from the upper level, my dad and I enter our place of birth – Brooklyn.

                        E.B. White wrote that there are “roughly three New Yorks”:  There is the familiar New York of the born-and-raised New Yorker, there is the one-dimensional New York of the commuter, and there is the objective and larger-than-life New York of the dream chaser.  I was born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, which are two of the five boroughs of New York City, but regardless my New York undoubtedly falls under the second category.  My family and I have traveled into the heart of New York City dozens of times, don’t get me wrong, but 99 percent of the time we do this with blinders in our peripheral vision – we take a car, drive to the Broadway show or comic convention, attend the event, and drive home.  What I mean by metaphorical “blinders” is that the way I’ve gone about traversing the city in past years blinds me to the true character of the city demonstrated by the people there rather than big events.  It’s almost as if I travel through a tunnel, a trip with only a beginning and end and nothing to see in between.  In this way I feel like a commuter in New York City, spending as little time as possible there to attend a given enjoyable event.  I wonder if it was Times Square that made me hate crowds…or have I always hated them?

            My mom says that if my dad and I were any more similar, we’d be the same person.  So, naturally, this never leaves us without something to talk about – the very thing that makes such long car rides great for me.  But this time his mind is preoccupied with our cat’s failing kidneys and the question of how much longer we’ll have our oldest and dearest pet.  So, I take the opportunity to look around a bit more.  Driving on an elevated highway in Brooklyn provides me not only with views of all the clever New York billboards intended for drivers – one of my favorites read something like this, “Welcome to New York, where we’ve got 9 professional sports teams…and the Mets” – but also with views in between buildings and views of the people down below.  I enjoy this position of looking in/down at Brooklyn until we reach the point of no return to suburban life, the medium between the end of familiarity and the beginning of grand urbanity – the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

            Nothing exists in the tunnel – no radio transmission, no human interaction, no environment other than the walls narrowly surrounding our large Ford Expedition.  I will always be taken by surprise by the massive metropolitan feeling that arises upon emerging and seeing the first collection of skyscrapers.  Thirty minutes from my house and technically in the same city, but this is definitely NOT home. 

            Driving up the east side is a pleasant experience, whether at night or during the day – the lights, the water, the open highway.  It’s funny, though, because I think I’d prefer to only be passing through in a car rather than to be walking by to see the very same sights that I enjoy.  We cross over Harlem to reach the west side and soon arrive at the destination.  I make as many trips as possible from the car to my dorm room in order to see my dad and car as many times as I can and finally say goodbye until Thursday.  I am officially bereft of the feeling of home, save for the few things that I brought with me.

I did say that I don’t exactly hate the city, didn’t I?

Now I’m walking up the hill from the conveniently places deli that has my favorite Tropicana Strawberry Banana fruit drink.  As I reach into my pocket to text my girlfriend who makes living at school so much more than bearable, I surprisingly pull out my red and blue Captain America headphones.  Maybe the next four days won’t be so bad after all.