Autumn in New York...

A very picturesque scene of the Central Park Mall - It actually looks even more charming in person...

Perhaps it's due to the fact that I'm somewhat of a curmudgeon at heart, but the autumn is my very favorite time of the year. Ever since childhood, I would look forward to the leaves changing colors and flying through the air in dancelike patterns until falling into the community of their previously fallen compatriots, already stuck on the ground, which depending on how you look at it, can be either inspiring or really depressing. In New York, a city known for its fashion-savvy residents, it is safe to say that even the trees seem to be modeling some trendy sort of seasonal wares this time of year, competing with the other trees to be the most outstanding, not unlike their human counterparts turning the sidewalks of the city into runways and catwalks of extravagant outerwear...

My Stupid Hat

Recently my office moved to a neighborhood near Penn Station known as the fur district. It's a rather dingy little section of mid-Manhattan with an abundance of tired looking gray industrial buildings in need of sandblasting and lacking very many good places to eat (I am most affected by this aspect of the move). There are more fur suppliers, resellers and designer fur-clothing manufacturers concentrated in these few blocks than any other place on Earth. I am not surprised at how many of the fur merchants seem to be surly Russian mafia members, but I'm definitely surprised that the streets aren't overwhelmed with PETA protesters holding overburdened paint cans, ready to for action. Being neither an angry animal rights activist, nor a person of wealth, I recently purchased the most ridiculous giant faux-fur winter hat I could find. Aside from looking like a reject from the Sonny and Cher collection, it keeps me warm in the oppressive New York winds that blow through the narrow streets between the buildings. My bargain-priced fall fashion decision earns me disdainful glares from the beady-eyed shop keepers surrounded by their menagerie of animal carcasses. They can notice from a mile away that my hat is both fake AND stupid-looking, as I blithely make my way down the sidewalk in search of lunchtime burritos (ah, Chipotle barbacoa), enjoying their squirms and malignant disgust.

Coming up on "the holidays," I have taken an extra seasonal job in retail working at a clothing store on 5th Avenue at Rockefeller Center. As glamorous as that may sound, retail is retail no matter the setting. The store can best be described as a more drab and less-edgy European version of the Gap (if more drab and less edgy than Gap is even possible). Being as "fun sized" as I am, the employee discount program is not extremely beneficial considering few of their garments even come close to fitting well on my impish frame, so my favorite perk of the job is the opportunity to observe a steady trickle of confused tourists who try to avoid salespeople, like myself, at all costs. I'm learning that I am unable to convincingly lie to strangers to get them to believe that they look "great" in faux fur-hooded parkas that would look strange on even eskimos. I blame my mother for my inability to successfully tell mis-truths as I was never allowed to get away with it when I was younger which killed my chances to hone the skill. Instead I have to find unrelated statements that will sound better, like, "I bet you'll be the only person back in Arkansas with a giant man-bag like this one," or "I'm sure you'll really stand out in that plaid hat when you go back to Japan..." Perhaps if I really believed in what I was selling, I could more convincingly lie about it, much like a politician or televangelist. We'll see how far I go in my sales career, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hope that I make it through the season unscathed.

Retail and unfriendly Russians aside, when all is said and done, New York is a beautiful place to be during this transitional time of the year, even when getting the stink eye from passersby, comparing outerwear. I now can vouch for all of those cheesy movies and songs based on this very phenomenon in the city. Between the beautiful leaves lining the gutters, preparations for window displays on 5th Avenue  and the smell of "a little something extra" in the coffee cups of certain businessmen walking out of Penn Station, there is a magical crispness that makes one feel truly alive.

Central Park Photo taken from http://www.kiamoy.com/?p=144

The wilderness lady in the Big Apple...

My mother in Rockefeller Center absorbing the essence of Al Roker...

No matter how far one may roam, it seems like remnants of your past are never very far away. Now, nearly two thousand miles from the tiny rural town where I grew up, the first instance of my old life colliding directly with my new one occurred recently in the form of my mother taking on the big apple...

My mother is a "real hoot," and she would be the first one to tell you that. Being a self-proclaimed city girl at heart (having grown up in Washington, D.C., - the daughter of a Pentagon accountant), living in rural Colorado for the past three and a half decades, teaching wilderness survival and baking thousands of loaves of homemade whole-grain bread to sell to the masses in her little town has definitely been a dramatic change from her upbringing. Even while butchering chickens on mountain tops and finding endless ways to prepare various bean-centric dishes over a smoldering campfire in the wind and the rain, she would always find opportunities to bring in saucy anecdotes about her former city life. She was always so very proud of her teenage exploits, whether they were stories of being chased by security guards down the banisters of the Lincoln Memorial or dancing around in public fountains with her psuedo-hippie riff raff friends. She was a non-conformist and in her ultimate non-conformity, she chose a life of peaceful obscurity in the wide open wilderness of the west, far far away from the noises and lights of the big city...

As a child, I could never quite actualize the stories my mother would tell of her former life surrounded by so many different people from so many different places. Considering that my parents took me on my first wilderness survival program in the mountains when I was just several weeks old, my world was quite removed from one of diplomats, generals and socialites all thriving together in one place. I lived in a world where feuds between ranchers of cattle and sheep generated the juiciest of gossip available. For my parents, our tiny house with its menagerie of non-functioning automobiles and our proximity to so many wonders of the natural world were much more appealing than living a fancier life anywhere else. Even in self-imposed poverty, they had chased after their own dreams and found themselves right where they needed to be; nestled comfortably in the heart of the middle of nowhere. Over the last thirty-some odd years though, living in her own private version of "Walton's Mountain" has softened by mother just a bit.

My mother recently made her first voyage to New York since 1972 as a means to cash in on an expiring airline voucher and also to inspect my new life, in person. On our first morning out in my neighborhood, she made it clear that she was to be the solitary member of the Morningside Heights neighborly greeting committee, and say "hello" and "good morning" to every soul she passed on the street. Despite my attempts to explain that people just don't do that here, she boldly walked ahead of me and made her wholesome small town gesture to all of Amsterdam Avenue in opposition to the puzzled looks on the faces of the people whose mornings she'd just interrupted with her mountain-fresh effervescence. Like a good son, I walked 5 paces behind her as she intentionally did her best to get the better of me, and I could tell she enjoyed every second of it.

Touring the city with her was like seeing everything through the eyes of a stranger deserted on an alien planet, and I enjoyed that. I thought she was going to disinfect the entire city with hand sanitizer before she left, but she seemed to take in every moment as a memory to be kept for later use. From the gilded doorways of Saint John the Divine to the dingy mosaics in the subway stations, everything was an object of interest to be admired. It would have been almost cute if not every single pebble on the street was seen with audible "oohs" and "aahs" coming from her direction.

One of the highlights of the visit was our trip to Rockefeller center. For some bizarre reason, my mother watches the Today Show devoutly and has always had a huge crush on Al Roker. Although seeing the darkened studio in mid-day through the windows on the street wasn't as exciting as being among the mob of early morning fans (I think I would rather be dead than to have to endure such torture), she was pleased to at least actualize the location of her early morning television nostalgia. This and many other little scenes of notable New York locations compounded into what seemed like a waking dream in my mother's outward reactions. Whether it was going to the Met's Egyptian collection, eating confections in Little Italy or seeing the inside of a real Broadway theatre, my mother's child-like excitement brought the city to life in a way I did not expect. Leading her through a new world and watching her discovery of it all made me feel, for one of the first times in my life, less like a child and more like the "grown up" in my mother's presence.

By the time my mother went back home to the mountains, I felt like we'd shared something unique. In coming and seeing this place that I've worked so hard to be able to live in, and actually enjoying it, I feel like my mother was able to understand me in a new way that she hadn't before. I think it was definitely a relief for both of us when she arrived back, safely, in her cozy quiet little mountain town, but she definitely left a piece of her heart in the big city...