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On the Feeling of Belonging
It’s question often asked and answered, if you live in New York City: “Where are you from?” It’s an easy conversation starter, and since countless residents of the Big Apple are born elsewhere, the answer is often interesting. People flock to the city not just from around the country but also from around the world.
Though I have lived in this place for nine years, I am not a New Yorker.
Once, long ago — I guess, maybe, in college — I was playing Trivial Pursuit with my room mate, her friend from Minnesota, and some other friend of ours. The young woman from Minnesota took her turn and drew a card. The question on the card was, “Name three New England states.” She answered, “Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York.” It is, undoubtedly, in keeping with a character flaw of mine that I rather loudly expressed my contempt for her utter lack of geographical, historical, and cultural knowledge, and her inability to accurately answer a most basic, third-grade level question. (By the way, Connecticut is perhaps technically a New England state, but half of its residents root for the New York Yankees, so…)
I was born in the state of Maine. I am not a New Yorker. I find that New York City is oppressive. The buildings loom over you, grinding you down into the endless cement. The feeling of impending doom lurks in every crowd.
When my wife and I were on vacation last year in Glacier National Park, various people — waiters, hotel clerks, B&B owners, fellow hikers — asked us, “Where are you from?” We always answered with a qualification, “Well, we live in Brooklyn, New York, but we’re from Maine originally.”
I’m from Maine. But am I still a Mainer?
I don’t know.
One week from today, my wife and I drive to New Hampshire to close on a house that was built in 1790, when George Washington was president. We’ll take up a load of our belongings then, but most of our things we’ll move up in a month.
Moving is a big ordeal, it’s stressful. Buying a house in another state, 300 miles away, makes it all the more so. But it is also exciting, exhilarating, and liberating.
New York city has an 8.7% sales tax, New Hampshire has no sales tax. New York City has a 9% income tax, New Hampshire has no income tax (though it does have a tax on capital gains). Our monthly payment for the mortgage, real estate taxes, and home insurance will be $400 less than we currently pay in rent. My Brooklyn Congressional district is 90% Democrat. New Hampshire is somewhat more balanced.
We’ll be arriving just in time to vote for Scott Brown, and we’re looking forward to the 2016 primary season! Our new town is next door to Mitt Romney’s house on Lake Winnipesaukee. We both have family in New Hampshire and southern Maine.
I have never been willing to call myself a New Yorker. I am perhaps no longer a Mainer. “New Hampshireman” sounds a bit clunky.
I am a New Englander, and I feel like I am going home.
Published in General
You are touching a sore spot.
Last weekend my husband and I were in NYC, and I was telling him that maybe it’s okay for me to consider myself as belonging to New York—as from there, in a way.
My Irish forebears were New Yorkers. Both parents were raised on Long Island. I was born in midtown. When I was five we moved to CT, where I never seemed fit in. My Dad commuted to his office in the World Trade Center. College in Ohio; grad school in Liechtenstein; married to a Dutchman. First four babies born in 4 different countries. We’ve moved and moved, looking for our niche in life.
New Hampshire has been a fixed point in summer time, but we are feeling finished with it now, and wanting to sell our house and land there.
We’ve lived in West Chester PA for several years now, and like it a lot. But it doesn’t really feel like home. Nowhere does, quite.
Makes me feel melancholy to think of it.
I used to be “from” Oregon. But I have not lived there in a great many years, and the place (when I visit) drives me nuts.
Having lived in 6 places (including a decade in London), I consider myself competent in virtually any Western environment from the wilds of Idaho to an exclusive Pall Mall club, but truly at home only with my family.
For better or worse, I now think of being “from” a place as being a weakness, a human concession to an accident of birth or upbringing. Even though my background is considered quite exotic by most, I consider my accomplishments and choices to be far more important for myself and the world around me.
New Hampshire is a great state, but is being populated by lefty squatters from Massachusetts. You’ll be welcomed there to counterbalance it all. My sister moved there from Ohio several years ago as part of the Free State project and loves it there.
What exactly does “part of the Free State project” mean, by the way? I’m vaguely aware of that.
https://freestateproject.org
It’s a project by a large group of Libertarians (across the spectrum from anarchists to socially conservative Libertarians) to try to move in enough numbers to sway the electoral map of a state. New Hampshire, already being about the most free on a host of issues, seemed a ripe target.
That being said, some factions have made themselves unwelcome, particularly in Keene where they seem most concerned with smoking pot and harassing the police. The Keene group has pretty well alienated the others.
HAHA, yeah…I picked up somehow that Keane is a hippie pot town… My cousin went to school there.
I’ve been in southern California for 37 years, so in all honesty I can’t call myself a New Yorker, but I never quite let go of the identification. Most people hear nothing of it in my speaking voice unless I’m on the phone to another New Yorker, especially if it’s a heated discussion: “What? Are you kiddin’? You’ll be lucky to get off with a reprimand, pal.”
I still love the Mets, but I won’t sit in Dodger Stadium and cheer for them; too many NYCers are jerks that way. Los Angeles has been good to us; show it some loyalty. And I do. But in many ways it’s still not home.
Tuftonboro’s gain is Brooklyn’s loss.
Yeah, he’s not going to be able to do his “Alternative Side Parking” videolog series up there. Maybe Albert can come up with an alternatives like “Driving Fifty Miles to Sears” or “Who Wants Ice Cream! It’s Only a Half Hour Away?”
New Hampshire is a great state. Congratulations on the move!
I’ve moved so much that my Ricochet profile reads “Parts Unknown”…like The Ultimate Warrior, RIP.
Happy as all get-out for you, Albert! Maybe “Alternate Side Parking” becomes “Alternate Point of View”?
Thanks, Nanda!
The view in question:
Welcome! I think Granite-Stater is the descriptor you’re looking for.
Mark lives in Woodsville on the Connecticut river, about 3/5s up the state (north of Hanover). I think it’s in the western reaches of the White Mountain National Forest.
Ah, gotcha. That’s almost two hours from us, then. (Tuftonboro.)