My Experience in New York City

I’m all about celebration. Celebrating myself, my victories, great memories. Celebrating others for the same milestones, and sometimes for no reason at all.

I relish celebrating life in all its forms. So when I turned 75 a week ago, I decided to celebrate in my favorite city – New York City.

Now, for those of you paying attention, you probably already think I’m 75. I have a confession.

When I wrote my book, Vivi and Me, last year, I figured it would take at least a year to finish. So, I made myself 75. The truth was I was 74, but the book took only a few months, and somehow 74 didn’t sound nearly as bold, brave, or marketable as 75 once I was finished.

So I aged myself. A strange decision for a woman, but there you have it.

Now that I’m actually 75, I’m celebrating all over again. Although I must admit, I’m not quite as young as I was last year – when I was also 75!

I Adore New York City

I love everything about NYC. The theater, the arts, museums, music, the crazy people on the streets, the smell of hot dogs on the corner, and the little surprises everywhere.

New York is a sensory overload, a cacophony of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that can be either overwhelming or absolutely magnificent. For me, it has always been the latter.

Until this trip.

Not because the city had changed. (Well, maybe a little.) But because I had.

The week before I arrived, I visited an ophthalmologist in Ecuador and received some frightening news about my eyes. Four potentially serious conditions, more tests ahead, and the unsettling possibility that my eyesight might be in jeopardy.

For someone who experiences the world so visually, the news was particularly difficult.

Suddenly, New York Took on a Different Meaning

The light hitting the changing autumn leaves. The patina on an old wooden sign. The glow of sunset on the skyscrapers. The shining bow of a violinist in Central Park.

What if someday I couldn’t see these things?

Every image seemed more precious, more significant, more worth remembering.

But something else happened.

I became tentative.

That was the word that kept coming to mind. Not frightened of New York. Not even particularly vulnerable. Just tentative.

I noticed it in the way I walked, watched the traffic, paid attention to the racing bicycle messengers, and navigated subway station stairs. When I wanted to admire something, I actually stopped rather than glancing at it while rushing along. I was more conscious of my footing, more deliberate in my movements.

And I didn’t particularly like it.

I looked up the word tentative. One definition described a movement or action performed hesitantly, cautiously, without confidence.

Had I lost some of my confidence?

A little, if I’m honest.

My body doesn’t respond quite the way it did when I lived and worked in New York. I have arthritis. I’m slower. There are aches and pains I never used to think about. And now I was facing the possibility of something far more significant.

It was an uncomfortable realization that I couldn’t always take my physical independence for granted.

But none of this stopped me.

I went to the theater, walked the streets for hours, shopped, explored Harlem, ate in wonderful restaurants, attended a publishing event at Rockefeller Center, and escaped to the countryside for my actual birthday.

I did everything I’d hoped to do and more. I simply did some of it a little differently.

And somewhere along the way, I began to wonder whether being more deliberate was necessarily such a bad thing.

Perhaps Slowing Down Meant Noticing More

Perhaps caution was simply another form of paying attention.

I was certainly paying attention to New York in a way I hadn’t before. Every architectural detail, every autumn color, every unexpected encounter seemed a little more meaningful.

Because suddenly, I was aware that there are no guarantees.

Then, last night, something unexpected happened.

Over dinner with two friends, I mentioned my newfound tentativeness. One of them, a die-hard New Yorker, surprised me by admitting she felt much the same way.

Her hearing had changed, and the city’s noise sometimes overwhelmed her. Two knee replacements had made her more careful about walking. She, too, had become increasingly conscious of speeding bicycles, crowded sidewalks, and the relentless pace of Manhattan.

She Used the Word Vulnerable

We weren’t experiencing exactly the same things, but we understood each other immediately.

And I can’t tell you how much better that conversation made me feel.

Not because anything had changed physically. My eye tests are still ahead of me. My arthritis won’t disappear. And New York certainly hasn’t slowed down to accommodate either of us.

But I discovered that what had felt like a private, unsettling experience wasn’t mine alone.

Maybe that’s another gift of getting older. Recognizing that we don’t have to pretend everything feels exactly as it once did. We can talk about the changes, laugh about some of them, and find comfort in discovering that others understand.

I’m still celebrating. I’m still curious, excited, grateful, and completely in love with New York.

I’m just a little more tentative these days.

And perhaps that’s all right.

After all, there’s something to be said for slowing down long enough to really see the world around you.

Let’s Talk About Our Challenges:

Have you found yourself becoming more tentative as you’ve gotten older? Has that made you feel more vulnerable, or has it also helped you become more attentive to the world around you? I’d love to hear about your experiences.