We’re here for the College tour, that All American rite of passage and it’s a bittersweet moment, as suddenly the prospect of our seventeen year old daughter leaving home this autumn seems all too real.
There may be some tears, but it’s hard to be too melancholy as we have arrived at the peak of cherry blossom season and almost everywhere we go in New York and Massachusetts is ablaze in pink and white- a fitting metaphor for her own blossoming into womanhood and for what suddenly seems like an all too brief prior interlude.
Before the serious business of sizing up schools begins, we’re treating ourselves to a couple of nights right by Central Park, and to our surprise and delight we’re on a high floor with that classic dress circle view. A room at The Holiday Inn in Brooklyn Downtown is in our near future, as it’s the only place within walking distance of Pratt Institute that has any space, so normal service will soon be resumed!
Down at ground level the next morning, after putting our daughter in a cab to Greenwich Village to meet up with friends, the park is in full pink blush as we head for a brief art fix at the Frick. Sabrina, as ever in museums keeps me on a short leash and after a few Fragonards and a tonic of Turners she’s ready for Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side, hands down her favourite part of town. It’s even warm enough to eat outdoors and as if things couldn’t get any better the Linguini con Vongole we order is beyond delicious, so much so that Sabrina declares it to be the second best she has eaten anywhere (the perfect version being at a small bistro in Milan). Suffused with good cheer we talk airily about moving here, which might even make some sense, depending on our daughter’s college pick.
Linguine con Vongole: Serves Four
I must confess to bit of an obsession with this dish, so much so that I once ate nothing else at lunch or dinner on a road trip in Lombardy and the Veneto in my quest for perfection. Despite our best efforts to find that bistro in Milan again, we have never managed to do so!
12 oz linguine
1 1/2 lbs Little Neck or Manila clams; (or better yet Ligurian clams if you can get hold of them); rinsed to remove any sand
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 cloves garlic, sliced
E V olive oil
Cook the pasta in lots of salted boiling water, until it’s al dente. While it is cooking, heat a large skillet with 2 tablespoons olive oil; add the garlic, cook until fragrant but not coloured. Add the wine bring to the boil then add the clams, cover and cook until all the clams have opened. If there is still a lot of liquid, remove the clams and reduce some of it, and return the clams to the pot. When the pasta is al dente, drain and add them to the clams, toss to coat, finish with a swirl of olive oil, chopped parsley, add salt and pepper to taste.
Next morning we discover that while the ‘new’ Penn Station may not be as magnificent as its Grand Central sibling, it still delivers on the romance of rail (even if the reality of actually riding the rails with Amtrak is more often than not sadly lacking). This is true of every major railway terminus we’ve used in this country, from the impressive Art Deco Union Station in our own home city of LA, to the Spanish Colonial Alvarado in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the Spanish Baroque of Sante Fe depot in San Diego. Still the ‘Acela’, which runs on this line all the way to Boston is as good as Amtrak gets, and the four and a half hour journey through the bucolic Hudson Valley, past Rhode Island’s beaches definitely has its moments. We disembark in the echoing halls of the Neoclassical Revival style South Station wondering if the West Coast will ever get a train like it (Southern California’s ‘Surfliner’ which I regularly catch from LA to San Diego doesn’t go fast enough to blur any of the scenery and some of the sights of South East LA and Orange County could definitely do with that), let alone travel at the 150 mph claimed for the ‘Acela’.
We’ve allowed ourselves a couple of days to get to know the city before the open day at Tufts and first impressions in the Spring sunshine are really positive, though after a few hours exploration it feels like Boston is a really livable large town rather than New England’s biggest metropolis. Still, the North End (the oldest quarter, which dates back to 1630), is delightful and lunch at the Union Oyster House, which claims to be the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the country (from 1826) is suitably dark and eccentric. Charlestown across the river equally impresses and we love the historic mellow brick townhouses, some of which have their own cherry blossom displays.
You wouldn’t know it was still cold, as t shirt toting locals look askance at us three shivering Southern Californians in our full winter regalia. Taking a very chilly water taxi ride from Charleston Navy Yard to Back Bay, which reminds us a lot of Maida Vale in London, where Sabrina and I were living when our daughter was born, with its large red brick terraces and old money vibe, we warm up with mulled wine and find a great Thai restaurant for dinner. Comparing notes we all agree that lovely as it is, Boston is not going to be edgy or large enough to keep our girl, who has lived in big cities her whole life, interested and visiting the Tufts Art School campus next day we find it to be a cosy cocoon, just like its home town.
A terrible night in a dark, dismal basement room at The Holiday Inn in downtown Brooklyn has done nothing to dent our enthusiasm at being back in a real city (after a thorough bitching by all three of us about our tiny windowless accommodation, unless you count a nine inch tall slit of glass under the ceiling as a ‘window’). Frustratingly, our attempt to ‘upgrade’ is fruitless. This part of the borough is all new to us, as ordinarily we don’t bother much with exploring CBDs, but it is surprisingly gritty and mixed, qualities that would appeal at any other time, but not when this is where our daughter might be living for the next four years. Sabrina and I both keep a firm lid on this first impression as we walk to Pratt for the open day, especially as we know that our daughter, who goes to High School on the campus of Cal State University close to downtown LA, will be as full of excitement about it as we are apprehensive.
Thus begins several hours of a roller coaster of emotions as Sabrina and I are alternately repelled by the huge crowds in the school’s Sports Arena (the intake will be six hundred students), impressed by the Fine Arts curriculum and facilities and horrified (no other word will do) by the utilitarian, breeze block dorms and the grim realities of the financial aid situation. The awful prospect of her leaving also strikes us both hard for the first time, as we can see from our daughter’s face that this might be the place she will choose.
Visit over, we wander south up to Park Slope, through Prospect Park to the Botanical Gardens which are also festooned in pink blossom. There’s a paper sculpture of Andy Warhol by the entrance of the Brooklyn Museum of Art which makes all three of us smile. A tonic for the days ahead where we must let her come to her own decision. It’s Brooklyn or London for the next four years. Either one will be a great adventure.
This really resonated as Boston is my hometown, and will always be a part of who I am.
But Brooklyn has been my home for over a decade, and at this point, it's hard for me to imagine ever living anyplace else again.
I now consider myself a New Yorker, although with baseball season just getting underway, I have no qualms about declaring #YankeesSuck!
A lovely account of that flight-from-home moment all parents face. It seems unreal until the first time you walk back into an empty house and think "So this is it then?!" How you remember what you ate amid all the anxieties it entails, is beyond me! 😄