Having grown up in and around New York City and spending many formative years there- I always have a bit of a love hate thing going on when I go back and visit family, as I do often. I have so many memories of places, people, times in my life that are in the past. Lets call it a total nostalgia trip- which it always is. Though I have lived in San Francisco for 18 years (amazingly), I do not have the history here that I have in New York. And that includes multiple generations of family members embracing all that is NY- late 19th century emigres, some to Ellis Island later, Lower East Side tenement life, exodus to Long Island suburbs in the 60's, Upper West and Eastside later, living in Brooklyn before it was so uber hip. I have no home base like that in California- and for that reason, sometimes still feel like a visitor. So when I go back to NY, that part feels good. I can walk down 86th street and see where my mother grew up and, go to midtown and see where my parents, 2 of my sisters and I, got married. I see where the old Ma bell restaurant was in Times Square, where you sit at a booth to eat with telephones mounted for use, and my old lemonade selling corners downtown. My kids, of course, are cultivating those kind of memories here in San Francisco daily and it will be their NY, and they are rooted here, though too, sense the history when they go east.
So long story short....just got back from NY where I went to visit family and do the New York International Gift Fair again in Handmade.
I mostly had to work, but did get out a bit to walk the hi line, and snap a few memorable images topping it off in the verdant woods and funky flea markets of Northwestern, CT.
Home (new hometown), again and came back to a heap of work as well as a hawk carcass on the roof of my studio. My husband said it was a blessing, an offering. I do hope so. I will give the hawk a proper burial and return to my new roots.
