I met and fell in love with the man of my dreams on my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Later on, when I’d tell friends, they’d act incredulous. “That only happens in the movies,” they’d said, and I’d say it, too, clinging to that perfect beginning, holding it up as evidence long after everything else told me to let go.
“Matt is impossible today,” his teacher said when she wearily passed him off to me. I could only see a 4-year-old whose large, frightened eyes were wet with tears. He looked lost and lonely and I immediately found myself wanting to shelter him. I was a 23-year-old kid myself, barely paying rent on a rundown railroad in Bushwick. This was the first real job I had landed, yet I was only a novice, an uncertified preschool librarian in Brownsville.
This essay by Heather Kristin is the first in our non-fiction series The New 8 Million, chronicling the lives of New Yorkers in their own words. Besides being a native of this fair city, Heather Kristin is a memoirist, novelist, playwright, violinist, composer, ex-actress, former subway performer and new mom who is currently writing a memoir about growing up in New York City. Here is an excerpt.
Introducing The New Eight Million: A series of essays about becoming and living the existence of a New Yorker. We’re here to ask, what’s worth knowing about those who spend their lives in our fair city? Click through to learn more about how to submit your original non-fiction for this new series.
