Dear New York,

It was good to see you. We took a few trips to visit you recently. Dad died in September and Mom needed some attention.

My sister is getting rid of her place in the West Village where we would stay. A son lives there and a daughter loves you like home.

We are going to take a break for a while. I’m not sure what it is really.

But you have an emptiness now. You’re a bit cold and dark. More impersonal. A little sketchier. Most of it is COVID, which pulls back the curtain on all of our flaws like the Wizard of Oz. People are packing your bars and restaurants after two years of uncertainty and anxiety - not a mask in site. Social distance be damned.

On my last visit a guy threw himself down in the middle of traffic on 5th Avenue. I raced to the righteous rescue, to save a life, to right the world, to do my civic duty. Once I’d convinced him to the sidewalk, he demanded a $20 spot. In my privilege, I expected a thank you. I don’t blame him for escalating the tactic to make money. But it’s a new level for sure.

And then he was on to the next.

We went through Dad’s stuff at his apartment, a cool two-bedroom overlooking Washington Square Park, looking straight south at the Freedom Tower. We roamed your West Village, had lunch with our daughter, window shopped on Bleeker, and wondered what the developer has in mind for the area.

We rented an apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn for two years before COVID - earning a masters degree in urban living. For 30 years, we’d done the country in Vermont, with all that entails; firewood, snow shovels, layers, bad Internet. It felt good, that feeling of living a bit differently, away from the crowd, spitting at convention. Vermont is far and cold. It takes a little more. When driving home, there is always a feeling of getting to Southern Vermont and realizing you have another two hours to go. Vermont is not easy.

So off to Brooklyn, where an old ethnic neighborhood - Williamsburg - has turned into a gentrified home for digital natives, e-commerce brands and $50 hair cuts. We learned to avoid the cool stuff and find the real places. The bodega, Ops pizza, the Italian place on Havermayer, McCarren Park, the new waterfront, the public pool on Bedford St. for $10 a month.

Your L train is America on rails rolling under the East River. We learned to take your ferry back and forth to Manhattan or out to NJ to see Mom. We ditched the car and walked everywhere.

It was a blast. You’re a blast. You are 10 different countries, all with their own culture and ways of life. COVID stopped much of that, changing everything. The scars and sores we ignored while strolling through Central Park or along the Hudson River now slap us in the face. That guy in the middle of 5th Avenue has taken his desperation to another level. And New York looks desperate too.

You’re just harder now. You’re traffic is terrible. And a general anxiety underlies your streets. But I know you’re greatness is still there underneath it all. Broadway is coming back, the streets are filled. The Moynihan train hall is a fabulous monument to what infrastructure spending can do for a quality of life. And your new mayor looks smart and focused and strong enough to resist the grip of the real estate developers.

What’s great about you is that in your streets and buildings, shops and bars, a person can scratch out a living. You’re a different kind of hard than Vermont, but hard just the same. And you’re harder now.

We are going to take a break and let you recover and grow back in new ways. We will be back. Thank you for having us.