Where's the sea, friend?

Albany seemed perfect for us. Believe it or not, it had its elements of romance, where we had met and fallen into each other after crashing clumsily into others less caring on an otherwise cold and frigid campus, where others seemed to be cruising past post-adolescence with easy casual '60s sex. We wanted compassion, convincing, good grammar. After 10 years in the City, we returned hoping for easier careers, for little babies, for an apartment with a kitchen and a dishwasher and a place to park. Albany, it was the best of worlds, evenly placed between New York where my friends were, and Boston with the ocean so near, and Montreal, which really didn't matter to us at all but it seemed like another good reason, Montreal so close! and those two days on our honeymoon!

I miss our City apartment, its cockroaches in the kitchen and its slim view of the World Trade Center from the bedroom, I hate the phone conversations with rueful voices that end with, "Coming to New York? when are you coming down? We'll be up to see you in your next show," I miss falling asleep hearing night traffic, I miss not owning a car, I miss walking with a purpose, without an umbrella, stepping in dog shit, watching my reflection in store windows and sitting and waiting on a window ledge, drinking coffee on the steps of a brownstone on Gramercy Park. I miss the Excellent Restaurant, and Donahues, and Chelsea Place, and Opel and Pegeen's, I miss being afraid, panicked, depressed, feeling like I could die young at any moment, I miss the amazing fragility of crushed crushing humans, each old woman with a shopping cart, each old man with a brightly patterned shirt, searing into my memory, I miss the stories I gave them, where they lived, I miss seeing Christmas lights dotting the windows of high apartments, who's up there, I miss getting out of town and returning as if in a bubble, untouchable and quiet on the pulsing, noisome streets.

And now here, this old street with its slow old memories; and where's the sea I thought was so close?