I am was a city girl.  Born and bred in Queens, New York, Manhattan or "the city" was a 20 minute train ride away. From the time I was 11, I was heading into the city with my friends on the weekends.  By the time I was 14, we were hitting the clubs.  My parents left the city when I was 14 - they moved to Connecticut, I went to boarding school just outside of Boston.  I spent as much time in Manhattan as I could.  I had a few friends that lived in Manhattan and spent school breaks with them whenever I could. I went to college in Ohio and did a semester in NY interning at NBC and a summer at NYU.  When I graduated college, I moved back to Manhattan and into a series of apartments with my sister.  We went from living in a squalid dive on 31st street for $800 a month (and hookers and the homeless on the doorstep)  to a much nicer apartment with a balcony on East 30th street until I finally moved into the apartment I shared with my husband on West 77th street, across from the Museum of Natural History and just down the block from Central Park.

I thought I would never leave the city.  In fact, my brother and sister still live there.  My husband was offered an opportunity to work in South Africa and so the decision was made to leave New York.  I left my high profile job as a Public Relations Manager for a major cosmetics company, left my beautiful apartment and ventured off to the great country of South Africa.  We spent six years there and upon returning to the US with 2 kids, Manhattan no longer seemed like a viable option for us to live. 

We chose to move to Mayberry, the town my husband grew up in.  It is a great place to raise a family.  Has a great downtown and great beaches and marinas.  Very different than the big City.

This week I was in the city with Mae, my ballerina. She was accepted into a very prestigious ballet company/school for "summer intensive." Sam was in Florida and Lu went to camp Grandma so it was just us girls.  We had an empty apartment to stay  in - my sister and her family were out of town.  It was hot and crowded and overwhelming and I realized I was no longer a city girl.  I have become soft.  I prefer the suburbs of Mayberry and my big wrap around porch and my garden and grass and everything else that goes with living in the burbs.  I also got a big wake-up call of just how out of shape I am.  The subway stairs were killer.  All the walking left me with sore feet.  Mae is back in the city next week - she is staying with my brother - after 5 days, I had enough of the city - which is funny considering I lived there for so long.  But the city has changed and so have I.  I have gone soft.