But today, glad to be home yet a little restless with the feeling that only yesterday I was on the sidewalks of Chicago and three days ago I sat in a room with Sean Astin, I keep making up excuses to go out just so I can put that soft, familiar strap over my shoulder and remember that I’m part of a tribe.

It’s a tribe of subversives, Ian Cron told us. Because

When the front door of people’s intellect is closed, you sneak in the back door of their imaginations.

Ed Saxon affirmed our creative hopes by reminding us that stories help us see another person. “They make us behave better to each other. “  This wasn’t ironic in light of the fact that Saxon was the producer of Silence of the Lambs. It was beautiful.

It’s a tribe that wants to fight the loss of wonder that creeps in during adulthood so we can be children again, roaring like dinosaurs, dreaming ridiculous dreams (Blaine Hogan). It’s a tribe of doubters who are broken and disappointed but never hopeless, because the broken and doubting and disappointed are the people sought by God.*

As we took in all that goodness and permission this week we were in Chicago. And as a new friend of mine said, of STORY and of Chicago, “You both were good for our souls.”So if you see me wearing the bag, just know I’m connecting to Chicago, to quote after quote giving me the permission to create every day, to create well, and to make a difference with the things I create. I’m connecting to the tribe, hoping to tell the stories that remind us, in the words of Samwise Gamgee,

There is still good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.

*This one’s from Darren Whitehead, speaking about Jesus’ final forty days on earth and the people he sought during them.

I never wondered if I would do it. I only wondered how long it would take to start breathing again after I jumped.

That’s a paraphrase on a favorite C.S. Lewis quote in our family. “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

I told you I snorkled in the Atlantic Ocean, but I don’t think I told you how terrified I was before I did it. As Michael and I sat on the beach one evening, gazing at the beautiful ocean in front of us, waves lapping, people bobbing up and down in the water, floating by with their snorkels, paddling out on their boards, I smiled and said, “It’s beautiful. It’s like a Jaws scene waiting to happen.”

And as we rode on the boat five miles or so from shore to a dive and snorkel site they call Christ of the Abyss, I pictured every one of those scenes. I heard the music. I watched my future as a tiny human interest piece on Shark Week, the one fifteen minutes of fame I so do not ever want.

And that’s the thing. I love Shark Week. I find the ocean so fascinating, so beautiful and powerful and mysterious. And I love the really big animals that live there. They amaze and haunt me. They thrill me. But the idea of jumping into the water where they live was now producing in me a weakness and nausea so far past any I’d had before that I didn’t think I could survive it. “It’s just a big lake,” my family told me. Which was exactly the problem. Because even in a lake I picture my feet as they dangle in the water, and I hear the music, and I feel so glad I have no idea what’s swimming beneath me and hiding in caverns under the water. Even land animals, even pets, though I’m not the least bit scared of them, I really prefer from a pleasant distance. I love sharing space with them, I like having them around, I like them in theory. But I really don’t want to touch them.

The only way I knew my fear was mostly irrational and how I knew I was going to jump in that water or perish in the attempt, is because I wasn’t thinking about my children at all. There they sat across from me on the boat, happily strapping on flippers, masks, and life vests, and I didn’t even care. I didn’t think for one second that I would tell them they couldn’t go in or even that I would worry (very much) about their experience. My panic was so reserved for me, it didn’t extend any farther outside except a few little tendrils of it gripping my thoughts about Jake, and I felt very confident Michael’s mom would take those tendrils in hand and overcome them by staying close to him and close to the boat the whole time. She’s as scared of sharks as me, and she had done this. I clung to that as well.

And, anyway, I did it. Just like I knew I would. I thought it was kind of crazy. I questioned the sanity of every person who’d ever done it and especially the captains of this boat who did it over and over again with complete strangers, children, novices, and a Jaws fans like myself. How could they know? How could they ever presume to know that nothing terrible would happen?

I put the yellow inflatable device on, mostly because it was fluorescent and I wanted the boat to be able to see me at all times, grabbed my mask like she taught me, and jumped. And it was probably about .8 seconds that I didn’t breathe after that. I mean, I will never forget the feeling of sheer terror that accompanied me into that water. But then I did breathe, and I shoved my mask in the water almost defiantly, daring the experience to prove to me it was worth this feeling.

And then it so was. Remember imagining you could walk on the ceiling and how different the house would look from up there or wishing you could shrink and walk through a doll house or an aquarium? That’s what this felt like. Like I’d been dropped into a situation that shouldn’t really be possible, but it was. And I was there, watching other things live and move and go about their day like an alien having a look at earth. It was so cool.

I popped my head back up, the terror not exactly gone but definitely conquered, Jake safe and happy within a few feet of the boat and a heartbeat from Michael’s mom, my oldest two swimming away with my sister-in-law, and I turned to follow them. “Well,” I said to Jane. “I’m going to see Jesus.”

It was the only thing I wanted to see that first time around. I mean, a statue of Jesus twenty feet under water is a pretty once-in-a-lifetime thing. It was pretty much as cool – and as creepy – as this photograph shows it to be. After that, I even looked at the coral and fish. I stayed in the water the entire alloted time, and I didn’t panic once. By the end I thought I even wanted to see one of the nurse sharks pictured on the what-you-might-see-here cards and which probably started the gradual panic, now that I think about it.

My in-law took friends to Hawaii once, and on the plane one of them said, “If it’s going to crash, I just hope it does it on the way home.” That’s kind of how I felt about sharks once I actually got in the ocean. If it was my time to go that way, at least I’d really enjoyed the ride.

Photo by gergobacsi on Flickr.

I think, perhaps, we have very mistaken ideas about heaven – what it is and what it holds for us. I don’t think it can be so very different from life here as most people seem to think. I believe we’ll just go on living – a good deal as we live here – and be ourselves just the same – only it will be easier to be good and to follow the highest. All the hindrances and perplexities will be taken away, and we shall see clearly.

~Anne of the Island

So, in the last month I’ve been on top of the Empire State Building and at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Can you believe it?

Well, you shouldn’t believe it really, since I wasn’t actually on the bottom of the ocean. I just bobbed around at the top of it and looked at the bottom which was only about twenty feet below me where I snorkeled. I might tell you all about that another time and how I saw Jesus there.

We were in Florida for about a week. We took two days to drive there and three days to drive home. I was in the Smoky Mountains and drove around the beautiful horse farms in Kentucky. We snorkeled in the Florida Keys and drove through Miami at night – a really gorgeous skyline I’d never seen before.

At times it gave me a grass-is-greener kind of feeling. I mean, everything seemed so amazing and unique compared to the little Missouri hills I come from. But mostly I was just thinking about how much there is to see and do, and I’m alive to do it.

Did you ever feel scared of eternity? I’ve kind of always been scared of it. Not so much where I’ll spend it but just the fact that it goes on forever. And on this trip – maybe it’s because I was looking back to the days just after my diagnosis when I sort of started expecting death – or maybe it’s because I got a phone call on it that kind of shook me – I’ll mention that later – but I kept thinking about how many cool things exist in this life and that I wish I had all of eternity to explore them instead of all of eternity in a place I can’t even fathom. It probably sounds strange, because believe me, I’m generally completely convinced that heaven is better than anything we can imagine. But I’m just saying. That’s hard to imagine since there’s so much to love about here.

The phone call was from Nurse Kim at Dr. R’s office. Apparently the official report on my lung CT showed a couple very tiny points of concern that should be and almost definitely are regular ol’ scar tissue that many people have in their lungs from previous infections but that seem to have grown since the last scan. So I go back in three months instead of a year, and we’ll take a look again. We’ve had this exact scare before, both on my lungs and on my shoulder. And we’ve learned that it wastes a lot of good, pleasant time to fret and worry about it when it really might be nothing at all. And I promise you, I’m not fretting.

I’m not.

But still, it makes me think. It makes me remember the really scariest moments in the beginning and how nothing has been quite that scary since. It makes me think about the people who’ve had cancer before me and despite lots of good years and lots of fighting, it eventually won. I also think about the people who’ve had cancer before me and totally won. And obviously, I think about eternity and life on earth and that feeling I had the first time that life was too short now to bother dreaming or to do daring things or to visit exciting places but how as I emerged from the valley of the shadow I was thinking, Not next time. Next time, I’m totally riding the bull. And that makes me think about the fact that from the Empire State Building to the Atlantic Ocean to the Smokies and horse farms in between, I’m kind of doing that. I’m completely alive and I’m actually living, and my heart is very, very full.

I woke up early, because I wanted to take a walk all by myself before the itinerary chased me down and ran me over. (I’d spent most of the trip technically flattened by that thing, but I lay there flattened and grinning, darn it.)

When I stepped from my hotel that morning, I was no longer watching a movie but in it. Today I would meet my writer friend Anne Dayton who is also an editor. I’d get another glimpse of the beautiful Central Park. And I was leaving.

I started at Subway and ordered a large Diet Coke just like the day before. The same guy took my money and handed me a cup, only this time his face lit up and he greeted me. I guess yesterday I was just another stranger but today I’d earned a neighborly hello. I told him where I was from and how sad I was that I had to leave today, got my Diet Coke, and headed south to 91st Street.

Before I left Missouri, I googled a bunch of places I wanted to see in New York, places like the building at Bedford and Grove that stood as Monica’s apartment in Friends (and the restaurant in No Reservations). The Seinfeld Diner was just a ways north of my hotel. And only three short blocks south and two long blocks over, the 91st Street Garden in Riverside Park, where Kathleen Kelly discovers for the first time that Joe Fox is her NY152. That’s where I headed Friday morning with my big green bag over my shoulder and my Diet Coke in my hand.

I walked through neighborhoods that I swear Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan walked through in the movie You’ve Got Mail. Every step or so, I’d think, that’s it. That has to be the exterior for her apartment in that movie. And of course, it probably wasn’t. There were so many beautiful brownstones in that neighborhood.

It was very quiet in this part of New York but still nothing like a quiet morning in the country when you actually might not see a single person. I saw runners, bikers, dog-walkers, people going to work, people coming home. And then I was there, on Riverside Drive – which is, I believe, the street where Joe Fox lived in the movie. And the park was just across the street. I walked into it and had to either veer left or right. I didn’t know which way, but the itinerary was coming for me, and I had to choose fast. Right it was. I went down, down, down a hill, then back up it a little bit – I swear I could hear Joe Fox calling Brinkley’s name as I did it. And then I saw this view and the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow played in my head and I heard nothing, not a sound on the city streets, just the beating of my heart, as I stood in Nora Ephron’s New York and just drank it in.

I took a few pictures there. During this speed-of-light tour of New York, I took pictures not so much to remember the things I’d gazed at while I was there but in a desperate attempt to capture the views I wasn’t really having the time to enjoy. On Top of the Rock, for instance, I hardly even looked. I just snapped, picture after picture, like a mad woman so I could say I had been there and then look at the pictures later and actually be there. It was kind of the same with this garden. Only maybe I managed to be there more than I thought, because I can still feel it. When I look at this picture, I’m there.

After that, I rejoined the group and most of us walked toward Central Park where we would just waste time until the Museum of Natural History opened later in the morning. We stopped on some park benches, and that’s when I left the group again and headed towards the museum to meet Anne Dayton for real.

When I got to the museum, a tall, brown-haired girl sat at the base of a statue in front of it. She had her head toward something in her lap, and she was swinging her feet. And I knew it was Anne. Her entire posture said Anne, although it was completely surreal to know that when I had only seen her in 2D up to this point. 2D Anne doesn’t compare to 3D Anne, you know. She’s prettier and brighter and so beautifully alive in real life that I felt like I’d walked into a painting.

We had coffee, Anne and I. We walked to a Starbucks a couple blocks down and then back to the benches across from the museum, with Central Park behind us and all of Manhattan to our left. We talked about our families and our work and about writing. Felicity asked me what Anne is like in person and I said, “Just like she seems online, and she doesn’t talk as much as me.” But despite my deluge of words – oh so many words, and none of them large or poetic – we had an actual conversation between the two of us, and I loved every moment of it and felt so thankful that she had cared to meet me and had managed to make it work despite the Itinerary of Madness.

I told you already that Holly and Anne made my New York trip what it was. The attractions were amazing, and the city sidewalks everything I’d imagined them to be (only so much more), but it’s the fact that I have friends there that made it really come alive and that made me really feel that I could be a part.

**

Our final attraction was the Museum of Natural History with its amazing planetarium and giant dinosaur fossils, realistic dioramas, the overpowering blue whale, and so much more. Everything about it – from its grand entrance, which was unfortunately under scaffolding when I was there, to the spiraling interior and fascinating exhibits – again, lived up to every expectation I had. My overwhelming thought about New York prevailed: the movies told the truth. It’s everything you see there, only like Anne, its brighter and better, more 3D and alive. And you get to waltz right in and be a part of it, and that’s what I loved the most.

**

We ate a boxed lunch at the hotel after that, loaded onto a motorcoach, and took off for the airport. I’d been the only one to refuse exhaustion before that point. I didn’t complain about my feet in Washington D.C. even when taking ibuprofen for the pain. And I never uttered the words I’m tired unless it followed an actual unstoppable yawn or was in answer to a direct question. But the moment our bus emerged from a bridge and turned so I could no longer see the skyline of Manhattan, I fell inescapably to sleep.

**

I don’t know when I first decided I wanted to see New York before I died. I do know that when I actually thought I was dying, New York wasn’t worth to me the moments I’d have to spend away from my children and family. But now that I have been there, I’m so grateful – so very, very grateful – that I didn’t die in 2005 when I could have. In the last decade or more my life has felt like it was missing some really cool part. I knew it was supposed to be in my life because I could feel it much more like I was remembering it than just imagining. Travels probably, friendships definitely. And now – a few small dreams aside, having slept and walked and visited and discovered so much in New York City, I feel much more complete.

New York City was my Planet Hollywood, and the restaurant by the same name, which held the dresses from Dirty Dancing and from Greece along with the actual hand print of Will Smith that you could place your own fingers inside, was really just a distraction from the real thing outside on the streets. When I’m in the midwest, I’d love a delightful glimpse of Hollywood with actual memorabilia. When in New York, give me the restaurants where celebrities might actually eat. Then put it on a secret itinerary for starry-eyed fans like me and call that Planet Hollywood. And that’s all I have to say about that.

**

After lunch on Thursday, we had free time. FREE TIME. It was oh so brief, and we were on Times Square which eats up free time like Monica Geller eats girlscout cookies, BUT IT WAS FREE. Do you wonder what I did? Are you dying to know which Times Square novelty store I perused (Toys R Us = I wanted pictures of the robotic T-rex for Jake), what unique things held my attention (the dude painted like the copper statue of a cowboy – he moved like a robot and made the noise of one if you put change in his bucket) or which Broadway poster I stood beneath and dreamed (Wicked, definitely Wicked – I missed the opportunity to see it St. Louis to be on Times Square instead)? It wasn’t any of those actually. Or it was all of them, briefly, but what I really did with my free time on Times Square was call my mother so she could guide me to a web cam and then send the link to Michael so my boys could see me wave at them from the middle of Times Square. If you thought I was cool up until the moment you read that sentence, you just haven’t been here long enough.

**

Next I walked to Radio City Music Hall. Alone. (And again, so proud). We took the regular tour there, and can anyone guess what song played in my head the entire time? I’ll give you a clue, because for some of you not even the actual lyrics will give it away…”Let’s. Go to. The Mooooovies…..Let’s. Go to. the Shoooooow. Let’s go to the movies, ANNIE…..” Do you remember? Little red-haired Annie running up and down the aisle at Radio City Music Hall when Mr. Warbucks took her to the movies? I LOVE that scene! And now I was living it. Only there was no movie playing, only a stage crew setting up for New Kids on the Block, and though the Rockettes didn’t dance, we did get to meet one back stage for Q&A and a picture.

Radio City Music Hall is beautiful and intricate and rich with fabulous history plus frequent celebrity guests today. We entered a reception room where both Judy Garland and Justin Timberlake have mingled, and I was moved. You see what I mean about Planet Hollywood? I mean, seeing their memorabilia behind glass is pretty cool, but it really pales in comparison to standing in a room where they have stood.

**

But then we went to the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and celebrities meant nothing to me.

The Empire State Building is beautiful and evocative and belongs to New York City like New York City belongs to it. But don’t cry or hate me when I tell you this, the experience and the view from Top of the Rock is the one that takes your breath away.

Did you ever climb to the top of a church spire or the Old Post Office in Washington D.C. or a small town water tower in the middle of Missouri? The observatory at the Empire State Building is a little like being on one of those. It’s no longer the glamorous building that lights up special for holidays when you’ve stood in line for two hours and now stand on its narrow deck at the top. It’s just a really, really tall building, holding you in with metal. It’s an amazing view and a sentimental thrill, but elegant, it’s not.

The observatory on Top of the Rock is deep and spacious. They send up just the right amount of people at a time and offer two levels at once – the first with tall, wide plexiglass separating you from the sky – the second a little interior of that with nothing but New York City wind whipping around you where you stand. It’s the ultimate Dead Poet’s Society moment when you move above the world to see it from a perspective that makes its troubles little and its people basically all the same. I wish I was there today. I wish I was there again and again, just breathing in perspective and the power of nature and innovation beautifully mingled below. I loved it there.

**

After Top of the Rock we went to an Irish pub with food so good I took pictures of it just so I could remember. After our meal, we sat on its terrace and stole time – little bits of it anyway – we just drank it in, thankful for the power to stop and actually breathe the moment. We sat there enjoying the gift of being there, no one pointing out the history or the famous landmarks around us, no one wondering, It’s pretty but what does it do? We just sat and looked at nothing and talked about nothing and visited with the owner about the weather in Ireland and how no one moves to Ireland for that.

When time found us, we left the terrace and walked to that night’s theater for The Lion King. I slipped into my high heels before that little walk, and I took a picture of them at the theater. “I want a picture of your high heels on Broadway,” Grandma had said, and now she has it. I love that picture. The pictures I love the most really won’t mean anything to anyone but me – my high heels on Broadway, my little blue flats at the Met, my shadow on its steps, my purse at my feet on Bow Bridge. I like those pictures though, because they take me back.

**

I’d seen The Lion King before – in Des Moines, Iowa, actually – through Broadway Across America. I thought it would be a thousand times different to see it in New York, and I have to admit – it really wasn’t. The show is absolutely magical with its innovative costumes and music so powerful it beats its rhythm inside you, and that really wasn’t lessened from Manhattan’s Broadway to the Civic Center in Des Moines. The Lion King on Broadway is one of those amazing artistic pieces that makes me think of its creator as much as I think of its appeal. I’m fascinated by the inspiration to bring that show to Broadway in the first place and then by the mountains of creativity that accomplished it. It’s the kind of art that leads to years and decades of brand new art from all the little minds that it inspires. I love that so much.

**

Tomorrow is the last day of my trip, but I can’t waste a single minute with that bitter in the sweet. There’s still so much wonderful to come.

I’ve written about agent Holly Root before, so you know I find her delightful. In person, the only thing I didn’t like about her is that she listens too much and too well. I wanted someone to walk inside Joe’s coffee shop and kindly button my lips together so I could just soak in the Hollyisms. You can find them online sometimes, in interviews with her or on her twitter page. “Eyes on your own paper” – that’s one of my favorites, as she teaches us all to please, for goodness sake, fight jealousy and just walk the journey we are meant to walk.

And I think what I love most about her is how much she loves her life. It’s ridiculously inspiring. I’ve been writing about New York so much now that I don’t think I can find a single new word for how much I loved meeting with Holly. To be sitting in a Manhattan coffee shop at what could technically (if you live inside my head) be called a work lunch for the New York City part of my career and to be meeting there with one of the most delightful people on the planet, well, this is why my mother asked if the rest of the trip would be a letdown. And I said, “You mean the rest of my LIFE?” But that, no, the rest of the trip and the rest of my life all looked very, very good.

**

After our conversation at Joe’s, which I wish I had recorded word for word, Holly walked me to my subway station with directions on how to change trains at the next stop and then wind my way through Little Italy to the restaurant on that night’s itinerary. It’s impossible to describe the giddy feeling of navigating that little trip by myself. IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE. On the subway, I got a text that the restaurant had been shut down the day before by the health department, so the group chose a pizza place across the street instead. I joined them only a few minutes late and devoured a chicken roll to die for.

We went to Blue Man Group that night. I highly recommend this show, because it’s full of inspiration about how noisy our lives have become and how much information we take in and how little we create. I loved that part. I did not love the part where I felt old. What was that? The screaming teenagers? The rolls of toilet paper? The black lights? I don’t know. It was very, very cool, but I did. I felt old. If you’ve been to the show, tell me you can relate. If you can’t relate, don’t tell me!

**

And then it was time to sleep again in New York City. I loved going to sleep in New York City, and I loved waking up in it. On Thursday morning my alarm, having been checked and double checked about a million times the night before, worked fine, and I got ready early enough to skip, I mean, uh, walk normally and adult-like, to the Subway around the corner for a Diet Coke to go with the chocolate chip mini muffins I’d bought at CVS on Tuesday night. Thursday was Central Park Day, and I smiled from the moment I opened my eyes.

It had rained the night before, and I felt every single drop of water that fell on me from Central Park’s green leaves. I wanted to bottle them and keep them on a shelf of all the things I loved about New York. Now, technically, my Central Park experience paled a bit compared to the attractions we’d seen with a guide. We didn’t always know where we were going, and I worried we’d miss the things I wanted to see most.

And then there it was. There it all was! A gazebo, a wooden bench and a bottle of wine, a painter actually painting, Bethesda Fountain, Bow Bridge, the Boat House – we just stumbled onto them like something bigger than the park was shaking and tilting it to steer us to its best and brightest parts. At one point we got out a map and that Something Bigger even sent us a human, a real live person with gray hair and a dog, to snap our maps closed (“I don’t like to see people opening their maps,” she said, “There are too many odd balls in the park”) and point us in the direction we needed to take next. That direction led us to a tunnel, which led us to Fifth Avenue, which led us to the Met.

**

Ah, the Met. I’ve never spent so little time in such a beautiful place. We raced through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Raced through it. The group sales people gave us gifts and an abbreviated spiel and a quick idea of the layout after which we spread out and zipped through Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, the Byzantine Empire, Statues, paintings, armor , and fashion like we could actually take in enough of its pieces apart from each other that we could share it later and try to make a whole. Not possible. My experience at the Met, for instance, consisted of a half-run to the terrace for a gorgeous photo session of Manhattan towering over the treetops of Central Park, followed by an attitude of lingering but fast-paced stroll through the exhibit on American women’s fashion, and then a glance at my watch after which I walked as quickly as possible through the pearl-white statuary like the one at Pemberley in Kiera Knighly’s Pride and Prejudice and made it to the door just in time to head to Planet Hollywood for lunch.

That’s right, People, I speed-walked through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to make lunch on time at Planet Hollywood. This, too, was my New York.

After our amazing morning at the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the World Trade Center site, we ate at a true New York Deli. It was called Stage Door Delicatessen, and the variety of foods was completely wonderful and overwhelming. Fruit, salad, deli meats, burgers, fries, milk, juice, soda, tea, coffee, dessert – everything you could imagine. You picked and chose. You called your order to someone on the other side of the counter, they prepared it in an amazing amount of time, you paid, and then you found a place to sit – perhaps around the corner and up some stairs to their second floor dining area overlooking the World Trade Center construction. The owner had a real live New York accent and she mentioned her brother Nick once as the other owner so that I felt I’d known them both all my life or at least grown up next door.

Full and happy, we made our way to a giant warehouse-turned-office-building for our Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger tours. At Hugo Boss we shook hands with a man dressed better than any person I’ve ever stood next to in real life. He took us through the show room, which was now in construction mode for its twice-yearly renovation based on the seasons of fashion. (They change out the mannequins two more times a year for the pre-fall and spring seasons). That’s four times a year the room gets a whole new look, two of which require nail guns, new carpet, and ceiling tiles. Can you imagine?

Alex – that was the guy’s name – next introduced us to Sonya, also sharply dressed only in a breezy feminine way. I could almost see her walking to work that morning to the Raising Helen soundtrack. And this is the surreal part. Sonya has my job. She also tweets and runs the facebook page and generally takes care of the social marketing aspect of her company, only she does it in New York City under the name of Hugo Boss and can give away cool contest wins like trips to Germany. But it’s okay. I get to give away…re-worded advice about student travel. Sigh. Yea. It was surreal meeting her.

At Hugo Boss they gave us an idea of the tour they actually give to students. We heard some really fascinating history about the company, felt extremely welcome, and nodded along as if we can actually imagine their parties on the yacht and the fashion shows in Berlin. At Tommy Hilfiger we felt like those people you met at summer camp once and loved with all your heart but just haven’t seen in a while, so you embrace them and bring them into your family room, plop them on the bean bag chairs, feed them snacks, and dish.

Our Tommy Hilfiger tour guide was John Burke. He got his job as the Tommy Hilfiger historian because he dug a pair of plaid ankle boots from a pile of castoffs and it made an impression on Tommy while everyone else had scoffed. He won’t allow his picture to be taken because he stopped aging, but his face hasn’t. And he told us all about how the Tommy people no longer speak to the Martha Stewart people in the elevator because the Martha Stewart people were eating cookies and laughing in their windows on the news the day the airplane pilot was rescued from the Hudson and the camera panned several office’s floors just behind him. (Our office looked appropriately hopeful yet concerned, he said. The homeland security people looked grim per usual. But the Martha Stewart offices were practically having a cocktail party!)

John Burke teaches a course called Life 101, and we got little tidbits of it all along our tour, which consisted of cubicles and offices with walls, including Tommy’s own corner office, where John proudly pointed out the custom artwork, portraits of rock stars – a community Tommy loves like John Burke and I love Hollywood, pictures of Tommy’s wife and children (aren’t they beautiful?), and the company closet stuffed full (though almost completely organized now by John and his interns whom I’ve decided might have the best summer jobs EVER) of hundreds of clothing items, from last season’s sailor sweaters to a pair of jeans custom-made for Marilyn Monroe.

Through it all, John told us Tommy’s history, the true American story, rags to riches, great idea to multi-million dollar enterprise. And he told us all about how you have to figure out where your passion lies and do that. “Success may not bring happiness,” he told us. “But happiness can sometimes bring success.” He literally overflowed with gems like that about the importance of doing what you love. As if I wasn’t thinking about that enough as I strolled through real live New York City offices. I’ve always kind of thought that if you really love what you do it doesn’t matter where you do it but that also if you really love where you work, it doesn’t matter what you do. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Because as we walked by cubicles cluttered with fashion samples and sketches, I realized a cubicle is still a cubicle no matter what sidewalks lie below and you really better love what you are doing no matter what. John Burke taught me that.

And then it was over, because despite how much I loved John, I had now begun a frantic texting session with Agent Holly followed by quick advice from Matthew the Super Guide, because as wonderful as John Burke was, he had just made me late for a meeting with Holly at an adorable independent bookstore way too far away. Coming up: A delightful walk through Chelsea to Holly’s plan B and the part of my trip that made my mother ask, “Will the rest be a letdown for you now?” And I responded, “You mean, the rest of my LIFE?”

I started floating again about the time we stepped onto the ferry, eyeliner having been applied while waiting to board. It was a gray, cloudy Wednesday that didn’t actually rain on us even once. And therefore it was beautiful. I shivered on the ferry a little, both from the cool air off the water and from the thrill as our guide regaled the history of the Statue of Liberty and recited its inscription from memory. When he was through, the passengers applauded, and nope, I’m not confusing my real life with a movie. THIS WAS MY NEW YORK.

We opted out of the full Statue of Liberty experience, simply basking in its wake as we cruised by, then staying on board for the little jaunt to Ellis Island. “You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you’ve been.” They should inscribe that line from Hitch at the opening to this amazing museum, because it makes you think about a million things – who we were when we began, the many places we came from, the type of lives we led and the lives we’re allowed every day to pursue now that we’re here. It’s so strange and wonderful to imagine that the children and grandchildren of people who arrived on a boat on the level tragically known as steerage might very well have died with land of their own, small businesses with their name on the window, and children who never doubted but what they could be millionaires one day if they just worked hard enough and got a good enough idea. As with all the other attractions on our trip, we walked much too quickly through this one – just glancing at it really, as I jotted down as many thoughts as possible in my little travel journal, incomplete sentences, bald facts, and only a few poetic thoughts despite being in a place that could have inspired so many. I’ve written before that you should build a lot of time into an itinerary, and I was so right.

Still, the purpose of this trip was neither intense exploration or deep introspection, so we were soon off – back to the ferry, then walking through Battery Park and the financial district to the World Financial Center for hands-down the most moving part of our tour.

Inside the World Financial Center, past the indoor palm trees of the Winter Garden, there’s a second-floor landing with floor-to-ceiling windows and a full, breathtaking, view of the World Trade Center rebuilding site. My tour guide, as I wrote on Facebook, would be so proud of me for calling it that. It’s no longer Ground Zero, after all, because Ground Zero is a place of tragedy and fear and rubble. He showed us pictures of Ground Zero, of the planes, the Towers, the fleeing residents. He showed us a picture of Winter Garden – the place we stood in now – right after the fact, debris and steel hanging from its palm trees. He told us of his former coworkers in the restaurant on one of the top floors of one of the Towers, of the friend who’d gotten his shift covered that day and fought horrible survivor’s guilt for years.

My tour guide’s name was Matthew Cummings with CityWalksNY. He fights back when vehicles honk in anger, he sports tattoos, tells stories of sneaking out to the city at night when he was a kid, and doesn’t hesitate to gripe about corrupt law enforcement officers or the people who dress up like the Statue of Liberty in Battery Park and annoy him with their irreverence for the actual majesty of the landmark. But when he finished his World Trade Center presentation, he said this, and he cried:

We are New York.

We’re very proud. Our city is better than yours. We are better than you. We are right. And you are wrong. But on 9/11 we were humbled. Not by the attack, but by the outpouring of love and support from around the world. If you’ve never been thanked by a New Yorker, you are now. So, Thank You.

After that amazing presentation we wandered through the exhibits in St. Paul’s Chapel, the pews still scarred from the belts of firefighters and policemen who volunteered their time during the rescue. And we noticed the almost-hush that presided over the most respectful construction site we’d ever seen.

And that was just the morning of my Wednesday in New York. Unbelievably, the Awesome had only begun.

I am pretty sure I walked down the street next to Sandra Bernhard. But having to explain who she is to everyone I tell that to really takes away from what was already a less than magical celebrity sighting.

But let’s get back to the beginning, because my first New York City moments actually were magical. We walked from that busy corner where we had almost seamlessly joined the rhythm of Manhattan, down the street just a little ways to another bus that would take us and our luggage to our hotel on the upper west side. If you need a visual for the upper west side, go watch You’ve Got Mail, and then come back to me.

On the way to our hotel, do you know what I saw? Gray’s Papaya. It’s one of the movie locations I forgot to look up before I left, and on the way to our hotel we drove right by one. Gray’s Papaya features in at least two of my favorite romantic comedies, and I always wanted to eat at one. I didn’t accomplish that this trip, but at least I know right where one is – the one, I’m assuming, where Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly ate in You’ve Got Mail though not necessarily the one where Salma Hayek’s character gets hot dogs from New York for Matthew Perry’s character in Fool’s Rush In.

Then – oh then – I saw some daisies. The store was actually called something about daisies, I think, but I can’t remember and I can’t find it on google maps. But there was definitely something about daisies, as in, “Don’t you think they’re the friendliest flower?” And between these two sightings, I knew right away New York would be everything the movies had told me it would be.

On my first evening in New York I met both kinds of New Yorkers – as if there are only two. At Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, our first official NY experience, I met people who’ve transplanted themselves to the city. The group sales coordinator who met with us there – as our booth overlooked the famous news ticker thing at the ABC studios on Times Square – she actually went to college in my town, which was a very cool coincidence, you have to admit. But then we went to the Empire State Building. And the group sales director there was born and raised in New York. He gave us the VIP tour of his beautiful observatory, leading us around each side, pointing out the neighborhoods, their history, and where that pilot landed in the Hudson a while back.

It was right before that tour that we sat in an actual conference room on the third floor – a conference room in the Empire State Building – and I was pretty sure every hope I’d had for my trip was officially being far, far exceeded.

Before Empire, we went to Madame Tussaud’s and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, rambling through each at our own pace. It was at one of those where I got that great shot on a landing with windows behind me overlooking Times Square (from a previous post) and of course where I got pictures with Johnny Depp (above), Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, and Brad and Angelina. I didn’t take pictures at Ripley’s Believe It Or Not because, ew, and already I was realizing that every moment inside Manhattan buildings would be another moment I wasn’t on its sidewalks where I definitely preferred to be.

We had supper at a jazz club where the jazz wouldn’t start until 8 p.m. when we had already left. It was delicious food, but I was anxious. The tickets to one of that night’s plays were in my name, and I was desperate to get in our seats on time. That didn’t work out so well. We were late, and there was a mixup with the tickets. But finally, about ten minutes into the show, one other coworker and I settled into our seats for The Million Dollar Quartet in which the Johnny Cash role was played by The Last Starfighter. And if you don’t know who The Last Starfighter is, that doesn’t diminish the magic for me at all, because I knew him and I loved him, and that was all that mattered.

After the show, Dache and I navigated the subway all by ourselves – with the help of one young woman who confirmed we were waiting for the correct train and who also handed us a miniature metro map laminated and everything. We got off the train a couple blocks from our hotel, stopped in a CVS pharmacy for a few things, and then strolled home. To my new home anyway, for a few wonderful days.

When I got to my hotel room, I looked outside the window for a while, amazed and so thrilled that I would go to sleep with Manhattan just outside, called Michael and my mom, wrote in my journal, and finally, finally crawled into bed. I listened to my iPod as I fell asleep, afraid I couldn’t calm down otherwise, and then, amazingly, I fell asleep in New York City.

Then one day in college, it hit me. I may never see the Eiffel Tower or New York City streets. There was no reason to believe I ever would. I had taken it for granted as something that would happen someday and suddenly woke up to the fact that there was nothing in my life to make me think that.

It wasn’t as tragic as it sounds. Just a realization really, that stuff doesn’t happen just because you kind of hope maybe it will.

It was sometime after getting married though that I really started dreaming. And eventually New York became so real to me I could feel my feet on its streets.

Fast forward to me on a bus, riding from Washington DC to New York next to an Asian woman perusing the catalog for her jewelry business and talking to people on her phone in a language I didn’t understand. I felt like a real live city girl already, sitting by a stranger, putting in the earphones to my iPod and shutting out everything but my beating heart. I dozed a bit – after all, we’d been out late and up early for days in DC, walking long distances in short amounts of time each day. But between the dozing I heard the songs, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Someday Baby, The Climb, even my own song, Lived, and they played in my ears as the soundtrack to the completely amazing feeling of the beautiful day and the familiar trees and the city ahead that was only familiar because I’d seen it in so many movies and imagined myself in it so many times.

When I first saw the skyline, I wasn’t even sure I was seeing it. It was far away and in a haze and it came more suddenly than I had expected, and I could have definitely been dreaming. And then I knew that’s what it was, and I cried. Not the ugly cry, just the happy tears that well up and barely fall.

We drove in from the New Jersey side, through a tunnel, and then slipped onto its streets anticlimactically like we were just pulling onto the streets of any old city at all. And then we just kept driving into it and it grew up around us more like my fantasies and less like any ol’ with every passing famous Avenue. We stopped smack dab in the middle of it all, and I expected the entire city to screech to a halt, because surely you couldn’t just drive in and join the daily rhythm like that.

But that’s what we did. We stepped off the bus – I never put my foot on any pavement so deliberately and with such feeling – heaved our suitcases from the space beneath it, and stood. On New York. Streets. I turned around immediately and snapped a picture. You can see it in the thumbnails below. It’s a picture of Macy’s. THE Macy’s. I was on the 34th Street in New York City, New York.

Now, I’ll try – I’ll try – not to describe every single foot-planting on New York City sidewalks from this moment forward. But you have to know I’ll be thinking it. Because every footstep from that moment on was a DREAM. And yet not. Because I wouldn’t let it be. I lived it and breathed it and took it in with every single part of me.

I’m reading Belong to Me now by Marisa de los Santos, and as this is only a “brief quotation” and if you can call the words in these ellipses a review (the writing in this book is amazing, and you should read it), I’m going to copy one of its first paragraphs which so beautifully describes how I felt each morning in this city.

I loved the noise, opening my window to let a confetti of sound fly in. I loved how leaving my apartment, in pursuit of newspapers or bags of apricots or bagels so perfect they were not so much bagels as odes to gloss and chewiness, never just felt like going out, but like setting out, adrenaline singing in my veins, the unexpected glancing off storefronts, simmering in grates and ledges, pooling in stairwells, awaiting me around every corner, down every alleyway.

That’s how I felt in New York.