And if you are wondering what I did, I waited until it seemed real, and then I walked to the corner bodega where someone was screaming that now things were going to go THEIR way, and then I walked to the other corner where people spilled out onto the streets, where fireworks (the real kind) joyously erupted from stoops, where strangers wept into my arms and wept with me, poured champagne for each other, danced on the sidewalk, cheered with their arms in the air, screamed with happiness as cars and city buses honked in symphony with the collected relief, disbelief, feeling of finally that changed everything for everyone. I phoned Hyde Park, I phoned Indiana, I heard from Manhattan and Toronto and Los Angeles and Vancouver and then I watched the skyline of my childhood projected on the wall of the restaurant, everyone in the room both somehow silent and bursting all at once, and in this moment I desperately missed Jeff, desperately missed Oliver, and I watched the city I grew up in make an entire country, an entire world proud, not change everything but change something so so big and I never before felt more homesick or more at home.

Dear Toronto,

I feel like I never write home anymore and it’s because there’s too little to go around and at the same time too much: did you hear me gasp as I stepped into the ocean this morning at 11:11, barely able to assimilate the empty shoreline, the early-spring sun, the happiness of life?

A second failed trip to the DMV isn’t failure because I kinda don’t believe in that anymore. There are just events; there are points on a line where you start out driving your car in the sunshine listening to the same three songs for forty minutes over and over, realize you forgot your passport, and find yourself standing in the middle of Astroland abandoned. I’d say I was happier than I have ever been except I kind of feel that way every day.

Peeling paint, rusty fences, sand in my shoes, hot dog stands and shooting galleries shuttered, a cat living in a skee-ball game. I feel like every day is an endless string of tiny miracles, and the way the light shines on things here just blows me away. I can be awake three hours and see enough amazing things and be brimming with enough love to overflow weeks: it is no small wonder I am too tired to do my taxes or listen to voicemail. I love and miss you all. When I come let’s just go to the beach, okay?

i am in new york city and it is wonderful. i eat too much pizza because i forget to eat in the morning and then walk around all day and drink coffee and realize i didn’t have any lunch or dinner. you can take your pizza on the train though, and ride around with it.

i am seeing amazing people who make me feel gladly received and cared about and like they want to have fun with me. many of them i have known for years and years and years, and the others are people who i want to know for years. i miss the home people terribly but i feel so lucky for this welcome.

in the eight days i have been here i have slept in queens brooklyn brooklyn, among cats and dogs and near bagels and indian buffets and streets i have watched change for a dozen years and places i have been kissed. i am settled down for a little while now in jackson heights, where the streets are glittery and i am home at mark and elena’s long enough to water my smuggled-in houseplant and buy my own yogurt. when one is in the midst of total flux and an endless series of huge decisions, a little of your own yogurt goes a long way.

the trains here are space-age modern, not all of them, but the constantly morphing strip-map on the N train will blow your mind unless you hate it like my friend kyle. the moving sidewalks at the court square subway station make me reminiscent of a toronto that once was — do you remember the guy who read the poem at pontiac quarterly about the death of spadina station’s moving sidewalk? all poetry should be like that.

(the opposite of the space trains are those adjustable-depth platforms at 59th street. seriously, like all that is magical in new york, i hope i never stop being amazed by them.)

i am learning a lot about the BQE. it is terrible. potholes try to launch you into cement barricades; the cars drive both too fast and too slow, and it is more rogue road than interstate highway. but anticity though cars may be, driving along the east river and blinking dumbfoundedly at the view is hard to beat. “i get all this?” i keep thinking. “i get to live here?”

and i come home now to the figuring-out of queens: these street numbers make no fucking sense at all, so it is instinct, homing, remembering these christmas lights or that railway overpass, and wandering happily from unusual place to unusual place, mysteriously ending up in a food fair supermarket at 11pm talking to your west-coast-best-friend about how getting over someone who is dead has its secretly easy parts, the ones that have to do with suddenness and change and clean slate and writing your own ending, and, hopefully, your new beginning.

in new york city they talk more than they do in toronto: not just blowhardism, but people are willing to approach you. with oliver i discussed the issue of my magical hat. case in point: i have a hat right now that is very beautiful. people love it. in new york city both friends and strangers exclaim at the hat, whether across a crowded cafe or just holding the door open for some lady in a bank machine lobby. we decided that this is the difference between cities:

new york person: “I like your hat!”
toronto person: [avoids eye contact, whispers to friend after person walks past, "she has a nice hat"]
san francisco person: [thinks about the hat, then goes home and writes blog post about seeing a nice hat, where no one who wears the nice hat will ever see it]

i do still wish new york were in canada, but the strange comfort of being around people as outgoing (intrusive?) and warm (too intimate?) and chatty (annoying?) as myself is so wildly comforting and familiar that it surprises me how far away i’d gotten from that climate. i was in some ways so out of my element and i didn’t even know. i don’t blame all of canada, or even give all of new york city credit, but there’s something about being able to look people in the eye and tell them it’s a beautiful day without them getting completely vibed out that makes you feel like you’re home.

i will write again soon.
love
liz

For pretty much all of my life I have attended sciencey ceremonies here and there: to honour my father, or to hang out with a bunch of scientists at some faraway meeting, or to collect swizzle sticks from every adult in the St. Louis Marriott, bored and confused, while my parents socialized with the meteoritical or geophysical set.

But this time…this time we were going to meet, what, the president? And my long-lost cousin? And the guy that did the world’s first liver transplant? And the guy that invented GPS? And the guy that invented the video game? Well, heck. I’ve taken advantage of a few of those technologies myself! (Though the cousin thing I’ll admit I’m still new to, and the current president, well, I’ve been trying to cut down.)

So here are the details in a nutshell: I trained down to DC in the middle of the biggest snowstorm alive, arriving too late to do much but see my parents, eat some seafood, and watch Gray’s Anatomy in the hotel with my mom. In the morning I found the nearest Starbucks, to the chagrin of my waiting mother, and got hopped up on coffee so that we could get on the “Awards Shuttle” (basically, a glorified short bus) to the White House. I ate half a banana waiting in the coat check line, and stuffed the unused half in my pocket, which I then checked. Classy, Liz. Very classy.

Inside the White House I bumped into my father, who was there already, hanging out with my cousin, whom I had never met before. They were amiably chatting and my cousin was doing a fine job of, well, doing his job, which was, conveniently enough, to handle my father for the day (and believe me, he’s a handful.) My mom and I were quickly scuttled off with the rest of the plebes and my dad and the other scientists and technologicians got to have a little meet-n-greet with the prez. Everyone else went into what I think was the East Room (almost spelled that Eats, but there was no food in there, trust me) and waited for the ceremony. Bush came out. Mangled a speech. Made vague threats about making science and math “cool” again, with the same goals for “success” as they’d had with the No Child Left Behind Act. They read citations explaining what the medalists were winning medals for, and when they got to my dad’s, the president exclaimed, “Hooo!” — in a tone indicating something like, “I don’t know what the fuck any of that means! But it sounds hard!” Then he touched my father repeatedly and put a medal on him, and it was weird, and then the other medalists got touched, and the president ran away and then we ate cookies. George Lucas won an award (or, more specifically, accepted an award on behalf of Industrial Light and Magic) and even though I am the only freak in the world who didn’t go see Star Wars as a child in the 70s and 80s (and 2000s…), I asked for a photo with him in hopes that I could up my geek credibility. He was civil about it, but I wouldn’t say nice.

Which is really only fair since I’m not a true fan. But he looks shifty, right?

From there I went and spent the afternoon with my cousin. He was great. It was really funny and strange to meet someone so closely related to me, about my age, who I hadn’t ever met. His manners were impeccable and made me ashamed of how many little social details I’m simply oblivious to — like when he fell into step politely with my mother if we were walking in a random alignment, and just, well, everything. Possibly a result of the military, but clearly not genetics, as there are so many things I just never think of. And yet, many other times, he would just say something so, not exactly blunt, but straight-shooting and realist-spoken that I thought, “Wow. You ARE related to me.” And that was really cool.

In the evening we were entertained at the Ritz-Carlton at a fancy banquet dinner for which I had been shopping for the right clothes for a very long time. It was pleasant enough, paced well, the food was tasty (risotto! what a surprise!) and we were all given commemorative…notepads. How geek! Short videos were shown to commemorate (and explain) the achievements of all the winners. There’s nothing quite like watching a video about the esoteric discoveries made by the IBM Whatzit Group and hearing a huge table cheering when it gets to part about when they invented the S-Class G Valve or whatever. So cute. The thing about being in a crowd like this is that not only is it wonderfully geeky, it’s pretty mindblowing. You don’t overhear “he got the Nobel Prize” — you overhear “he got his Nobel Prize”. Because so many people there already have one!

And at the end of the night I screwed up my nerves and went over to Dr. Fancy Transplant and said my little thank-you-for-saving-the-life-of-someone-important-to-me speech, which I was glad I saved for later in the night when he was tired and busy and going home, because of course it was awkward, and of course I had to explain that that person was dead now, but I’m still glad I did it. It’s not often you get to be in the room with your award-winning dad and your mom and your long-lost cousin and the guy who made Star Wars and all the other guys who made stuff and the guy who invented the thing that saved, for a time anyway, the life of your husband. After that I was very tired, then we saw some pandas, and I went back to New York, hung out for a few days, and caught a cold on the train home.