Ed and I like to watch those shows where couples look for houses to buy. It’s always interesting to see the houses in different parts of the country, the views, the costs. It is vicarious relocation.

This afternoon, I happened on a show that is called “Selling New York”. High end earners look for fab apartments and lofts and condos in Manhattan. I know there are people around the country who might watch these personalities and be turned off. Entitlement is not just a word to them. They got it, they flaunt it. But I don’t mind. They bring New York City back to me.

We are talking spaces like 4,000 square feet in Chelsea or Soho, views of the Hudson, cityscapes 3 bedrooms, 2 ½ baths, terraces …

This one fashion designer had a wish list of 10 or so must have features and wouldn’t settle. “What can I say,” he said, “I’m a Diva”. He gave new meaning to gay mannerism, and I loved him.

When I watch scenes of New York City, I get this great hunger, an obsession almost, to be in the middle of it again, though it is now beyond me financially (we were rent-controlled before) and I wouldn’t live anywhere but Manhattan, unless it was on, maybe, the Brooklyn waterfront, and, of course, the pace of it might now be overwhelming to me. On my trips to New York in past years (I no longer go since Sophie, my piano mentor, is gone and I can’t justify the expense) I always had trouble readjusting, not to the psychological effects of the chaos, but to the physical ones. I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, it seemed, to avoid being knocked aside by the flow. (Worst offenders: young mothers with baby strollers used as battering rams -- that's the kind of entitlement I despise). But I wouldn’t mind getting used to it again. I could relearn the city dance.

Sophie, who died at 99, lived in Lincoln Towers on the Hudson River, with a great view --- walking distance to Lincoln Center and upper Broadway with its high end shops. She never wanted to leave and lived on her own till her last year, disabled by a stroke, and tended to by paid caregivers. She volunteered at a soup kitchen. The doormen in her building used to watch out for her and wouldn’t let her leave if the weather was bad. She walked miles up until her mid 90s. She thought I was nuts for wanting to move down here. But, of course, she was in the city and Ed and I were in Queens. Very nice indeed, but not Manhattan. If we had had the equivalent of our Queens apartment in the city, you couldn’t have pried us away, Paradise or not.

xx, Teal