Just when I thought I would NEVER want to come back

The NYCW changed my mind completely. I went to Maryhouse on the Lower East Side on Tuesday, arrived at the lunch rush. I fell in love.

I stayed in Martha's room (a granddaughter of Dorothy Day, the one who has a farm in Vermont) on the third floor. I met just about all the people that Sheila told me about, and felt as if I had known them all along, like we were friends long before. It was easy, fitting myself into Maryhouse.

I retreated to my room for a nap, ended up sleeping through dinner but waking up just in time for mass happening at Josephhouse. Oh sigh. And then I had all sorts of crazy ideas about staying at least til the end of the week. After mass I sat with Carla (who is fabulous, who reads like a Mack truck) we watched TV and later I walked with Ted (Ted, who reminded me a bit of a future Tyler) to the small grocery on 4th Street. We got Ben & Jerry's and other snacks, walked home and vegged out. Carla and Ted and Tanya (who had just arrived) and me, this girl suddenly finding herself in no hurry to leave New York, if it means leaving the Worker eating ice cream watching the news.

I went to bed woke up in the morning and then Eugene and I went to the Bean for coffee and Internet. Eugene granting me tenure, saying I should stay stay stay. We went back to Maryhouse, and I took a walk to put out some mail then came back to help with lunch. It was such a fun afternoon, rescuing a pasta salad from over salting, washing dishes, sweating, reading Rilke in German and English more eloquently, trying to arrange a switch with Clare (who is there for the summer, who will come and hang with the SBCW soon) to send her back to South Bend in my stead.

Ted escorted me to the Port Authority, we took the F train to the A train and then I was all set. We agreed that I should come back next summer, be on kitchen duty, bake pies and the like. I'm so there.

So New York (and this is probably true of most any place I guess) was generally overwhelming. But New York with the Worker: somewhere I want to get to know. Community makes everything better, because then there are precocious children who make Lego films and hilarious girls who tell the silliest jokes and take all the credit for the pasta salad. People to talk your ears right off your head and to tell you that the world needs your smile. I guess I could love New York after all.

But I think I will be quite pleased to be home. Nine and a half more hours, keep your fingers crossed.

"Sing, if you can sing, and if not still be musical inside yourself."
--Mary Oliver, More Evidence