Notes from an empty nest: retracing 28 years of NY memories
Permanence is an illusion, but some places feel frozen in time.
New York City is a living and breathing organism, a city of reinvention. Old buildings whisper secrets if you’re willing to listen, but the stories inside its facades continuously get rewritten. I walk down certain streets that I know like the back of my hand, passing familiar bones of concrete, brick, and glass, but the storefronts are more like strangers now unless my eyes search long enough to catch a glimmer of something I recognize.
I realize while walking down St. Mark’s Place, a street that I have walked a million times before, that I don’t pay enough respect to the haunts that are still around—and there aren’t many still standing. The few that remain survive decades of gentrification and the constant churn of multiple generations that shapes a city where permanence is an illusion. It’s possible I don’t revisit old haunts because some ghosts are better left alone as memories etched into walls. They don’t build them like they used to, as the saying goes. Those airtight plaster walls could hold secrets forever if it wanted.
But last Thursday, as we were out in the East Village debating on where to eat, I change my mind mid-deliberation and decide to go an old diner I hadn’t been to in 34 years. B&H Dairy is one of the last standing kosher luncheonettes in the city from the 1940s and an East Village icon. It was a huge part of my youth, yet I always walked past it, sometime averting my eyes and other times nodding in its direction to acknowledge its existence. I haven’t stepped inside since 1991 until now.
I open the door to a narrow sliver of a restaurant, a twelve foot wide galley with barely any room to move between the dozen counter stools on the right and a row of six tiny tables hugging the opposite wall. I freeze momentarily because this place hasn’t changed one bit. I’ve stepped back in time. I want to sit at the counter where I used to eat at as a college student, but the restaurant is full and there aren’t two empty seats together. I am not alone on this visit.
Squeezing into the last table near the back, I watch single diners come in from the cold and sit on stools to eat hot bowls of soup, sandwiches, blintzes, and pierogis. This tiny luncheonette isn’t for groups larger than two; it’s an intimate affair by default. You either eat alone or with one other friend, and I confess that this place is the only restaurant in the East Village still standing that reminds me of one person in particular. Maybe that’s why I’ve never gone back because mixing history from past relationships with current ones seems unnecessarily messy.
Sitting on two stools to my immediate left is a mother and her son. I’m guessing he’s a college student and has brought his out-of-town mom here for lunch. I can’t help but eavesdrop in on their conversation because of our close proximity. They catch up on their lives and comment about the food and the old school charm of where they’re eating lunch. The mom chats with the man behind the counter who, along with his wife near the cashier, owns the luncheonette. I have an impulse to jump up and tell him that I used to come here weekly back when I was a student too, but I hold back. They weren’t the owners back then, so who would that declaration be for? Him or for me?
On an empty stool sandwiched between two solo diners, I can see my 19 year old self nursing a bowl of mushroom barley soup, which is what we order today with a side of pierogis. It’s not my favorite soup in particular, then or now, but it’s warm and filling and just how I remember it. For a student on a budget, that’s all that matters.
I bite into challah bread and remember that 19 year old girl lost in art school who grew disillusioned with art as a discipline and industry. She was instead, electrified by the energy of the neighborhood, and that ended up being a better education than anything she learned inside art school walls. I allow the nostalgia to swallow me. One minute you’re that girl, and the next minute you blink and find yourselves with two children exactly that same age.
The ending to this year has been a mixed bag in a year that wasn’t particularly kind to us. I am not a fan of 2024. People always ask how empty nest life is treating us and I honestly don’t know how to answer. That I miss my children terribly? That I spend most days not speaking to anyone during the day? That despite it all, it feels like a disruption and a constant push and pull of emotions each time they come home? Most times I just answer, fine. But we’ve had time this month to pause and lay the roadmap for future empty nest years.
We’ve been taking long walks, retracing our 28 years of New York together that layer over my even older personal history with the city. We’ve taken liberties to eat out a little more now that it’s just the two of us, except so far we’ve only frequented hole-in-the-wall type places and cheap NYC eats: the tiny falafel counter that’s barely a storefront on 17th Street, a $5 plate of dumplings handmade all day by elderly women on Mosco Street in Chinatown, a slice of pizza at our neighborhood joint.
For reasons that I can’t articulate yet, we haven’t gone on any full sit down meals with table service and cloth napkins. That is part of our past too when he was working in restaurants and we’d eat at really fancy places, often comped with an extra course just for being a chef. Maybe we’ll ease into that in time, but it feels too formal, too much pressure somehow.
It could be why we rarely eat at the table anymore. Twenty years of dinners with the family at the dining room table at 6 P.M. sharp and it all ended when the kids left home. The TV fills the air between us now as we eat on the couch most nights. That may sound pathetically sad, but really it’s not. I promise. It’s cozy and we like it, even if we shouldn’t. We’re learning how to be with each other again, in a life without kids, just as it was decades before.
Related reading
Links and things
What I read this week:
HBO to no longer air new episodes of Sesame Street on Max (Entertainment Weekly). HBO is cutting Sesame Street, and Big Bird and friends are looking for a new home. I can’t stress enough how important Sesame Street was for young immigrant kids like me. It’s how I first learned to speak English as a toddler. I had a very turbulent transition to life here in America and those muppets and characters were my first friends. I know my story is not unique. With calls to defund PBS, a move that has the support of the DOGE bro billionaires (insert eyeroll), the future of public broadcasting is unclear.
The AI-Generated Textbook That’s Making Academics Nervous: The UCLA literature professor who developed the textbook says it will save students money and allow her to be the teacher she’s always wanted to be. Others aren’t so sure. (Inside Higher Ed)
Is EVERYTHING about saving money and time these days?The Year of the Cat – Elisabeth Donnelly looks back at a relationship with a wily cat during a lonely time in upstate New York (Memoirland)
I love cats. I love stories about cats, and this was a rather haunting story about loneliness.Can’t Sleep? Try ‘Cognitive Shuffling,’ a Doctor-Approved Way To Drift Off (Well + Good) “Dr. Whittington says cognitive shuffling is his “number one technique” for dealing with “intrusive thoughts” that keep your brain from sleeping.”
I tried these techniques the other night. Did it work? I can’t really say since I went through these exercises in my head so many times, but I did eventually fall asleep, so 🤷🏻♀️?Doing Nothing Has Never Been More Important How the under-appreciated art of idleness can transform the world (The Walrus)
To visit and eat:
Noona’s Ice Cream - So many of our small biz food friends have shuttered their businesses like we have, but a few are still around and growing in ways that have us cheering. We met Hannah Bae early on when she first started her ice cream company in 2016.
OG flavors like Toasted Rice and Black Sesame were early favorites of ours, and Hannah’s now opened a shop in the East Village where you can get scoops, pints, and other treats like ice cream cakes. Visit at 304 E 5th St near 2nd Ave. in the East Village.
A little splurge to keep or give:
Olive & June's Cuticle Serum – I’m not really a manicure or nails person, but over the summer, my cousins and I did our nails using Olive & June nail polish and cuticle serum. We painted on pale pink neutrals and kept updating each other throughout the week on how long the polish lasted. I hadn’t heard of the brand before, but we were all impressed.
–Till next time, JP
I’m packing up stuff and throwing away more in a house that I’ve lived in for 33 years now, for one kid, her entire life and the other, his life minus six years, preparing to sell and moving halfway across the world (my also home 😀) Nobody tells you about the ghosts, the ghosts that stop you cold and forces tears as you remove photos from the walls, books from shelves. It’s just a house, right?! Just a house.
My husband and I eventually stopped eating at the table after our youngest left for college. At first I felt bad about it, like, we shouldn’t stop doing what we’ve been doing for 25 years. And then - it just felt better not to, so why shouldn’t we? It is cosy.