Radio's on as I start the day's writing and editing. Folks are yammering about today's call in topic: "What's a real New Yorker?" I half listen to the guy who's so passionate about this topic that he's breathless, words rapid-firing urgently, the spit audible in his voice. You can only be "real" if you were born here, if you eat Nathan's hot dogs, if you buy bagels at a deli, if you think beach = Coney Island.

Then, another caller-- Are you kidding? If you're a real New Yorker, you don't do any of those things!

I turn off the radio.

*

It wasn't my dream to move here, but an internship, then a job, then grad school, then a husband--they all kept me here. I like how the city absorbs me- how I don't have to be related to someone or have known my neighbor's family for three generations in order to find a place here. I like how everyone here chooses to be here--how they either came here by choice or stay here by choice-- how they're not pining to be somewhere else.

*

I spent most of 2008 away from New York and returned strange, the question-- Where am I from?--gnawing me.

For some reason, I've been drawn, in recent weeks, to the places I once scoffed at as touristy. The department store holiday windows. The bar of a certain hotel where martinis are grossly overpriced. Rockefeller Center, watching skaters glide or fall on the ice. "Where are you from?" a couple asks, seeing a camera around Francisco's neck. "Uh, here, actually," I say, kind of embarrassed. "So are we!" they say, with an equal measure of relief. "I don't really know why we're here," I say, feeling like I've got to offer some explanation. "You were worried you wouldn't be a real New Yorker, right?" she says, not waiting for an answer. She doesn't need one. "I know," she says. "It's cool. We get it." She adjusts the camera around her neck, smiles, and hurries away.