Nothing emboldens me more in my recent adult life than a young woman I first met on the C train to Brooklyn. I found her reflection staring back at me from the pages of a paperback version of Just Kids by Patti Smith.

As someone with a history in fashion, I am no stranger to mirrors. Regardless, it wasn’t until I moved to New York City that I learned how to read my likeness in the layers of history and grime on the Coney Island Boardwalk, in the murky waters of Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, and in the minds of people who have challenged, shaped, and welcomed me in ways I hadn’t experienced before.

In this way, New York City and her renderings of my innate design have become nothing short of sacred to me, and although I don’t live there at this time in my life, I do feel an occasion pang from a light tethering, calling like a pilgrimage for me to go back to where I found myself.

About a month ago, I started to sense that my number was up and that it was time to go back to New York City. I had a travel voucher that was about to expire (thank you, Uncle Dan!), my work schedule for December was light and Alex’s looked heavy enough that we wouldn’t spend much time together, so it seemed like the perfect time for a winter wonderwhirling excursion.

While silly to realize, this would be our first time apart since being married! It has only been the past few months of feeling confident and healthy enough to take a solo endeavor, but I had more than a handful of my favorite people to visit, and I wouldn't be totally on my own.

Smooth is what happened to a T. Alex dropped me off at the airport on a Sunday afternoon, and by midnight East Coast Time, I was carrying my bag up the third floor of Kelly’s apartment in Brooklyn. When I woke in the morning, the mirror above my twin bed caught a curl of sunlight and splashed a welcoming smile across the wall facing me. If I were one for omens like Patti Smith is, I would have known then that only great things were in order.

I slipped out into the busy honks and barks of morning to grab bagels from Vanderbilt Ave. A rainbow of kids’ coats and sneakers padded alongside their respective black and grey storm cloud ensemble of grown-ups and business owners threw open the sleepy metal eyelids of storefronts while exchanging greetings and mostly friendly banter with passers-by.

Bagels in tow, I made it back to Kelly’s where she had prepared veggies and eggs, of which I had to constantly fend off the cat, BooBear, for. We were able to have a quick visit before Kelly started work. I caught the A train for the city.

With few plans for the first part of my trip, I decided to knock off some of my favorite places straight away before the week got a little more structured.

My first stop was The Met, where I spent the better half of the day revisiting old favorites. I also explored two new-to-me wings; the Asian Art and Medieval Art sections.

The Met was my first proper exposition to art when I was a teenager, and I spent a lot of time there in college studying works for assignments in my art history classes. I had taken a few art history classes in Oregon, where I tried to study works from a screen, but having the opportunity to see “the real thing” for my assignments blew my mind.

Being in museums like The Met makes me feel incredibly seen and valued as a creative person. I can feel the presence of the artists who made each work and the level of struggle they endured to convey their experience of the world for others in marble or on canvas.

Several of these artists suffered physical ailments due to the nature of their trade, with crippling arthritis from a lifetime of using their hands, loss of eyesight from decades of working under poor lighting, and illness coming from the chemicals they used to make their paints. Many died alone, with little money, and without ever seeing their works gain a fraction of the acclaim they hold today. They lived lifestyles outside of the social norm (for better or worse) and told the stories of people that others were afraid to tell. For me, visiting these places is as much a paying homage to the artists who sacrificed for their art as much as it is about seeing beautiful things.

After a few hours, my stomach started to growl, and I got a voracious craving for Chinese dumplings. It was time to take the Six train to Chinatown. I popped out of the subway at Canal Street and was greeted by the usual wall of perfume — urine, roasting duck, tar, and particularly strong notes of a nearby fish market. There is truly nothing like it and there are few places on earth that I would rather be.

Once I pushed through the onset of the busy tourist area, with trinkets and "I Heart NY" hats dangling in my face, I made it to the true heart of Chinatown. Here the streets are narrow and still smell ever so slightly of Oolong from decades of old when restaurant tables were still sanitized with hot tea. Patti Smith romanticizes these days in many of her books, including M Train, and muses that if she ever opened her own cafe the tables would be cleaned in this way.

Chinatown is where my palate of about 12 flavors was first expanded tenfold under the lead of my friends who introduced me to sesame, taro, salted duck egg, matcha, and many more. I have come to love everything about Asian cuisine's thought for a full experience outside of mere flavor.

Chopsticks require that you take small savoring bites. Small plates are shared between friends for sampling more foods, and different sauces are enjoyed so that you can try the same dish in different lights. Tea is served in small cups so that you will take turns filling each other’s cups many times, making a shared meal even more intimate. Desserts such as mooncakes are made a little too big and a little too sweet so that you would never eat one by yourself. You are meant to cut them and share the tiny, rich, pieces with friends.

I am also inspired by packaging in Asian markets. In a utilitarian Western environment, we would never think to make things such as a candy wrapper or rice bag lovely. I have found that beauty and art are deeply ingrained in Eastern culture as an act of worship. It has made me come to appreciate such beauty in a new light because I know that it must be so pleasing to God, who is deeply creative, to see us appreciate and re-create things in a way that is beautiful and reverent.
My craving for dumplings was satisfied in a hole-in-the-wall cafe where 90-year-old women were sitting in the kitchen folding tiny dumplings and nestling them into bamboo steaming baskets. Their work was very communal as they smiled and made each tiny dumpling with the practiced precision of symphony musicians. I ordered 10 chicken and mushroom dumplings for $5 and ate at the bar with a book and a small crate of raspberries picked up for a buck from a street vendor.

Afterward, I went on a voyage for the perfect egg tart, sampling a few as I went until I found one that was a perfect soft pastry with a beautiful shine across the top. I purchased a few for later snacking and made my way downtown to The Oculus.

The Oculus, as my mother describes it, is a holy temple to consumerism. It stands as a building like two hands with interlocking fingers outstretched with high-end stores in an underground city that dips below the 9/11 memorial in FiDi. At one time my mother and I lived a few blocks away, so it became a staple of our morning walks. It has grown a bit since I lived there, but many stores remain the same. It is attached to a subway station that connects to nearly every train line and has some of the cleanest public restrooms in the city. I have always stopped there for a convenient pit stop to use the pristine bathrooms and refill my water bottle in the drinking fountains.

I have come to learn that knowing where to find a good bathroom that you don’t have to pay for or wait in a long line for (or feel like you need to shower after using) in New York City is essential. Oh, the little things that matter!

While poking around the “Holy Temple of Consumerism,” I purchased a unique pair of earrings made from real orchid flowers dipped in resin as a small gift to remember the trip by.

I continued down through the underground city of stores until I got to another upscale shopping mall on the waterfront called Brookfield Place. It is home to the most elite of designer stores and a series of posh French restaurants. It is a favorite of mine because the waterfront side of it has a hundred-foot glass ceiling much like a planetarium, and the indoor seating area is filled with real palm trees. At Christmastime, they have hanging white lanterns that are an interactive art exhibit. When you wave your arms, you can see the lanterns change colors in response to the different movements you make, making you a conductor of beautiful light displays that ripple through the entire room.

I sat and watched children play with the lights with craned necks and wide eyes before walking outside to the waterfront. Outside the night was warm and clear, and you could see the New Jersey skyline glittering across the Hudson. Gusts of wind blew the fallen yellow leaves in happy little flurries around my face and the city lights twinkled in gold over the water. Everything was a rich dark shade of navy or a hundred shades of gold from a hot hot white to deep ochre. I sat on a bench with a ham and goat cheese crepe from the French Quarter and listened to joggers wiz past with their bounding dogs in tow.

When I got back to Brooklyn, I got to have a proper catch-up with my host and dear friend, Kelly, over cocktails at a bustling place called ‘The Beared Lady.’ We have kept in contact over the internet these past years, and she even came to Oregon for a visit two summers ago, but it felt so good to have her in person and talk about things you never really get to when you’re divided by screens.

I slept hard that night, with my heart and belly full of favorite things. I had already done so much on my first day in New York and I could hardly wait for the next day’s adventure to unfold.

It has been years since I have blogged regularly, but this trip and a recent re-reading of ‘Just Kids’ inspired me to get back into writing. Here is the first day of my Winter Wonderwhirl adventure and a peek into some of the places that helped me find myself when I was seventeen.

Stay tuned for the next day’s post where I get to cover Central Park, Coney Island, a search for an old friend, and dinner with my Brooklyn bonus fam.