Good Mexican Food and Moving to New York

My favorite restaurant has been gone for 6 years. It went out of business and was taken over by a cheap imitation. They featured fabulously thick tortillas and amazing salsa with fresh tomatoes and cilantro AND promptly served coke with lemon with as many refills as one can ingest in one sitting. It was at this restaurant that my husband and I decided to move away from our tiny little town and take off for New York--without a place to live or jobs.

We chose a date, almost at random, rented a van, and picked a route to the East Coast. We drove our 20 foot van with our cat Jezebel meowing and hiding at our feet, stopping by various places to visit friends and family.

When we neared NY we realized we didn't have an actual destination and so we looked on the map and found an area with more than your average number of golf courses, figuring that would be a safe place to call our temporary home. We lived in a hotel, with Jezebel as contraband, and happened on an acquaintance at church. Our acquaintance soon became our best friend as she invited us to move into her one bedroom apartment and reside there with her two cats while we found both jobs and a place to live.

We lived with our friend, affectionately nicknamed Cordelia, for a month while I scoured the apartment listings, and JL went to the city everyday to talk to job agencies. It was discouraging, and we were running out of money, but on the same day I found an affordable apartment ($1000 per month for a one bedroom that allowed cats) Jl found a job--albeit a temporary one working for Suzanne Sommers' book agent.

We didn't know it when we moved in, but we were in living in a Hacidic Jewish neighborhood. We loved observing their lives, watching black coated men, with their knickers, long beards and curls at the sides of their heads, with their huge furry hats walking around stoically. Our favorite thing to do was drive around on Saturday--a day when no Hacidics will drive a car to keep their Sabbath holy--and watch the huge families with wives in wigs, and clothing suited to the 1950's push strollers with similarly outdated clothed children.

It was an experience to be an outsider looking in.

In our particular apartment complex, where we lived for 1 year, I took interest in an older man with a very long white beard, and very traditional clothing. He never made eye contact with me, though each time I saw him I would smile and sometimes when I was feeling very brash would say hi. One week before we moved, after a year of seeing him weekly or more, he finally responded to my greeting. Not with words, but with a half-smile and a nod. I was elated.

Even though it was the smallest of gestures, it meant the world to me. I guess I realized that day, more than ever it's the little things that count...