The City is My Home

A large saguaro cactus silhouetted against the rising sun symbolizes the desert for me. I keep the picture in my mind’s eye, as a phone background, and it’s etched in the pottery coffee mug beside me. The realization, however, sinks into me that the city – not the desert – is my home. My heart is here. The city is my security. It provides our livelihood. There is no place I would rather worship than in the city, in a church where people of many different backgrounds meet and meld.

I know the city’s trains and buses. I walk its vibrant streets and shop at its ethnic stores. I walk into the busiest library in the nation to see a wealth of books and of like minded people. The emergency personnel of this city picked me up when I’d fallen and broken my leg. The surgeons here mended it, and the best of them removed my burst appendix. City nurses cared for me in my brokenness. Today, I meet them on the sidewalk, and they chat with me.

I know my neighbors, their challenges, that the boy next door is engaged, and the Polish couple’s dog’s name is Romeo. We visit together about our families while we throw clothes into the coin-operated washers and dryers of the basement laundry room of this building. Because I live here, I know the Muslims are having Ramadan now, and that the Chinese New Year is cause for a large celebration.

Beautiful and fresh flower bouquets are inexpensive when purchased from the sidewalk vendors of the city. The taco trucks are numerous. There’s the old Chinese man who mends shoes, and the Mexicans who sell pineapple. I would miss these things in the desert where the sun rises behind a large saguaro cactus.

When the city wearies me (and it does!), a bus will carry me to the sea or the Wildlife Refuge. I know the beauty of the bay at sunset when the large orange orb sinks behind Throgs Neck Bridge. I walk with my best friend on the wooded paths of Forest Park, and many times we’ve grilled there among the Hispanic parties with their music playing.

I live in the city, in a small apartment that holds all our earthly goods. Here, in this alone place, I am given words to write. The colorful foods and fabric of the city satisfy me. The city is my home.

Berniece 3/4/25

(Written as a writing assignment.)