New York! New York!
My last long stay in New York was in the summer of 1970 when my sister and brother-in-law, a medical doctor, were there and invited me to stay. I had written three long articles about it in The Sunday Times of Malta in November of that year. It was a pleasurable trip which also took us, by car, to the bowels of Canada. My sister was well into her pregnancy but was the main instigator for the trip. It was an adventure we all thoroughly enjoyed. We were young and enthusiastic and which of us had not harboured a dream of visiting the New World one day.
Subsequently I was in transit at JFK on my way to a conference in Haiti. This was in 1984 when our ties with Libya were very close. I was stopped on the way to my hotel at JFK by an FBI agent who asked me to ‘step aside’ as he wanted to ask me a few questions and check my bag. Fair enough. He was only doing his duty. He was infinitely polite and after a brief look inside my handbag I was allowed to proceed.
The following day someone stole my handbag as I was waiting to board the plane to Haiti. I dozed off for a few minutes and it was gone from under my chair. Wild promises to St Anthony were made and finally it was tracked down at a police station in Jackson Heights. A few pieces of jewellery which had great sentimental value and my money were missing. Finding that bag was a minor miracle. My week’s stay in Haiti was an adventure especially as my suitcase did not arrive until the day I was leaving. Even St Anthony could do nothing about that. Still, all part of the rich tapestry of life.
New York was very different then. Crime was obiquitous and the difference is very evident now. In 40 years the crime statistics are no longer overwhelming. Then I was writing: “You are free to do anything in New York. There, you are not hemmed in by any group; no stupid reasons are given for not being able to do something interesting, outrageous or mad… If you have always harboured a secret passion for playing to an audience, you can pick up your violin and play it in the middle of the Rockefeller Center. You can give vent to your religious mania by distributing tracts and threatening everyone that ‘God is gonna getcha’. Or you can start a new trend and dress up as Salome, Sappho or Lady Godiva and go and break the monotony in Wall Street.”
This freedom hasn’t changed much. We saw, my 1980 baby and I, a couple of times on Union Square, a tall, quaintly dressed man pushing his poodle in a very colourful pram. It was refreshing. On several occasions we came across another one carrying a huge poster with ‘Love’ on it. There is tolerance for crankiness and new ideas which makes for an interesting society.
Thankfully criminals are no longer lurking round every corner ready to prepare you for the morgue at worst. There are no longer heavily armed policemen on the streets carrying ‘walkie-talkies’. They are very much around but not conspiculously so and their armoured cars can be heard day and night. In those days most stores had an armed guard. This time round, although they may have guards but they are not so obvious.
What I love most about Ameicans is their casualness. The overweight are as likely to wear a pair of shorts as the slim. It is rare to see anyone wearing costume jewellery or gold jewellery. And high heels? The shop windows are full of these ridiculous platforms and heels created to destroy women’s feet but you never see them on the street. They are probably worn at night clubs and discos. I quickly had to abandon my high heels and adopted a pair of ‘sensible’ shoes like everyone else. If you are going to walk several blocks there is really no other option and walk you do in Manhattan.
I found the Americans I came across to be courteous and friendly. ‘Congratulations!’ came immediately to their lips if they saw the baby in a ‘stroller’ whether you were in a lift or in a restaurant. The doormen in the block in which my daughter’s little family live were always there to open the door for us, day and night. They had a friendly word or a positive comment, without being intrusive. It was a change from the average bad mannered and curt Maltese one generally meets in public places.
Women have come a long way since 1970 when we were present for Betty Frieden’s Women’s Strike for Equality. She had started it all with her book The Feminine Mystique in 1963 in which she exposed the vacuity of the lives of many suburban housewives. We had watched the strike from the steps of the New York Public Library. By then I was immersed in feminist literature but my bible was Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxieme Sexe, which preceded Betty Frieden and others like Erika Jong, Germaine Greer, Kate Millett and so on. The parade on 5th avenue on 26 August 1970 was the 50th anniversary of the 19th Amendment which gave American women the vote. What they were asking for and which was mirrored in the many banners they carried, was free abortion on demand; free community-controlled 24-hour child-care centres and equal opportunities in jobs and education. Unofficially they were asking for test-tube births and ‘freedom from pain for the female body’. That week Newsweek magazine had announced it would recruit more women into reporting, writing and editing jobs and for the first time employ men as researchers. Well, women journalists and editors have come a long way since then – even here, let alone the States. In 40 years American women have really made huge strides in their bid for equality. However, I must say that one of the saddest sights on 6th avenue where I took my lovely grandson shopping almost everyday, was the sight of four children in a huge pram being pushed by a baby nurse – usually Mexican – while their mothers were at work. Of course, many women have to work not only for self-fulfillment but perhaps because they are single mothers. The cost of living in New York is very high and it is a luxury for women not to work. But is there no better way to look after children when the mother is working? I somehow do not think that this is what those feminists had in mind when they were demonstrating for childcare centres in August 1970. It is sad to see the older children bundled up in prams, four at a time.
We are still lucky to have extended families with in-laws and parents as well as obliging aunts who live close by, because Malta is so small. Here it is not so very difficult to get help from the family if a woman wants to work or is obliged to work while the children are small although this too is changing. It is different in a huge continent where family ties are so easily broken as distances are impossibly large and once members of the family go and work elsewhere it becomes increasingly difficult to meet regularly and to keep the family bonds tight. You could not miss a number of homeless begging. To us here, perhaps, it seems incredible that someone should finish up without a job and homeless. Doesn’t their family give them support when they are in dire circumstances? But each one has his own story.
The purpose of my long visit, this time round, was to bond with my 1980 baby, husband and lovely Theo. I can’t wait to go again.
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