Lately, I’ve felt the fluttering of a few “missing New York” moments across my heart.  Imagining myself on the loop in Central Park as I pound the treadmill of our apartment building’s gym, going nowhere.  Longing for Tim Keller’s voice and authority in my ears.  Moments on rooftops.  In the year prior to our departure from the city, I dealt with my urge to leave by focusing on the things I loved about New York, the things I could only find there.  I find myself doing that now with Atlanta.  Not because I want to leave, but because I am resigned now to my heart being forever divided between two places.  Thankfully, the division is uneven, as I find that most of the things I love about Atlanta are found in relationships rather than events, in the warmth of home-burning lights instead of sparkling skylines.

Here are a few things you find in the South that would never deign to appear on the streets of Manhattan:  Hey used as a friendly greeting and not a shout of indignation; an American-flag cake composed entirely of cupcakes; the phrase “I’ll get right on that” meaning it will happen sometime in the next two weeks; 5 pm being a reasonable end to a workday.  And cheese dip.

This week, I was reminded of that glorious culinary achievement when the old Roommate, the Sis and I met up in Buckhead for some Mexican food at Cantina.  While the Sis sipped on Pellegrino, BE and I downed 24-ounce pomegranate margaritas (for $8.50, an volume/cost ratio that you’d also never find in NYC) and all three of us devoured basket after basket of salty chips dipped in melted white cheese.  Then I looked at the menu.  Now I have seen my share of menus, the variety of which grew exponentially during my Manhattan tenure, but even there I was never offered a Trailer Park Taco: flour tortilla filled with lettuce, pico de gallo, cheese sauce (because I hadn’t consumed enough already), and FRIED CHICKEN.  Hello, Jesus.  Thank you for the hug.

In New York, my two jobs had me working with two sets of children: the poor and the richer-than-rich.  At NYU, we saw a Medicaid population. Mostly kids from the boroughs who took the train or bus to come to our clinic.  At my practice on the Upper East Side, which was located in American’s richest zip code, I treated kids who spent their summers in villas across Europe and traveled with their nannies (often in a two-per-one-kid ratio) and a driver to their appointment.  Here at my Marietta practice, I work with kids who have their neighborhood swim team heats written down their arms in Sharpie marker, leading straight to a tangle of silly bandz on their wrists.  In New York, a kid famously told one of the doctors in our practice not to speak to her “like one of his whores.”  I visited a preschool and spoke to three-year-olds, one of whose responses to my call for questions was, “My daddy drinks too much.”  Last week, I met a three-year-old who twirled on her toes as she introduced me to her “mommy’s husband, whose name is Daddy,” and her “daddy’s wife, whose name is Mommy.”  Later in the afternoon, a particularly witty teenager who sat waiting in the chair looked at the similarly-aged girl across from him and said, “So.  What are you in for?”

I know there are dysfunctional families in every corner of the country (like yours and mine, for example), but the kids here get to be kids for a lot longer than the ones in the 10021.

In the car the other day, after I had seen one trite church billboard too many, I ached a little for the city’s challenge to my faith, for the way the sunset glowed off the buildings, for the wine bar a few steps from my apartment.  The BF had mentioned the night before that it seemed like so long ago that we were falling asleep in a loft with a ceiling three feet above our head.  I wonder sometimes–fretfully and fitfully–if, eventually, it will all just seem like a dream.  Like our trips to Atlanta when I was a kid, driving over for Falcons games or Six Flags trips and falling asleep on the way home only to wake up as we pulled in the driveway and ask myself if we were ever really there.  Will there be a day when the city and I are strangers to each other?

On the road, a car with a “Show me his birth certificate” sticker next to a “Honk if you love Jesus” one blew past me, and I recoiled in a way I never would have without my five-year Southern break.  Nope, I thought, we’ll never be strangers.  New York is part of my story, part of who I am now.  Which means that divided heart or not, I can have my cheese dip and eat it too.