The New Yorker: My Father, the City, and Our Dreams

Years after his passing, our writer realizes she is living out her father’s dreams.

The F train was nearly empty so late on a weeknight, and I was engrossed in my book, earbuds planted firmly in my ears, when I became aware of a howling sound. Eight years in New York hadn’t completely inured me to train weirdness, but I kept my eyes down, determined not to give in to my curiosity. When the howling increased in urgency and was punctuated by sniffles and jagged sobs, I looked up. 

My fellow passengers were poker-faced, but shifting eyes betrayed their discomfort. No one knew where to look. Holding on to the pole at the end of the car, a woman stood alone, crying inconsolably. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

It was the sniffling that got me. When my girls sniffed like that, I was quick to shove a tissue at them. “Blow, don’t sniff,” I would say. I always I had a pack of tissues in my bag. 

I dreaded breaking the social contract of the train; when someone makes any kind of public spectacle, we pretend we can’t see them. But it was too late. I’d already had the thought. I knew I had to do it, however much I didn’t want to. 

I dug the pack of tissues out of my bag and stretched my arm out, nodding for her to take it, but she was crying too hard to notice. Reluctantly, I stood and touched her shoulder. She blinked at me, confused. I pulled a tissue out of the pack and handed it to her. She took it and choked out between sobs, “My father is dead. I miss my father!” She blew her nose, continuing to weep. 

Tears jumped to my own eyes. I felt like I’d been sucker-punched. 

I missed my father, too.

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Riding the subway is when I feel most like a New Yorker, though I was born and raised in the West. The rumble that vibrates through your bones, the energy that pulses underneath the city—everyone pressed up against each other, all of us headed to different destinations, dreaming different dreams. Excitement, loneliness, sadness, anger, hope, joy, fear, every feeling you can imagine, and some you can’t, all crammed together and flowing underground, the beating heart of the city. And I’m part of it.

My father only visited New York City once, not long before he died, playing tourist for a day. But he was a devout subscriber to The New Yorker, his face lighting up when it arrived in our mailbox each week. He used to read it before calling us to dinner, during the hour or so when he’d lie down after working in the kitchen. I remember hearing his soft snores and tiptoeing into the living room to find him stretched out on the couch, The New Yorker splayed open on his chest, moving up and down with each breath. 

As a child, I was a precocious and voracious reader, plowing through stacks of library books, always on the hunt for something new. Whenever I picked up The New Yorker, however, I was stymied. The articles were hard for me to parse; they may as well have been written in another language. So boring. Even the cartoons seemed to speak to someone in another world, living a very different life from mine.

“Why do you get this magazine?” I used to ask my dad. “It’s full of stuff that’s happening in New York. We don’t live in New York.” I didn’t even know anyone who’d been to New York. It was impossibly far away. I don’t remember how he used to answer me.

My father wanted to be a writer, but he’d settled for teaching writing instead. He got a job as an English instructor at Red Rocks Community College just before I was born, and worked there for 30 years. Sometimes, he penned silly poems for us kids, or wrote a letter to the editor of The Rocky Mountain News. In the early morning dark, I often heard the click-clack of his typewriter at the kitchen table. 

Did he dream of writing for The New Yorker? Did he wish he were living some other kind of life? Maybe. Still, I can’t imagine him ever leaving his beloved Rocky Mountains. He used to take us hiking, feeding us tins of butterscotch pudding when we stopped to rest, reminiscing about his days climbing fourteeners. 

I never understood what was so great about the mountains. I only ever wanted to live in the city.

When people ask what made me move from Denver to Brooklyn with two young children, I tell them that I brought us here for my husband’s career, so he’d have a chance of working as an artist. But all these years later, I realize I really just wanted to live in the place my father visited every week, the city that came to life in the pages of the magazines stacked on our coffee table, strewn on the sofa, resting gently on his chest.

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And so here I was, sitting on the subway late at night, the ache of missing my father thrumming like a bass line in my heart, standing next to a stranger who was crying because her father was dead, too.  

I wrapped my arms around her and she rested her head on my shoulder. “I miss him so much,” she wept. “I’m all alone now. I don’t have anyone. I want my daddy.” 

I was vaguely aware of people looking at us, or trying not to look, but I didn’t care anymore. I tightened my arms around her. “I know you miss him. I know. But you aren’t alone. You’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” I rocked her and whispered shhhh, just like I used to shush my own babies when they cried. 

The train slowed, and she pulled away. It was her stop. “Thank you,” she said to me, stepping off the train. She raised her hand and gave me a sad little smile from the platform. I sat back down, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. I put on my best New York face, daring someone to say something, took a deep breath, put my earbuds back in, and smoothed my skirt underneath my bag. 

The next stop was mine, and when I emerged from the subway station a full moon was shining down on me, even brighter than the streetlights. How many times did I look at the moon with my father? He’d point out the constellations, and together we’d sing:

Here in this city my father knew through the pages of a magazine, the weight of his imagined dreams lies heavy on me. I see everything through his eyes: the book-lined conference room where I take a class from a well-known writer, an awards ceremony where I’m a friend’s plus-one and make small talk with David Sedaris and Calvin Trillin, a reading series where I stand behind the podium and take a slow breath, trying to steady my voice as I adjust the microphone. Guess what I did tonight, Dad? Guess where I’ve been? Guess who I met?

I bring him with me everywhere. My father, the New Yorker.

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