EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Retired Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer, living in Vermont.

Just A Place Where I Had Been

June 21, 2026—New York City

Today Maddie and I went to New York City together for the first time. The day began in Saratoga Springs, where we met up with her friend before driving to the Metro-North station in Wakefield.

Maddie and her friend took turns driving, which meant I was spared the responsibility of southern New York traffic. From Wakefield, we took the train into Grand Central Station. I have been to New York City countless times throughout my life, but there was something different about arriving there with Maddie.

New York City was once the entire world to me. Then it became the place I came from. Then it became a place I rarely visited, and never thought much about. Yesterday, for a little while, it became somewhere I could share with my best friend.

Our first stop after Grand Central was Raising Cane's for chicken strips because apparently neither of us believed that sightseeing, emotional processing, or basic navigation should be attempted without fried chicken. This turned out to be one of the more reasonable decisions made that day.

Afterward, we went to Chelsea Piers and boarded the Manhattan II for a sightseeing cruise around New York Harbor to see the Statue of Liberty. The boat was beautiful, with polished wood, clean lines, and the kind of finish that made it feel older and more dignified than most things built for tourism have any right to feel.

I have seen the Statue of Liberty before, but seeing her from the water with Maddie made the experience feel new in a way I did not expect. I have even seen Liberty from the crown when I was a small child—a fact disputed by the tour guide. New York is different from the harbor. From the streets, the city feels crowded, impatient, and endlessly under construction. From the water, it becomes easier to understand. The skyline pulls itself together. The bridges, buildings, ferries, docks, and islands finally appear as parts of one enormous working system instead of a thousand separate demands for attention.

But the thing I will probably remember most from the cruise was not the Statue of Liberty. It was Maddie. For the first time in awhile, I got to see her genuinely happy and carefree. She sat against the varnished wood of the Manhattan II, the harbor air moving around us, and for a little while there was nowhere she needed to be, nothing she needed to fix, and nothing the day required from her except being present.

After the cruise, Maddie took me to see my childhood home at 11 Bank Street, right at the corner of Bank and Waverly. I had gone there anticipating being overwhelmed with emotion. I thought that perhaps standing in front of the house would bring everything back at once, as if memory had been waiting behind the shutters with a clipboard and a list of unresolved grievances.

Instead, nothing much happened. The house was still there. The shutters in my childhood bedroom remained closed, just as they were on the day I sold it. I did not bother taking pictures because nothing had changed there in the year since I let the house go. The flowers that mom and I had planted in the garden were in full bloom, and the tree I had paid a considerable amount of money to have pruned had already outgrown its shape again. Trees do that. People spend money trying to give them a polite outline, and then they return to being themselves.

I approached the front gate and gripped the cold, worn cast iron points with my hand. I stood there for about five minutes and stared at the front of the place while Maddie sat quietly on the steps of 9 Bank Street to give me time to process. She did not rush me. She did not make the silence awkward. She simply waited.

Maddie asked if by chance we might be allowed inside, and I told her I doubted it. Some things are better left unsaid, unseen, and unexperienced. I meant that. I still mean that. Going inside would not have given me anything I needed. The rooms would have belonged to someone else. I have learned that not every door needs to be opened simply because it exists. Sometimes it is enough to stand at the gate, look at the place, and realize that the part of you that once lived there has already left, never to return.

At that moment, it seemed that New York City had let me go in the same way I had let the house go. And yet, it still felt like the house belonged to another person in another lifetime. I expected to feel grief, or longing, or something dramatic enough to justify the visit. Instead, it was just a place where I had been.

After Bank Street, the day returned to being New York City, which meant food, walking, crowds, at least three people screaming at inanimate objects, the usual confusion, and the city's total indifference to whatever personal revelation had just taken place in front of a cast iron gate.

Maddie and I went to Little Italy and Chinatown. After a long, hot day in New York City, dessert seemed like a reasonable idea. Maddie got Italian pastries, and I got a strawberry milkshake made from gelato, which was absolutely the correct decision. There are moments when I admire people who make refined culinary choices, and then there are moments when I want something pink, cold, sweet, and calorically unnecessary.

Yesterday was the second kind of moment. I liked walking through those neighborhoods with Maddie. The streets felt dense and alive in that particular downtown way, where everything smells like food, exhaust, perfume, old buildings, hot pavement, and someone else's plans. New York has never been subtle. It does not gently ask to be noticed. It simply surrounds you until you give up and accept that every block has its own character.

At some point, Maddie and I attempted to take the subway during rush hour to get to Times Square. This went about as well as anyone familiar with my life should have expected. We got lost. There were too many people, too many trains, too many signs, and far too much confidence involved for the outcome to be anything other than temporary underground confusion.

I took a photograph in the subway of a dark passage near the tracks, fluorescent lights overhead, old tile on the walls, and red signs warning people not to enter or cross the tracks. I titled it Surrender To The Void, which felt less like artistic exaggeration and more like a practical instruction. The subway at rush hour has a way of making everyone briefly reconsider the life decisions that brought them there in the first place. Eventually, we made it to Times Square because New York City releases people after it has humbled them sufficiently.

For dinner, we went to a fancy burger restaurant. I ordered my favorite, a cheeseburger with cheddar, a plate of fries to share with Maddie, and a Coke Classic. I gulped down the first Coke, then followed it with a glass of water. After I ate my cheeseburger and finished the fries, I ordered a second Coke, which I shared with Maddie on the way out.

After a day of boats, old houses, Little Italy, Chinatown, subway confusion, and too much walking, a cheeseburger felt like the correct ending. There is something reassuring about a simple meal after an overly full day. Not everything needs to become meaningful. Sometimes dinner is just dinner, and sometimes dinner is a cheeseburger with cheddar, fries, a cold Coke, and your best friend sitting across from you after a day that had already become more memorable than either of you probably expected.

The day should have ended there. On the way home, just after midnight, Maddie's friend decided to kick us out of his car at the rest area on I-87 in Sloatsburg.

There are many situations in life where I prefer to remain calm because panic is rarely useful, and this was one of them. Being left at a rest area after midnight was not ideal. I had Maddie with me, and that was the only fact that mattered. I needed to get us back safely.

And so it cost me $650 to get a last-minute ride back to Saratoga Springs. Six hundred and fifty dollars is an absurd amount of money for a transportation problem that should not have existed in the first place.

I thought for sure Amelia would be upset by the cost. Instead, she said, "You and Maddie had a great time in NYC. You kept her safe, so it was well worth the cost."

Some friendships become family so gradually that nobody notices when it happens. She understood immediately what the money had actually paid for. It was peace of mind. It was knowing that Maddie and I would get home safely. I have always understood love in practical terms. I show up. I remember the details. I notice when someone is not okay. I notice when someone is finally happy again. I do everything possible to get my friends home safely, no matter what.