A Simple Contrast

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Perhaps the greatest contrast between New York and Mexico was the simplest. A film clip shows mother, father and a couple of friends standing on the steps of our Brooklyn Heights brownstone holding the recently arrived me. Gusts of a late Fall wind flap the hems and lapels of their coats. They are braving smiles.

The camera pans away to catch the tail end of a passing car, past which, on the other side of the street, a neon “Ballantine” beer sign blinks forlornly in a pub window. Everything is grey and sooty.

The clip abruptly ends and the next frame shows mother and father standing under an arch in a halo of bright light. Everything is warm and clean and light and white. How could one not want to go back?

Of course, New York was not all-grim and it would be several comfortable and cheerful years after that first home leave before the final move. But the allure of Mexico must have beckoned like a premature taste of heaven.


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