Loyalty to Place

After many years here – and anchored by deep ancestral roots – I often wonder how Park Slope will factor into my future.

In late January, on the day I turned 65, I walked past Methodist Hospital and looked up at the mid-winter sky, a gray sky streaked with pink and brightened by a pale yellow sun. It was a sky – and a building – I’ve come to know all too well.

In 1957, I was born in Methodist Hospital to Helen Broadwell, who hailed from Greece; and to Michael Broadwell, the son of a Lebanese immigrant, a widowed mother. In 2012, I nearly died there, when my appendix burst unexpectedly, landing me in the ICU. Less than a year later, my mother would die at Methodist, at the age of 88, holding the hand of my daughter, her namesake. 

How did this all come to pass? I was born in Park Slope on a cloudy winter’s day. But eight months later, my parents, grandmother, great-aunt and I all piled into our blue and white family Dodge and moved out to the sandy shores of Long Island. For years, my parents would talk about “16^th Street” and how happy they were to have left it behind in favor of their split-level home in the suburbs. At 17, I left those suburbs to learn more about myself and to find my place in the world. I lived in New England, California and Mexico. I traveled far and wide. New York City – and Brooklyn – were never part of my plan. 

But in 1983, I returned to New York to work in publishing and to live closer to my family. I commuted from Long Island into Manhattan every day, and in due time, I began looking for a place of my own. One day in the spring of 1984, a co-worker told me of a room in a Brooklyn apartment she was vacating and asked whether I wanted to see it. The room was tiny, she said. It faced Flatbush Avenue (loud!). But the rent was $200 a month. Brooklyn hadn’t been on my radar as a potential place to live. But what did I have to lose?

On a warm day in April, my co-worker and I boarded the 2 train and got out at Grand Army Plaza. As I emerged from the station and looked up at that magnificent arch above me, I was struck by the most powerful feeling: I was home! I stood there in awe, not knowing what to say or think. But within weeks, I was moving into that tiny room on the edge of Park Slope; and in time, I would move to another apartment, and then another, until I finally settled into a duplex on 8^th Avenue. It overlooked Methodist Hospital, and I lived there for 26 years. 

There are many reasons why I’ve been loyal to Park Slope, for everything it has given me and perhaps taken. Park Slope after all was a place where my dad grew up, playing stickball in the street in the 1930s and early 40s. During World War II, my father traveled far and wide while in the Navy, but often sent letters home to his mom, who lived in an apartment on 16^th Street. I still have those yellowed letters tucked away in my closet for safekeeping. I also have black and white portraits of my mother in her wedding dress, taken in Park Slope in the 1950s, and photos of me here as a baby. I have stories of my great-aunt Martha and our adventures in Prospect Park – tales of her falling asleep beside me on a bench while I napped in my carriage peacefully; accounts of the strange man who once asked if he could please hold the baby. 

In my 40s, I raised my daughter, Eleni, in Park Slope, echoing my grandmother as a single mother. In other parallel experiences, Eleni was baptized at the same Greek Orthodox church, on 18^th Street, where I was christened as an infant. As a young child, Eleni took frequent Sunday strolls in the park with my parents, napping in the fresh air and playing at the 3^rd Street Playground for hours. In her later years, my mother even returned to Park Slope (albeit against her will), when she was widowed and elderly. As her dementia worsened over time, my mom would insist that she still lived in her home on Long Island. But on a cold night in February, on what would have been my father’s 88^th birthday, my mother died in Methodist Hospital, the place where she birthed me. She was holding my daughter’s hand. In that moment, the four of us – my parents, Eleni and I – came together in Park Slope, full circle. 

That’s not to say that I’m always enamored of my home or how it has changed over the decades. More often than not, I grumble along with the best of them, recalling how so much of the neighborhood’s character has faded. I miss the small family run shops and the local restaurants I once frequented. I hate the ever-rising price of real estate and the shuttered storefronts on 7^th Avenue. I feel unmoored by an air of transience I can’t shake. But then something happens, some grand event, like the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, or the more recent Covid outbreak, and I see where my loyalties lie. 

In the spring of 2020, my daughter and I hunkered down in our apartment to ride out the worst of the pandemic. We watched as cars pulled away from our street, as neighbors left for greener pastures. We listened as ambulance sirens blared, and birds chirped, and as the neighbors who remained behind banged pots and pans at 7 p.m. to cheer on the workers at Methodist. As I walked down an open street, masked and socially distant, as I shopped at a local vendor or helped a friend sick with Covid, there was no question in my mind. I wanted to be home. In those dark early days, those frightening days, I needed the comfort of Park Slope as much as it needed me. 

But in January I turned 65, and some bigger questions have plagued me, questions that will inform my future. What is the (literal and figurative price) of loyalty? I wonder. Why am I still here? With my parents and ancestors long gone now, and my own days ahead growing shorter, what am I holding on to? What am I afraid of facing if I leave? What – or whom – do I fear losing? Is my sense of loyalty warranted, or is it displaced? What would my future look like if I stay?

I often think about places in the world and why we form an attachment: Aren’t we all just a small part of their history? I know that Park Slope had a life of its own long before I moved here in the 1980s, and well before my father, his mother and his sister arrived in the 1930s. I know too that this place that has tested me and nurtured me, frustrated me and watched me and my daughter grow will be here for decades and hopefully centuries to come. The brownstones that have weathered history, the tall arch shadowing Grand Army Plaza, the new gleaming high-rises, the young and more established families…each will all have own their story to tell. I also recognize humbly that my Park Slope story is an infinitesimal one – a mere pinpoint on a canvas of a million dots. To those who’ve come before me, and to those who’ll come after, my story will be but one in a landscape that ever changes.