The City

Having someone share the details of a personal collection is often the most immediate and, at the same time, intimate way to get to know that person. A good collection will speak to you of the passions that it’s curator holds dear. A great collection articulates the weathered soul and patinaed character of a human being.

Of all collections, I’ve always considered snow globes to be the most romantic. Like a sorcerer’s crystal ball, they posses a certain amount of magic; the sort of magic that can transport you to a single time, place, moment even. Inside, everything is perfect and beautiful, timeless.

I have only one snow globe. It’s delicate flakes fall on the Statue of Liberty, and the Chrysler Building, a patriotically lit Empire State Building, and Citigroup Center. However, holding this trinket (an afterthought at the time that it was purchased), shaking it, and watching the crystals fall where they may, will forever transport me to one perfect weekend, filled with a lifetime’s share of memories.

It wasn’t my first trip, it certainly wouldn’t be my last. But it was the trip when I began to arrange my New York City nostalgia into a proper collection. Not the sort of collection you’ll find on a bureau, or a windowsill. Far less striking than Limoges or Herend. Less functional than a shelf full of Junior League cookbooks. It’s a collection whose curios sit side by side ... in my heart.

For a long time, I thought that The City had become such a part of me that I would carry it wherever I should go. And I do. But recently I realized that it’s often already there, waiting for me, a familiar spirit in an unfamiliar haunt.

From the bartender who slid me a flirty grin across the dark mahogany and raised my “the only thing I don’t like is Gin” with a “well I think we can convert you” to the haunted hairs on the back of my neck that stood up in delight when I turned around in the middle of a silent Alabama street and thought “Pastis,” it turns out that there are New York moments waiting around every other corner.

And I, for one, am always eager to “shake it up” a bit and add another to my collection.  You can read about them here . . . City Britches: A Southern Girl's New York Minutes