A Big Apple a Day...

It was truly a New York minute. Well, actually, it was a New York hour and a half, but let's just say it was a New York moment.

The New York University winter convocation ceremony was less a celebration of students graduating from a school than a nod to a group of young people who chose to take on the challenges of a daunting city, and succeeded. NYU is a place without a pristine campus -- without a campus at all, really. There is no football team, no intricate fraternity system through which students might find a comfortable social niche. By all appearances, NYU is scattered buildings on gritty urban streets, buildings identifiable as part of the university only by virtue of simple purple banners hung several stories up. Its students blend into a landscape of unparalleled diversity -- diversity of age, race, economic status, attire, beliefs, and passions. They make their transition into adulthood steeped in a melting pot of adventurous souls.

Sure, a traditional continuous loop of Pomp and Circumstance was thrown in when the graduates marched in. Actually, they kind of sauntered in, New York style. Some carried shopping bags, some carried little suitcases, and they entered in no particular order. Some chatted, some seemed oblivious to everything, more than a few collided with each other as if they were strolling down some crowded New York City sidewalk. Musical theatre majors entertained us with show tunes while we waited, and closed things up with a spectacular New York medley. There was no recessional, per se. Graduates and families alike jostled the crowds to escape the theatre, New York style. Orderly chaos.

My son has told me he feels as if the lion's share of his college education occurred in New York City rather than at any institution. The student speaker seemed to concur. There will be no homecoming weekends for these graduates, no spirited annual football gatherings to glue them together. But it is clear that New York City has become a part of each of them, and that, for what it's worth, will always be their common ground. Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker, and my son is no exception.

Back home in deep dark suburbia, I envy him that he gets to stay. To continue living, at least for a while, in his fourth floor walk-up in the West Village, in an apartment about the size of my kitchen. In a building with a vestibule just large enough for one person -- something I realized the other day when we tried to get in while the mail woman was trying to fill the cramped metal boxes. My son greeted her by name, and she chuckled as the three of us tried to navigate the tiny vestibule without injury.

Outside that little vestibule, though, is a world larger than life. Hole in the wall restaurants of every ethnic variety imaginable line the streets, interspersed with trendy little dessert joints and coffee houses crowded with beat up wooden tables and delicious treats. Taxis whiz by, horns blare, everybody is on the move. Even the dogs seem to walk quickly and with purpose.

Graduation day in Washington Square Park. Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood.