The view at night from the roof of my sister’s apartment building in midtown Manhattan is like looking down from one of the higher clouds in heaven at the other angels living out their merry lives below. There are no problems up there, nor does there seem to be any in the buzzing, flashing, grinding world 30 stories below. Manhattan honks and roars, fully awake at 3 a.m., the taxis on Third Avenue prowling for drunks and delivering them safely home. Brooklyn and Queens sparkle across the East River and dance on its reflective surface. New Jersey spreads out to the West, barely visible over Manhattan roofs and the Hudson River. Nestled somewhere among those modest hills are my house and bed, my triumphs and failures. On this dark roof, in this city of my birth, I feel, more than see, the city around me, and know I am once again only visiting.

My parents were both born in Brooklyn, as were their parents, and as were my sister and I. In the 80s and early ‘90s they lived in Queens, commuting into Manhattan every day, and sending us kids to various preschools and friendly spinster’s homes. By the time I was three and my sister was entering kindergarten in the then-notoriously-failing New York City public school system, we moved to a nice suburban home with two green lawns, a pool and a nice, tall flagpole, in Wayne, New Jersey—a 20-minute drive from the city, but in some ways a whole world away. The house wasn’t far from the highway, which led straight to the George Washington Bridge. Buses ran regularly. School field trips to the Statue of Liberty or the Museum of Natural History were not uncommon. But by moving me out of New York my parents made me no longer an official New Yorker, something I’ve never forgiven them for and probably never will.

New York for anyone growing up around it is never “New York,” but always “the city,” which outsiders may view as romantically intimate but which is really quite alienating; it merely nods at familiarity while slyly alluding to its unavoidable status of not really being that special. It’s just “the city”—I assumed everyone had theirs. Those outside Philadelphia surely had “the city,” as did those outside Chicago, Moscow, and, presumably, Fargo, North Dakota. The city was where my parents dragged my sister and me to boring museums without enough places to sit or enough things to touch. It was also where the Yankees played, where the Giants and Jets pretended to play, and, starting in sixth grade, where a lot of people died and a lot of people posted pictures of their family asking if I knew where they were. Later it was Columbia University, the school of my daydreams, great record stores, romantic row boats and carriage rides in the Central Park. It was also between me and my grandparents on Long Island. The city was always a place to which I was going and from which I was coming, but in which I never remained for very long.

I idealize New York, admittedly. Life there is not heavenly. Its residents do not wake up with smiles and good hair saying, “Gracious me—I live in New York!” My idealization of the city is a direct result of having never really lived there. It is both the curse and the only redemption of my nearly lifelong exile, the inevitable end of which will necessarily mark the end of that idealization, too.