Crossing That Bridge to Jersey
Until just before third grade, we lived in my grandmother’s brownstone. She lived in the third-floor apartment; my family lived on the other two floors.
From my grandmother’s apartment window, we watched the towers of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge rise. The bridge had not opened yet, and the towers were still rust-colored, not the battleship gray it’s known for today.
On the day the bridge opened, we piled into the station wagon, Tammy our dog included, and crossed over to Staten Island.
We turned around and came right back.
It would not be the last time we crossed that bridge.
Before I started third grade, my family moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey (Old Bridge, to be exact).
That wasn’t the normal progression for families leaving Brooklyn. Like a game of checkers, the move was a jump from Brooklyn over Staten Island, then another jump to Jersey.
King me.
But we never made that first jump. Family legend has it that my mother, touring a house on Staten Island, saw a rat (or maybe a mouse) scurry across the floor.
And just like that, a home on Staten Island was out of the question.
The final jump to Jersey landed us in Old Bridge.
But when my family moved, I didn’t. I stayed behind for the summer with my grandmother. I didn’t want to leave Brooklyn.
In the end, that wasn’t my call.
Eventually, I woke up in Jersey one morning, for good.
My entire world had changed.
In Brooklyn, we lived in a brownstone in Bensonhurst. Except for small differences, every house on the block looked the same.
In Jersey, the house designs were named after presidents.
We lived in a Jefferson.
In Bensonhurst, our backyard was a shared driveway that ran the length of the block.
In Old Bridge, we had a third of an acre just for us.
Brooklyn had public schools named after numbers.
I went to P.S. 204.
Old Bridge had schools named after astronauts.
I went to M. Scott Carpenter Elementary School.
For a long time, I felt out of place in Old Bridge. Like an unwanted dog, I was a Brooklyn kid sent to live on a farm upstate.
Finally, years later, I knew I had crossed the bridge. On a visit back to Brooklyn, an old friend asked in the middle of a conversation:
“Where did you get that accent from?”
