A Giggle and a Gasp in Gotham

Every time I visit New York, I realize how much I hate it.

I hate the noise, the traffic, the hype, the crowds, the prices and the extravagant size of everything.

And every time I leave New York, I realize how much I miss it.

I miss the noise, the traffic, the hype, the crowds, the prices and the extravagant size of everything.

I can understand the longing of those who abandon the high drama of Manhattan to make money in our languishing City of Dreams. There are no masses to jostle them here, no din to addle them, no taxis to terrify them.

There is an emptiness in the heads of displaced New Yorkers where once calamity dwelled. They never stop aching for the place poet Byron Newton described as “Vulgar of manner, overfed,/Overdressed and underbred,/Heartless, Godless, hell’s delight,/Rude by day and lewd by night.”

One can readily see why it can be an almost spiritual longing.

L.A. is no New York, and the difference is more than just buildings and bustle. It’s in the Manhattan attitude: the stride, the swagger, the arched eyebrow, the icy disdain. And it’s in their, well, ever-present cockadoodledooing.

Which is why we took our good friends Nicole and Shana there last week.

My wife, the luminescent Cinelli, wanted them to see America’s ultimate island before it sinks under the weight of its own ego. The girls are 15 and ready to expand their worlds beyond the limitations that dependency imposes.

Soon, in the time it takes for an eye to blink, for a laugh to fade, for a tear to dry, they will be out there on their own, daring, risking, experiencing. We wanted to give them a small head start.

In New York, they discovered a new world. And I rediscovered the teenage girl-giggle.

It is an expression of delight that brings the tinkle of wind chimes to a moment of silence, a burst of bubbles into the quiet air.

A girl-giggle can pop into existence without warning and without apparent reason. With Nicole and Shana, as it once was with my own daughters, a giggle is an acknowledgment of secret moments.

Adolescent girls see things we miss, funny things that fly by and tickle their noses, outrageous things that stick out their tongues and make faces. Magic flourishes where teenagers walk.

And, yet, there were silences too as we toured Manhattan, moments of observation that continue to resonate: Nicole, viewing the dot that is Earth in a mass of galaxies at New York’s stunning new Hayden Planetarium: “We’re so tiny.” Shana, viewing a photographic wall of diverse faces on Ellis Island: “We’re all immigrants.”

Each day was different in the exploration of new places. A stroll through Central Park became a walk on the moon. A view from the top of the Empire State Building was a sight from outer space.

At night, there were elegant, dressed-up dinners at Tavern on the Green and Cafe des Artistes, an introduction to manners they will need when the giggling years have passed.

As I watched them carefully sipping their iced teas and selecting the correct forks, I realized how sophisticated they can be, how proper and grown-up.

Were these the tiny babies I once carried in my arms? Were theirs the small hands I held as we walked tree-shrouded pathways and wondered at things that scurried in the bushes? How swiftly the years pass, how swiftly the stages of life blur one into the other.

We took them to Broadway shows, to museums and to art galleries. We rode taxis, buses, subways and a horse carriage. And as cool as teenage girls occasionally try to be, the child’s wonder in their eyes glowed.

At the end of it, as we left the small and lovely Hotel Salisbury (suggested by one of you out there), a final touch of luxury was a stretch limo to the airport. If we expected aloof sophistication here, what we got were two girls, too high for cool, giggling and waving back at the Manhattan skyline, their laughter trailing like silver ribbons toward the lofty horizon, a gift to the Big Apple from the City of Dreams.

Only on the flight home did quiet set in. Two young adults thought their private thoughts and wondered their silent wonders and remembered how it had been, before New York, when they were still children.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.