Meeting Mitch In New York City

March 16, 2022

Today I took a trip to New York City to show Apartment 2 of my childhood home to a new tenant, [name withheld]. She is a wonderful woman, an actress from Holland, who is a friend to [name withheld] who have rented an upstairs apartment from me for many years.

She immediately fell in love with the apartment and was more than happy to give me the asking price, and to my amazement, she signed the lease agreement on the spot!

Later in the afternoon, I decided to meet up with my friend Mitch in Brooklyn. Mitch had some time to spare that afternoon, and the plan was to meet at Hungry Ghost Coffee at the corner of 7th Avenue and Garfield Place in Brooklyn.

Mitch had suggested that I take the subway from 14th Street station to Grand Army Plaza, but I had some Uber cash that I needed to use up, and made the mistake of trusting Uber to drive me to see Mitch. I ended up needing to take three separate Uber rides just to see Mitch because none of the drivers were willing to drive so far away from their respective neighborhoods. The trip itself, which should have only taken about 30 to 40 minutes ended up taking over an hour and 30 minutes. People can be truly impossible sometimes.

The third Uber driver finally dropped me off at the corner of 7th Avenue and Garfield Place, and I spotted Mitch sitting at an outside table outside of the coffee shop. He didn’t recognize me at first until I said, “Mr. Mitchell Goldman”, at which point he immediately recognized me. His face lit up and with a smile, he invited me to sit and enjoy the late that he had ordered for me.

I first met Mitch when I was a camper at Camp Chateaugay in 1991; he was a counselor who was in an adjoining cabin. I was a camper there from the summer of 1991 to the summer of 1994. It was a few years later that I would work at the camp, first as kitchen staff, then as a camp counselor for three years.

Mitch and I talked for awhile, catching up on the events in our lives which we hadn’t mentioned on our social media accounts. He spoke of his family, and of being a father, for which he was immensely proud. He then spoke of the future of camp, and the plans that were going to be implemented to move camp into a new direction. I then asked about plans for the next reunion, which is scheduled to happen in 2023, and promised that I would be attending.

Mitch then walked with me back to his apartment, and to our surprise, his wife, Ashley was at home. Ashley of course remembered me, and said I look much more happy and healthy than I did the last time she had seen me. Mitch commented that in all the many years he had known me, that I was finally living, and was the most authentic version of myself that he had ever seen. He is right; for the first time in my life, I am genuinely happy and according to the doctors, extremely healthy.

After I met with Mitch, I went back to Bank Street, ordered some take-out and ate dinner while sitting on the front steps with Jenny, my next door neighbor, whom I have known my entire life. After a very productive day in New York City, I walked back to Moynihan Train Hall to catch an Amtrak train back to Albany, New York.

Then from Albany, I had to drive back home to Vermont. If there’s one thing that Amtrak does right, it’s Moynihan Train Hall, which combines industrial architecture with the convenience of rail travel.

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The images featured in this article were self-taken.

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