My Long Distance Relationship With New York City

I grew up in Connecticut where I had the luxury of hopping on a Metro North train and arriving in Grand Central Station in about an hour. When the train door opened and the stale stench of Grand Central Station greeted me, I would set out with the crowd to the 42nd Street exit to the city's grid-patterned streets and yellow cab glory. As a child, New York City's Cornell Medical Center was where I underwent my first open heart surgery at the age of nine. I was born in 1965 with a congenital heart...