Coming to America: Lessons Learned When New to New York

I was born and raised in Jamaica. No, not Jamaica, Queens. Jamaica, the third largest of the Caribbean islands and the largest English-speaking island in the Caribbean Sea. I spoke patois, an English-based dialect that Americans would not understand. Luckily, I went from Jamaica to the Cayman Islands where I worked at a boutique and got used to hearing and imitating people speaking something close to the Queen’s English.

Since my husband has family in the Bronx, and since I was eager to experience cold weather, we moved to New York where, I thought that one day, I may even see snow...if there is such a thing.

Meanwhile, I had a lot to learn, not only the New York language, but about getting around in the city.

One of the first words I learned was networking. This one asks that one and that one puts word out and before I knew it, I had an interview for a job in a big apartment house on Manhattan’s East Side.

It was summertime. I was used to warm weather because of the four seasons in Jamaica—warm, hot, hotter and hottest. Central Park was alive with lush-leafed trees and colorful flowers and people playing guitars in Strawberry Fields, even though there wasn’t a strawberry to be seen.

Time to go for my job interview. My husband gave me tokens for the bus (this was 20 years ago) and told me that when I get on the bus, I should put one of the tokens in the token thing. He said, “It’s alongside the driver. You’ll know it when you see it.”

The bus I needed to take was the M30. (Remember the wonderful M30 that wound around Central Park West to 57th Street and then went uptown to East 72nd Street?)

When I got to the bus stop, I read a sign that said, “No Standing’. No standing? There were no seats. I had no choice but to stand. Would they let me on the bus if the driver saw me standing here? Was I breaking the law by standing? Could I be arrested? I didn’t know what to do and there was no one to ask. I really needed to take the bus, so I walked to the huge building (I later found out that it was the Majestic) and I huddled in one of the doorways, close enough to watch for the bus, but far enough away from the “No Standing” sign.

When the M30 showed up, I ran to the curb, the bus door opened, I hopped on and deposited the token in the token thing. The driver didn’t say anything to me. Why should he? He didn’t see me standing at the bus stop.

I got off the bus at the appropriate stop and found the building I needed. The doorman led me to the front desk The front desk man asked my name and who I was there to see, then sent me to the bank of elevators, telling me to go to the 21st floor. Gulp! I was never in an elevator. They have elevators in Jamaica and in the Cayman Islands, but I was always to scared to get in one. Luckily, a delivery man was going up to the 30th floor and I went in the elevator with him.

The interviewer was waiting for me near the elevator. She introduced herself and led me into her apartment. The actual interview is a blur. Between worrying about going down in the elevator and standing at the bus stop to go back to the west side, I don’t know what I said. I just know I wasn’t going to be offered a job.

The interviewer walked me to the elevator and rang for it. I thanked her for her time and assured her she didn’t have to wait for the elevator to arrive. Thankfully, she went back into her apartment before the elevator came and I was able to find the door to the stairs and walk down the 21 flights, exiting the stairwell a little wobbly, but ready to face the next obstacle, the bus stop.

The bus stop, across the street and in the opposite direction from the stop I got off, had a shed and seats. I was able to sit and wait for the bus.

When I got home and told my husband about my “No Standing” experience, he didn’t stop laughing until I threatened his life. I don’t care what anyone says, those signs should have a picture of a vehicle and say “No Parking”!

There were some things I could figure out on my own. For instance, in Jamaica, right before Queen Elizabeth was scheduled to visit the island, all the potholes were patched up. Seeing all the potholes in the Bronx and in the city, it was obvious that the Queen hadn’t visited or planned to visit anytime soon.

Learning Americanisms is an ongoing process...even after being here 20+ years. One day, not too long ago, I was talking to a friend at church. She repeated a news item about a celebrity sleeping with his wife’s relative. I said, “So what? I used to sleep with my brother.” My friend’s jaw dropped. I explained that there were seven children and no one had their own bed. My brother is 10 years younger than me and we slept in the same bed. We really slept! That’s when I learned that “sleeping with someone” usually doesn’t mean sleeping at all.

I made it through my first New York summer, ready for autumn. The way the leaves were falling off the trees, I knew why the season was also called “fall.” I thought the leafless trees died. In Jamaica, when a tree looked like these bare, lifeless New York trees, we would chop it down and use the wood for all kinds of things. I was saddened at the sight and was wondering when new trees would be planted to take their place. It didn’t happen.

Winter at last. Oh how I love the cold weather. One morning, my husband woke me up and told me to go outside. It was snowing. I looked up at the sky and let the flakes land on my face, loving every one of them. Snow was magical. By the afternoon, the snow settled on the bare tree branches. So that’s why they don’t chop down all these dead trees. They wait for the snow to make them look beautiful.

And then came springtime when the extraordinary awakening powers of Mother Nature brought the trees to life once again. Another lesson learned!