The day I moved to Manhattan, I discovered I was pregnant. Checked into a hotel and awaiting the arrival of our belongings, I found out the daughter I never believed I would have was brewing. I also discovered what it was like to be puked on by my two year old with an ill-timed flu, while having breakfast in the Carlyle. Twice. One of those discoveries was better.

My daughter is a New Yorker. She was born at Mount Sinai Hospital the following April. Born on Fifth Avenue. It doesn’t get much more official. We scooped her up and moved back to the west coast 10 days after she was born, but if you ask her, she’s a New Yorker. That fact accounts for any differences she perceives between herself and her California born and bred bookend brothers.

If there is a game she doesn’t like or a food she can’t tolerate, it is due to her status…New Yorker. “New Yorkers don’t like blueberries, so I don’t like blueberries.” There you have it. She personifies the stereotypes of the city. She is headstrong. She is in charge. She is the center of the universe that she lives in. She is the catalyst. Her energy is intoxicating. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

My girl will forever bind me to that city. I will love it always, if only because it is where I met her all those years ago. Today, that is a little bit heartbreaking. This is the day eight years ago, on an otherwise beautiful Tuesday morning, we all became New Yorkers. While standing in my flip-flops in my California backyard and watching the last of the planes overhead as they flew back from every direction to be grounded, I joined my daughter as a New Yorker.