As I shared in the book, I am a displaced New Yorker. New York City will always be the one place in the world that feels the most like home to me. There are days when I really miss it. There are days when I hallucinate it into my mind space.

The other day, as I was driving over the Cooper River Bridge here in Charleston, I could have sworn that out of the corner of my eye I saw the Statue of Liberty. I mean it. It was there. I saw it. For a brief moment, I was back in New York… only it was warm. I was wearing short sleeves in January. Hmmmm, that can’t be right…

As I glanced out at the water again I realized, it wasn’t snowing, or icy, or even remotely chilly. It was just a little cloudy in the way that the New York Harbor can be sometimes and so my eyes and my mind had both played a trick on me. They made me feel like I was there again. I stayed disoriented for a full three or maybe even four minutes before I figured out I was dreaming. I couldn’t see the Statue of Liberty at all.

The funny thing is, if I were actually in NYC, I wouldn’t be driving over a bridge anyway. I wouldn’t even own a car. I would be walking, or taking a subway, or riding a bus. In order to see the Statue of Liberty that close in vicinity, I would have to take a ferry out to meet her. You can’t cross the Hudson in the same way you can cross the Cooper. It’s just not possible.

What would be really great is if I could have both. If I could somehow figure out how to have the warm embrace of the low-country weather and all the hustle and bustle that NYC has to offer in the same place.  Then I actually could drive across the Cooper River Bridge from downtown Manhattan/Charleston to neighboring Mount Pleasant/New Jersey and glance out my window and catch a glimpse of good old Lady Liberty.

That’s the dream.

©2016 Betts Keating. All rights reserved.

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Read more of Betts Keating’s story in her memoir, My Movie Memoir Screenplay Novel, available for purchase at amazon.com.

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