The second you leave the northern part of the Bronx, you end up in Westchester County, which houses around a million New York State residents including myself. The county is filled with small little towns and cities, ranging from populations of 2,000 people to 210,000. I myself, grew up in the small village of Croton on Hudson, a town of around 8,000 people surrounded by forestry, mountains, and the Hudson River right to the side. Although the city is a good drive or train ride away, it has undeniable effects on Westchester residents.
The city is a part of Westchester resident's culture, but experienced very differently when compared to native New Yorkers. My parents, for example, have not once been residents of the city itself, but have worked and commuted back and forth from my town to Manhattan nearly every business day since the early 90s. My dad has driven the same commute since 1995, and my mom, who has shifted through a multitude of jobs, consistently finding herself working in New York City. Growing up, watching my parents leave the house at around 6AM and coming back around 6PM felt normal. My friends in my hometown as well, mostly had parents who commuted back and forth from Croton to the city everyday. We would wait in "after school programs" for our parents to come back late at night and pick us up after they finished their long commutes.
To me and my peers, the city felt far and close, and our perception of it changed as we grew. Younger me would only go to the city on rare occasions, always accompanied by my parents. In fact, my first trip alone to the city happened in my sophomore year of high school at around the age of 15. Before that point, my relationship to New York City was distant and pretty minimal, but the memories of the many times I went with my parents were integral to my interest. My youthful passion for trains and subway systems arose from my little experiences in the city. In fact, my mom took me on a "day on the rails" when I was younger, where she planned a day trip on nearly all New York City subway lines, air trains, Amtrak, Metro North, and the Jersey Transit. The city felt far because my experiences with it were minimal, and felt similar to vacation rather than just visiting.
Although the distance between Croton on Hudson and New York City has always been a 41 mile drive and a 50 minute train ride, as I grew older, the city felt as if it were growing closer to me. It no longer felt as distant to me as it did when I was younger. In the winter of 2020, right before the pandemic struck, after school I would walk to the train station in my town, hop on the Hudson line, and take the train to the city alone for fun. I would get on the subway, wander around the streets of Manhattan, and meet my mom somewhere downtown in the financial district for dinner after she was done with work. These small city trips after school were some of my first experiences going alone and exploring the city rather than following a parent around. Doing this more often made me realize that the city wasn't as far as I thought, and was something/somewhere I could personally easily access for fun.
During the Pandemic, the city wasn't even a possibility and I didn't return until the spring of 2022 due to COVID concerns. However, between that spring and move-in to Cornell, I found myself repeatedly returning to the city for fun, mostly with my friends. Over the summer, we would text each other "wanna go to the city", hop on the train at any time of the day or night, and go just for the sake of having fun. Every time, we would just wander around, exploring parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn that were new to us, shopping, riding the subways, finding new restaurants and parks, and overall having a good time. At this point in my life, New York City never felt far, and was not something I had to "plan" or wait for my parents for
Of course, my experience and my friends' experience with the city is nowhere similar to one of a Native New York City resident, but the closeness of the city is rooted in everyone's life in Westchester in one way or another. We watched our parents work and make the commute there, we found ourselves growing up and making small trips to it, and we found ourselves growing to enjoy the city independently as we grew older.