Sheffield, Mass.
I happened to take that picture with my phone in my hometown of Sheffield, Mass. last month during a visit with my father. The line of those mountains has a way of embedding itself in your subconscious if you see it every day. Now it’s August; I am remembering the perfect Sheffield summer afternoons years ago – riding a bike crazily down the steep hill from the spot of the picture – Chapin’s Hill.
My identity is not there, however. It’s also not lower-East-Side Manhattan, where I was born and lived until age 10. Also not Ukraine, where I live in the summer and where my grandfather was from. If anything, I am a rootless cosmopolitan….