A New York homecoming — more slowdown in the suburbs than ‘Sex and the City’

When the FT asked me to relocate to New York from London this summer, I was ready for a change. I imagined my post-pandemic NY life would resemble Carrie Bradshaw’s, a youngish single journalist writing in a quirky one-bedroom, batting handsome men away with a broomstick. I would dash to my flashy new job in an outfit I didn’t have to cover with a raincoat.

But instead of moving forward into this reasonable fantasy, I seem to be stuck in a new-life birth canal.

While New York City is 70 per cent vaccinated and dancing through “shot girl summer”, in a potent distillation of almost every possible pandemic theme I am living alone at my parent’s house in the suburbs and babysitting the geriatric family dog.

My parents did not saddle me with my own personal fourth lockdown on purpose. When they booked their pre-retirement honeymoon to Iceland, there was no reason to believe our dog would still be alive. She is 112 in dog years, about to celebrate her 16th birthday.

At the end of 2019, it seemed like any day could be her last. To aid her elderly digestion for what everyone assumed were her final weeks, she was switched to a fancy dog food.

But she was resurrected by the pandemic. My stressed mother, desperate for excuses to leave the house, septupled the daily dog-walking regime. With all-day access to ear rubs from my dad, no longer commuting, our dog flourished. Eighteen months later she still eats like a duchess.

The food is so expensive that it is ordered in two-week tranches to avoid having extra . . . just in case. But we keep buying more, week after week. Only the love of an old dog can bring you to willingly open fragrant cans of pet food at 6:30am.

On the surface I am resentful of my bonus lockdown, which involves a fair amount of cleaning up dog vomit. It’s isolating to be alone without the crucial knowledge that no one is having any fun anywhere else.

I wonder if those millions of families who got puppies during the pandemic (and then wrote think pieces about it) imagined themselves 15 years down the road. I doubt many did. Adding 15 years to any current age is traumatic.

They will be caring for old dogs, if they are lucky. The houses they purchased for more space in lockdown will no longer be new. Their towns will be unrecognisable. Mine is.

As frantic millennials continue to buy into in the property FOMO economy, houses in my little hometown, just outside New York City, now sell within hours of listing, often hundreds of thousands of dollars over the asking price, sometimes in cash.

I still know all the houses in my neighbourhood by the names of families who used to live there. They are almost all gone

The old guard, people my parents’ age, are taking their cues to cash in and move along. A cascade of younger, sleeker families are arriving. I still know all the houses in my neighbourhood by the names of families who used to live there. They are almost all gone.

This cute but decrepit old dog is one of the last things left that made home feel familiar. And when she is napping it is not always obvious that she is breathing.

While I am saying hello to my new life in the US, at the same time I am tangled in this mess of letting go. Every night I give my old dog an extra good belly rub, because I’m just not ever sure if it will be the last time we say goodnight.

When she was a puppy she looked like a large cotton ball crossed with a mop. She would knock you sideways if she mistimed her stop in her rush to say hello. Now her bony legs struggle to climb our front stairs. She is thin but has lumps with their own centres of gravity.

Ageing is not a particularly dignified process. She eats standing on a yoga mat to keep her paws from sliding slowly out to the sides until her face plants into her water bowl.

So much of the time spent raising dogs involves saying no, setting boundaries. With an old dog, the script reverses. Life is all about yes. A handful of cheddar crackers on top of her lunch because it helps the medicine go down. A spoonful of peanut butter just because.

If she nudges my elbow while I’m working, I don’t shoo her away. I pause my writing to scratch her so well that her wasted back legs give out. I’m flattered that she’s asked.

On our many daily walks, we plod along so slowly that I see things about the street where I grew up that I never noticed before. I was always in a rush. I never used to let her linger. She has demanded a slowdown at exactly the moment I least wanted but probably most needed it.

I am also secretly grateful for this long goodbye. I was in London for the better part of the past four years. During that time, I said goodbye to both of my beloved grandmothers over FaceTime calls. I wasn’t there to give them hugs or tell them how much I needed them. I didn’t get to care for them at the end.

But I know the way our old goldendoodle’s bones feel in my arms as I carry her upstairs, see where the tumour is growing that will probably be the thing that finally takes her away.

Taking care of our old dog alone is about as unglamorous and opposite from my Sex and the City fantasy as I could have designed. But she is helping me learn to say all the goodbyes many of us were unable to this past year. She is helping me find my way back to my life here.

The tender, tedious rituals of her day — preparing her food and her medicine, the head-to-paw rubdown first thing in the morning to celebrate another day — help me find meaning in mine.

Madison Darbyshire is an FT US investment reporter

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