Before I moved to New York, five years ago, I was already a control freak. Despite being married, I hadn’t quite given up on my single lifestyle, with its minimal fridge contents and maximum me-time. I ate sensibly, drank sensibly and exercised a lot. I wrote religiously for four hours every morning. My four-year-old twin boys were asleep in their cots before the Channel 4 News. Mess-free, stress-free was my mantra.
When my husband got a job as the BBC North American business correspondent — meaning we were moving to Manhattan for three years — a candid friend, Sophie, declared: “You’re well suited to New York. I can see you fitting in there.” Eight weeks later, I found myself in a steamy, empty brownstone two blocks from Central Park, in the heart of the Upper West Side.
The reality was more complex than even I might have imagined. While British control freaks like me furtively hide behind a burka of self-deprecation and secrecy, our New York stepsisters publicly advertise every sordid element of their freakery, joyfully and at every opportunity. It didn’t take two days for me to realise I might just have met my match. A woman knocked on our door at 10pm. She didn’t introduce herself, though we assumed she was a neighbour. She announced: “I’ve just been going through your garbage.” Surely no civilised human being could admit to that? Oh, yeah. She continued unabated: “You have mixed some plastic in with metal. Plastic is Wednesdays in the white bags.” Then she left. How hilarious. All part of the rich reality of our new spot on Google Earth.
I still thought that in Sarabeth’s, a trendy brunch place, when one loud woman to my left shrieked: “It was super-delish. The best gluten-free mock seitan duck ever.” Her friend, not to be outdone, trumped her: “Personally, I place far more importance on the fact that they stick to the 100-mile diet [no produce served is grown further than 100 miles away].”
It took only a few weeks before I realised that I was outmanoeuvred. I was being pretty true to my breed — out buying new trainers in a specialist running shop — but I was usurped by a control freak on the rampage. “You gotta have some shoes that’ll work,” she yelled at the resigned assistant as she tossed yet another shoe that had failed to fit over the plastic brace clamping her torn tendon in place. “I mean, how am I supposed to run?”
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In Britain, CF mothers pitifully overpack wee Oscar and Esme’s diary with afterschool clubs and a friend too many for tea. How tame, I quickly discovered. I was urged by the head of my four-year-old twins’ preschool to attend a $350 one-day workshop, Overscheduling or Underscheduling — The Great Social Challenge Facing Parents Today.
I didn’t sign up to beat this parental challenge. I rebelled. Most afternoons, I was to be found in Central Park, digging for worms with my sons. Out in all weathers, despite the risk of strep throat — almost as great as the threat of underscheduling.
One woman refused to shake anybody’s hand because she had no Purell sanitiser There is nothing worse for the New York control freak than the unpredictability of childhood, which must be managed at all costs. The private medical profession understands this only too well. A friend of mine was immediately offered an appointment with a cranial plastic surgeon to cover her daughter’s 1cm playground gash.
The bestselling book A Mind at a Time by Mel Levine is subtitled: America’s Top Learning Expert Shows How Every Child Can Succeed. Inside, the chapter titles are lurid yet compelling — Are Some Kids Too Successful Socially? When a Mind Falls Behind...
An overbooked child therapist who works on my block explains this phenomenon. “They are used to paying for services — so they employ someone to iron out the things about their kids they don’t like.” Many children’s laminated timetables include an array of therapists. As one friend of a friend told me: “My daughter is just great, unlike my son. I mean, she’s only having a little therapy for her pencil grip and co-ordination on the monkey bars.”
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Even the little headaches of family life have to be controlled. Head lice? An in-depth search with a Nitty Gritty Comb is unimaginable. There are a multitude of successful lice-eradicating agencies, results and confidentiality 100% guaranteed.
Germs? Please don’t get a New York control freak started. One woman I met at a party refused to shake anybody’s hand because she had no Purell sanitiser. In New York, to Purell is a verb. Play dates are a battleground. Is it okay for your kid to touch their kid’s toys? Hard to know when they are whipping out the sanitiser and wiping down any “contaminated” toy.
So did New York exaggerate my controlling characteristics? Superficially, yes. I ran four miles a day and ate oatmeal at any meal before midday. Of course, the speedy 24-hour services suited my CF tendencies. I could go to yoga, have a manicure, meet a friend for a glass of wine and another for dinner, all in one night.
Yet the manic craziness broke even me in the end. Perhaps it was the day when the skinny blonde yelled at me for running round the reservoir in Central Park the wrong way. Or maybe it was when I watched Lycra-clad obsessives training in the snow, clinging to the railings as their feet slid over endless icy patches.
Actually, it was probably the day I found a Betsey Johnson suede and fur gilet in Loehmann’s, the bargain-hunters’ haunt on Seventh Avenue. It was $59, down from $195. I had it loosely tucked over one arm, ready to buy — a gratifying moment, if brief. “That’s mine,” a woman said, as her arm whipped out and lifted the jacket. “Excuse me?” Yes I know, feeble and pathetic. How British. And she was gone. I just stood there, deflated, beaten by an aristocrat of my breed.
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When my British expat friend Ellie emerged off the escalator, I explained the theft. She stared at me incredulously. “For God’s sake, why didn’t you snatch it back?”
I have returned to London tamed by New York. I no longer think that the stress is in the mess. I know that there is so much more to be fought over, every inch of existence to be controlled. And I am certainly not up to that challenge.
Exiled by Shireen Jilla (Quartet Books £12) is out now