Remember being told to finish your homework before you can go play? When I moved to Jersey 28 years ago, it felt like homework—the unpleasant slog before the fun. It was where my husband and I would spend our working years saving for retirement, looking forward to the time we could go play—somewhere else.
As a New York kid, my image of the other side of the Hudson was of ticky-tacky houses and strip malls blanketed in foul fumes from oil refineries. I pitied the terminally uncool bridge-and-tunnel crowd who invaded the city on weekends, and snarkily warned anyone who lit up in my personal space to “smoke toward New Jersey.”
Years later, when my husband, a newly minted doctor, told me he was being courted by a Jersey hospital, I was appalled.
“Let’s just go see,” he wheedled. “They’ll put us up in a nice hotel for the weekend. What do we have to lose?”
The experience proved to be an eye-opener. Instead of tract housing and factories, we found an inviting town with wooded open spaces. Morristown didn’t fit my idea of Jersey at all. I decided I could tough it out for a while.
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But a funny thing happened on the way to my future: My feelings about the Garden State began to change. The more I saw, the more I liked.
Among my discoveries: Acres of cherry trees in Newark’s Branch Brook Park erupt in a pastel-pink riot each spring; Jersey City gives a hip vibe that rivals Brooklyn; Edison boasts global gustatory pleasures; Wawayanda State Park rewards hikers with breathtaking views; you can munch local blueberries while paddling the rusty waters of the Mullica River; Lambertville galleries house hidden treasures; beaches don’t get better than Cape May.
But my Garden State epiphany wasn’t just about locales; it was also about people. I learned that, while Jerseyans don’t suffer fools gladly, they have big hearts. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy drove that lesson home.
My daughter’s bat mitzvah was scheduled 10 days after the storm. The power was out, and we were about to cancel. But people who didn’t even know us donated heaters and generators; friends installed them in the synagogue. A nearby church that had electricity offered us space for evening services. The caterer prepped food outdoors to take advantage of daylight. That day, my Jersey community touched my heart.
Defying all expectations, I’ve come to love this state, now more than ever, when I need my family and friends to feel secure no matter how they look, whom they love, or where they’re from. I’m grateful that, with Jersey grit, Governor Mikie Sherrill and much of our congressional delegation are standing up to authoritarianism with concrete measures to protect the rights of all who live and visit here.
We’ve worked hard, raised kids, and, yes, paid a lot of taxes in New Jersey. At last, we’re near retirement, when it will be time to go play. Looks like we’ll be doing that in Jersey, too.
