✨You Take the Man(hattan) Out the City, not the City Out the Man(hattan)✨

Just trust me, you'll be fine...

Happy Cocktail Friday!

I’m trying a little something different today, and this year. I’ll be bringing my Friday Cocktails from Story, Sip, and Song to Substack!

If you’re new to Story, Sip and Song, maybe start here. If you’re used to seeing these on Instagram, I explained a bit about that here. In short, I’m trying to not be beholden to the constraints of Instagram. I just like this space better. It feels safer, cozier, less…loud. This is not the bar of my twenties. This is where we go to actually have a conversation. Tell stories. I just love the way music can inspire both story, and cocktail art. If you love a reel, I’m still posting on the gram. I like the videos I create. But the words, the stories, the connections, they’ll live here. I hope you’ll pull up a seat, and maybe invite a friend!

Now onto the story, sip, and song of the week…

Sometime shortly after the new year, my aunt Trish sent me this song. “Thought of you” she said. I would soon learn why.

The artist is Djo, otherwise known as Joe Kerry, otherwise known as Steve from Stranger Things. Lucky for us, this music from first play gives the exact 80s synthesizer notes you might expect from Steve of Stranger Things. Immediately I was transported. There’s something about that show and the characters in it that give me nostalgia. It reminds me of my younger self, fighting my own monsters, finding my own power. I tell you this because it’s important for you to understand this nostalgic place in which my mind was living as the lyrics carried on.

Enter, Troubadour. Remember 24?

You probably don’t know what those words mean. I didn’t. But something felt specific about them, the way that Taylor Swift will sing about a teal shirt in a yogurt shop. It reminded me of this quote by Taffy Brodesser-Akner from a recent episode of The Daily Podcast speaking on the art of Taylor’s music. “The more detail you give, the more I will find myself in it.”

I wanted to find myself in this song.

As it turns out, before Joe was Steve, he began his acting career as a performer, or troubadour, at college in Chicago. The first episode of Stranger Things aired when he was 24. A beginning, or rather two beginnings, because we know what Semiconic taught us. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings End.”

There it is, then—two beginnings. I found myself in it.

I remember 24. That’s the year I started my first job as a Developmental Therapist, in Chicago. For the next 7 years, I would grow and learn how to support young children and their families. That was my troubador. A beginning.

And when I'm back in Chicago, I feel it

Another version of me, I was in it

I wave goodbye to the end of beginning

I’ve been thinking of my beginning in Chicago ever since we returned last summer. You probably know this. I write about it a lot. Everything about being back here reminds me of who I was in the Before Times. A different version of me. One that was just beginning to understand who I was and who I wanted to become. But starting a job wasn’t my only beginning in Chicago.

Enter Caroline.

The words came through my headphones and I nearly stopped breathing, choked immediately by tears. Now finding myself in this song was getting a whole lot more real.

Djo’s Caroline is a sister. My Caroline is my Caroline, my oldest, the one who made me who I am today, another version of me, I was indeed in it. Becoming a mother was an end to a beginning. In the spring of 2013, I left my work to stay home, to find a new version of me–a mom, a writer, a creative. It was a goodbye to a beginning, a goodbye I thought about all the time after that. Did I make the right choice? For ten years I wrestled with this question, among others.

Just trust me, you’ll be fine.

My goodness how many times do I wish I could go back to another version of me and whisper this, shout this.

But now I’m wondering if Caroline did, in her own way. Maybe her entrance into the world was a whisper not heard but felt. Trust me, she said. This new thing you’re about to go do, taking you out of the city that you know, the city where you began, the city that feels safe somehow, it will be scary. But you’ll be fine.

You take the man out of the city, not the city out the man.

And when you come back, you’ll learn maybe you are a new version of yourself, but also who you always were is still there. You’ll feel it.

The day after listening to that song was the first day of my new job as a Developmental Therapist. Once again I am saying goodbye to a beginning, and not because I have arrived to the highest achievement as a mother and a writer. Laughable. But maybe those parts of me are a little more formed than they once were. Maybe it’s time to say hello to another beginning. I’m back doing the things I once did at my start. But also its a new beginning in itself. The versions of me are all still there. You can’t take them out of me.

But maybe its okay to say goodbye to those other beginnings so I can welcome the next version of me. I’m ready.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

This cocktail is a bit of a goodbye to a beginning. It’s a Manhattan, familiar to many. But it’s another version of itself. Remember 24? When you could drink 4 Manhattans and feel nothing the next day? Well, that’s not me anymore. With this version you reverse the amounts of sweet vermouth to bourbon thus lowering the alcohol content. But don’t worry, you take the Man(hattan) out of the city (of hangover), not the city (of flavor) out of the Man(hattan.) Just trust me, make this and you’ll be fine.

✨You take the Manhattan out the City not the City out the Manhattan✨

2 oz. sweet vermouth*

1 oz. bourbon

Dash or two of favorite bitters

Orange peel and fancy cherry for garnish

Stir liquids with ice. Strain over fresh ice cube. Rub glass with orange peel and garnish.

*look forward to making your own version of this ingredient in the week’s ahead…