In 1985 I was brand-new to Manhattan, and wowed by every bit of it—from Battery Park’s harbor views and the Midtown skyline all the way to the medieval gardens of The Cloisters on the northern tip of the island.

To this hick from a one-light town, my new urban life felt unlikely in the extreme, almost fictional. One early winter day, running to catch a train at Penn Station with a leather bag trailing from my shoulder, I stopped on the sidewalk and laughed out loud: I am running to catch a train in New York City, with a leather bag trailing off my shoulder.

My first Christmas in the city was especially exotic—a glittering spectacle light-years from all that I had known in my hometown. Human-scale wooden soldiers and twelve-foot-tall snowmen came to life at FAO Schwartz. Giant, non-denominational snowflakes swung over Fifth Avenue. Diamond-studded ornaments and gold-plated “gingerbread” houses gleamed in the windows of Cartier and Saks.

I lived near Lincoln Center then, a five-minute walk from Central Park and 30 stories above the streets. The windows faced north toward the George Washington Bridge, a graceful span strung in twinkling blue lights that shone above the Hudson River like earth-bound stars.

At Rockefeller Center, where I worked, an 80-foot Norway spruce was done up in thousands of red bows and silver bells. Skaters whirled around an outdoor ice rink like extras on a movie set.

As the least-senior person in my office, I was scheduled to work the holiday. So on Christmas Eve I stared into a computer terminal editing copy for the Associated Press—my first Christmas away from home.

Back home, I knew, the holiday would be what it had always been: a crowded, slightly manic, wisecracking family reunion. The air would be full of noisy talk and laughter and smells of evergreen, baked ham and scalloped potatoes. A slew of young nephews and nieces would be ripping open packages.

Did I make a three-minute phone call home that night during my lunch break? Maybe, but I honestly don’t recall. The rest of that Christmas Eve, though, is etched in my memory.

After pressing the “SEND” button on the latest NORAD update tracking Santa’s progress around the world, and giving up my desk to whoever was working the overnight shift, I walked out of the AP building into what in New York City would pass for a silent night.

The streets were nearly empty. A trace of snow had fallen, blanketing the dirty sidewalks with pure white fluff. A few yellow taxis rolled past during the 15-minute walk north to my place. But no sirens wailed. Nobody honked.

Walking up Broadway, I imagined the scene at my family’s place. It was past 11, when the crowd would be thinning, but the party not quite over. I thought of calling from a payphone, but didn’t. I was tired and ready for the night to end.

But at Columbus Circle, a few blocks south of my place, the prospect of unlocking the steel door on an empty apartment suddenly lost its appeal. So I did what you can always do in New York City when you don’t know what else to do–I walked. First I headed down Central Park South, then looped around The Pond, then north through the Sheep Meadow and along the west side of The Lake to Strawberry Field. Finally I decided to head home.

There was no traffic at 72nd Street and Central Park West, but I stood at the curb while the signal went from red to green, twice. A few snowflakes tumbled in the halo of a streetlamp. For a long moment—and for the first time in my 30 years on the planet—I felt the absence of my family at Christmas. The city night suddenly seemed like deep space—infinitely empty, utterly indifferent. It was a kind of weightlessness, an unmooring.

The feeling clung to me as I crossed the avenue and walked through a brownstone neighborhood toward home. Wreaths hung from heavy oak doors. Christmas lights and menorah candles glowed in windows.

On 71st Street I stopped in front of an old stone Catholic church. Inside, voices were raised in song. Outside, I scrolled through dim memories of midnight mass in my altar-boy days, and the earliest Christmas gatherings of my childhood.  Though it felt decidedly unsophisticated and nakedly sentimental, I let the tears come. There was nobody there to see.