They say it takes seven years to become a New Yorker. And though I’ve only been here for five and a half, I am now, officially speaking at least, a good step closer. As of last week, I no longer have a California drivers license, and am instead awaiting the mailed arrival of my first New York license.

Granted, this a step most people take within the mandated thirty days of arriving in a new state. But I’ve been lazy. Without a car, I’ve had no need to hit the local DMV, and California allowed renewal of my expired prior license by mail.

Of course, I’ve thought about getting a New York license before. In fact, shortly after I moved here, when September 11th hit and I was living a half block from the UN, I took to carrying my telephone bill in my pocket so police officers would let me through UN barricades and back to my own apartment. And it occurred to me then that I should probably make the license switch to something bearing my actual address.

So, in September 2001, I printed the requisite forms out online, and put them in a folder atop my desk. Where, I am ashamed to say, they sat for the five years since. Sat despite the desk itself having been twice moved to new apartments.

Perhaps the delay has been psychological, symptom of my conflicted feelings about abandoning my West Coast roots. Give up a California I.D., and, at least in some small way, give up my tie to California.

I don’t know if I believe that less now, or if I just feel a bit more ready to declare allegiance to this city. But, for whatever reason, at the end of last week, something snapped. Enough seemed enough. I picked up the folder, headed to the DMV License Express, sat, sat, sat, sat, had a bad picture taken, filled out some forms, only winced slightly when they stapled my yielded California license to those forms, and walked out the door with a bona-fide, verified NYS Department of Motor Vehicles Interim License (as the piece of folded paper proudly proclaims).

New York, New York. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, indeed.