A friend wrote to me today saying, "I miss window shopping." And she's right. All the things I miss the most are the free things-- public things.Wandering into shops, holding a mug in my hand to feel the fit and putting it back. Drinking a sly bottle of wine with our feet dangling in the Washington Square Park fountain. Laying in grass. Seeing trees, any tree at all. That patch of grass on Governor's Island with the ramshackle porch and the view of my home. Leaning against the rail and feeling the salt spray on my face at the East River under the FDR, just two blocks from here. Sitting on park benches. My library. The ease of sitting on a grubby rug in a public library, leaning against a shelf with my book while my kid turns strangers into friends surrounded by shared toys (and thinking, "she's building immunities when she not-so-pretends to drink from a plastic tea cup), games, puzzles, tins of broken crayons and a pile of scrap paper.
All the reasons I live in New York City.
And so we wait.
And revel in hearing voices from behind every door in our apartment building while I take the garbage down.
easter sunday, 2020
reading: The Mother/Child Papers by Alicia Suskin Ostriker
-I'm not finished and have a lot of thoughts about it for later.
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