Day 138----

We left the apartment directly after breakfast, trying to beat the heat of the day--I don't think it cooled off at all overnight. Even sounds were muffled by the haze of heat.

A small tote filled with film to be developed, a pink book of poetry (too hot to pause long enough to read), water bottle for bambi, hand sanitizer (it's the stinky one, dammit), one popsicle mold to return to the coffee shop round the block (we were testing their new recipe), cash for the cash only photo lab on Elizabeth and Hester, keys, phone... I forgot alcohol wipes for the swings.

I pick up my birth control from Gigi at the corner chemist--the socially distanced line got complicated by the very elderly man who needed to sit on the bench but was next in line so the rest of us bunched up in the back till one lady entered, took it in and skipped us all. But in the end Gigi knew what everyone needed/everyone just shouted their order from the barrier in Chinese and she just brought me my birth control without my even asking.

Every time I leave the city and return I'm first teary with relief then awkward with how much I've missed. Even just six days-- homelessness has visibly increased since before we left. It's shocking and it's not at all.

I took bambi to Hester playground for the first time since March (longer even maybe? it's very cold there in the winter) and it has less non touching options than Seward Park has so I've avoided it but it was always our favorite. The diorama of the city for matchbox cars that she'd giddily packed three cars for in her baggie wasn't shaded by the time we got there and it was impossible to play on. I let her swing for a bit since they were the only things shaded at the time. It was so hot the hand sanitizer evaporates before I can fully coat my hands.

She is the only child in the entire playground. Every shaded bench is full of elderly and homeless people. They are mostly silent to preserve energy, reading papers, drinking (hot always) coffee and tea from the pink paper cups from the bakery on Grand St. Some are showering and dabbing their foreheads in the sprinklers periodically. The sprinklers and the shade trees are the only cooling centers the city can offer this summer with libraries and rec centers closed.

A couple ballroom dance to the beat of a boombox in a nearby handball court, the pace of their movements incongruously fast compared to everyone else. They only manage three songs before they load their boombox into a tote bag and leave.

She offers no protest when I say we have to head home, climbing right into the stroller, pulls her mask down briefly for a gulp of water and puts it right back on.

As we climb the stairs back at home (my eyes blacking out, waves of nausea--we definitely stayed out too long and how are those elderly people ever surviving???), she holds my hand and walks up the first flight herself, carefully avoiding touching the shared railings. "The white things on the stairs look like moons, Mama." I reply--vaguely--I cannot see anything resembling a moon and she can tell. She firmly pauses (I hate this, I badly need the momentum, the shared stairs are perhaps the most important place to wear a mask and the most searing), turns and points to a perfect tiny half moon imprint in the slate of the stairs, as if someone dropped a half moon hard. We were home by 11am.

The moon tonight is also a half moon.