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A helping hand on Broadway, sneakers hanging on a wire and more reader tales of New York City in this week’s Metropolitan Diary.
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Teamwork
Dear Diary:
Overjoyed at seeing a fantastic play on Broadway, I exited the crowded theater and headed for the curb.
As I stood there waiting for my husband to pick me up, I felt a gentle tug on my sleeve.
I turned to see a small, older woman standing next to me and smiling.
“Are you crossing the street?” she asked. “Will you take me with you?”
“Oh, no,” I said, laughing. “You don’t want me to help you. I am legally blind!”
She replied that she could see but was terribly afraid of falling. If I held onto her as we crossed so she should get her bus, she would watch the traffic for both of us.
I hesitated but agreed, and clinging to each other, we crossed the street successfully.
My husband drove up and was surprised to see me on the other side.
— Linda Cahill
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High-Tops Hanging
Dear Diary:
Strung from pole to pole,
wires gleam at dawn
like necklaces of gold,
and one that’s stretched
across the street bears
a pair of sneakers hung
by its shoestrings twined
as one, flung up there
in such a way that someone seems
to be stepping up stairs
to a realm — perhaps of dreams —
that’s set beyond the sun.
— Tom Furlong
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St. Patrick’s Day, ’78
Dear Diary:
It was St. Patrick’s Day in 1978. After returning from a party in Brooklyn thoroughly inebriated, I had settled into a deep sleep in the duplex condo on West 10th Street where I was living at the time.
I was awakened by a phone call. The woman on the other end explained that my roommate, Joe, had arranged for her to stay overnight at our apartment. Her name was Matilda.
Fifteen minutes later she rang our bell. When she climbed the four flights to the condo’s first floor, I couldn’t open the door from the inside. I directed her to the upstairs entrance and then to an empty bedroom on the apartment’s second floor.
“You can sleep there,” I told her.
The next day, I returned home after working a rare Saturday and spent the day with her. We watched “Saturday Night Live” together that night.
On Sunday, I took her on the Circle Line and to the Statue of Liberty. Later, we had dinner near Columbus Circle, where she had a hotel room for one night paid for by the company she was to interview at Monday morning.
It was love at first sight for me, and we began a long-distance romance, going back and forth between New York City and her home in St. Louis.
By October we were married, and we later settled in Charlotte, N.C., staying together for 45 years together until her death last October.
— James Chase
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Near the Hudson
Dear Diary:
It was an unseasonably warm winter evening, the first night of the Year of the Dragon, and I was down near the Hudson River. I had just learned that a recorded family tree might exist on my family’s long-lost Chinese side.
I sat down with my dog to consider the news, watching broken branches float downstream. She sniffed at a saline-soaked rope tied to what appeared to be an oyster cage. Overhead, the West Side Highway hummed.
A flock of sea gulls scattered, then landed, their talons gripping abandoned wooden posts jutting out above the river’s surface near the remnants of the 69th Street Transfer Bridge.
I saw a man who was facing northwest. He was full of energy: laughing, jumping, waving his arms. I could tell he was on a FaceTime with a child who at that moment must have been right across the river in New Jersey.
The child must have been young and not yet so aware of the concept of distance or perception.
“Can you see me?” I heard the man ask. “Can you see me?”
He laughed and kept on waving.
“I know where you’re at,” he said. “I can’t see you, but I know where you’re at.”
— Kirsten S. Chen
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The Bus Driver
Dear Diary:
I was eight and a half months pregnant. My feet were swollen and I had two big shopping bags in either hand as I waited for the M98 bus to Washington Heights.
The temperature was in the 90s, and it was rush hour. One bus that stopped was so packed it wasn’t taking any passengers.
Fifteen minutes passed before another packed bus arrived. This time I got on.
A man was sitting in a seat reserved for older and disabled people.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the driver said. “You’re going to have to get up. I have a pregnant lady coming onboard.”
The man got up, and I sat down near the driver. We started talking, and I mentioned that I was going to have a girl.
“I have two little girls myself,” he said. “Saturday night, I paint their nails. Hot pink’s the color we like.”
— Beba Shamash
Illustrations by Agnes Lee