‘We Would Take the Bus to Her Home on East 37th Street After School’

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East 37th Street

Dear Diary:

Janet became my best friend in fall 1968. We met in fifth grade at the St. Vincent Ferrer school on East 65th Street. She was a transfer student from a school in Murray Hill that was closing because of low enrollment.

We were both only children. My mother worked outside the home. Janet’s mother did not. So we would take the bus to her home on East 37th Street after school.

It was a magical place for me: a first-floor garden apartment where we could play outside and in Janet’s beautiful bedroom. It felt like a real home.

As we grew up, Janet was on track to become an actress. I vividly recall the day her father took us to a shoot for “The Godfather,” in which Janet had a part.

Janet died of leukemia a few months later, and over the years her friends, including me, made a point of walking by East 37th Street whenever we were in the area.

Fast forward to 2022. I had lived in different parts of New York City over the years and most recently at my mother’s home in Connecticut. I sold the house after my mother died and was able to rent in the city once again

I looked at many apartments, until one day a certain East 37th Street address came up on my computer. I was shown an amazing, newly renovated, light-filled apartment on the fourth floor in the front of the building.

I had to interview with the apartment’s owner. He listened quietly as I explained my connection to the building. I expected to leave and hear his decision at a later date. That is not what happened.

“Welcome home,” he said immediately.

— Dayna Gerring

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Forget Sardines

Dear Diary:

I was waiting for the Lexington Avenue express at Fulton Street on an extremely hot day. When it finally whooshed into the station, I was relieved to escape the broiling platform and squeeze onto a crowded train for my evening commute to Grand Central.

The air conditioning was on, but with riders packed together so tightly, it wasn’t doing much good.

The car was completely silent and felt pressure-cooker tense as the train made its way uptown. Then I heard a passenger call out to a friend.

“Is this how it feels to be a lasagna?” he said.

— Meredith Mundy

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City Island Summer

Dear Diary:

City Island glistened as a friend and I met for lunch on a summer Saturday before the evening crowd flooded in. I ordered shrimp, she ordered fish and we got some of the same soul food sides we had enjoyed last summer.

Three hours later, after we had caught up on a year’s worth of living, the sun was still shining brightly and the sail boats on Eastchester Bay were still bobbing to their own beat.

“Look,” my friend said, pointing toward the line of dinnertime drivers navigating their way onto the island as we crossed the bridge and headed home.

“We have to do this more often,” I said, wishing we had stopped for a piña colada to go.

Next time.

— Pamela Horitani

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Flying

Dear Diary:

There is a dim sum place in Chinatown where my family goes whenever my Chinese grandmother comes to visit. It’s small, often crowded and always filled with incessant chatter.

One day last April, my grandmother, my mother and I shared a round table there with an older man and his home care aide. They had almost finished their meal, and we were getting ready to order.

The man was talkative and cheerful, chatting with my grandmother and mother in rapid-fire Chinese. I couldn’t understand any of it, but my mother was laughing.

My grandmother ordered a dish the man had recommended: white fish with vegetables.

“He says it’s delicious — his favorite,” my mother explained.

When the man was about to leave, he showed us a picture on his phone. It showed him standing in a park, surrounded by pigeons. He was smiling with unfiltered delight.

Standing there in the restaurant, he flapped his arms, laughed and said something in Chinese to my mother. She nodded, we said our goodbyes and the aide helped him out of his seat.

“What did he say about the picture?” I asked my mother after they left.

“He said that he likes the birds,” my mother said. Our fish arrived, and she put some on my plate. “He said they make him feel like he can fly, too.”

— Emma Savonije

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Unfazed

Dear Diary:

I was holding onto a pole on a crowded 1 train when it stopped abruptly between stations.

Caught by surprise, I completely lost my balance and landed on the lap of an older man who was wearing a three-piece suit and had an unlit cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth.

Embarrassed, I jumped up and apologized profusely.

The man was unfazed.

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said, and returned to reading his newspaper.

— Tara Greenway

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Illustrations by Agnes Lee