‘He Took Something From His Bag and Dropped to One Knee’

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The Red Balloon

Dear Diary:

In slow motion, I saw it: a young boy holding a red balloon at the corner of 59th Street and Columbus on a sunny morning, and a woman beside him, holding the boy’s hand and a phone.

People on their way to a nearby grocery store and drugstore navigated between cars, cyclists and delivery trucks as the boy, squinting at the balloon, focused on it and not on his grip as the round red bubble slipped from his hand and began a lazy climb upward.

Walking by him, at the moment of escape, I saw, briefly, his eyes, as they melted from awareness to confusion to terror to grief. I saw him pull the woman’s hand, pointing upward, wondering if perhaps it was not too late.

There were no cars turning onto 59th. As she ended her call, she shook her head once and guided him across the avenue, undeterred by the gasps, then growing wails, then sobs.

It was all expressed in a gentle toddler warble but spoke so powerfully of loss, that my heart paused, just for a moment, as I continued on, watching the balloon get lost among apartment buildings, and the boy and woman get lost behind the delivery trucks on that busy morning.

— Laurie Ann Gruhn

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Conservatory Garden

Dear Diary:

It was a beautiful April day, and I hoped to find tulips in full bloom at Conservatory Garden in Central Park.

Only the yellow ones obliged, but in front of them and all the green stalks stood a tall young woman in a floor-length, lemon-colored dress. She was posing with a young man who had set up his smartphone on the ground to take a picture of them together.

I asked if they wanted me to take the photo. I took several and was about to leave when the young man asked me to take one more. He took something from his bag and dropped to one knee.

As he proposed and gave the young woman the ring, I snapped away with moistening eyes.

— Kathleen Brady

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The Glow

Dear Diary:

On an unseasonably warm Brooklyn night, I was on my way to meet friends when I stumbled upon a glowing, heavy, orb-like glass sculpture on the sidewalk.

Something about it pulled at me. I scooped it up and carried it onto the train.

It moved with me through bars and parks and city blocks, unveiling itself as an invitation for connection. It passed tenderly from hand to hand, stranger to stranger, each of us sharing the weight and the moment.

On the way home that evening, I stood on the subway platform buzzing from the interactions the sculpture had touched off and with a renewed love for the city.

A handsome man gesturing toward the unusual item I was holding motivated me to remove my earbuds and fall into an easy, flirty rhythm as we fell onto the G train together, until his stop pulled him away.

Arriving home, I chastised myself for letting the moment close. With the residue of the evening’s magic still on my skin and feeling a swaggering confidence, I posted a missed connection on Craigslist.

The next morning, there it was: a note from orb man.

“I think it’s more of a nest shape, but we can argue about it when we see each other,” he wrote, the words levitating up and out of my phone.

We met again two days later. I left the orb at home.

— Billie Hirsch

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Huge Piece

Dear Diary:

I was at the West Fourth Street station waiting for a train. A man laboriously trundled what appeared to be an enormous and elaborately wrapped piece of furniture the length of the platform until he stopped next to me.

As he plonked the huge piece down, wiping sweat from his brow, all kinds of things went through my head. But I realized that even for a jaded native New Yorker like me, this might be a first: a guy dragging his sofa down to the subway.

As soon as he started to unwrap it with great ceremony, I realized I had been mistaken. It was an upright piano.

He made an even greater production of positioning it just so, producing a stool from somewhere and folding his packing material away neatly. He then held his hands high above the keyboard in anticipation of playing what I expected would be a ponderous chord.

But no sooner had he completed these elaborate preparations than the unmistakable warble of a saxophone came pealing from somewhere across the tracks.

He and I heaved a huge sigh in unison the moment we recognized the melody: “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”

There was nothing more to be said.

— Deborah Frost

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7 for $1

Dear Diary:

I stopped at a fruit cart on my way into my Midtown office. The dates were seven for $1. A bargain!

“Seven dates, please,” I said to the vendor.