One day the bird just stopped flying up and kicking at the
window. That he gave up his workout routine just as my dad returned from
Florida did me no favors in the credibility department but fortunately I am
lazy and the swath of smudges left everywhere by the bird’s dumb little feet
were still in full view, lending more credence to my claims. Plus, I have
video. A lot of video.
It’s bird central up here, which is kind of heaven for me.
There’s a piliated woodpecker who comes around and bangs his face into things
on the regular. I’ve seen a belted kingfisher—his HEAD!—and there is a
(several?) Great Blue Heron who stalks around majestically. One day the (a?)
heron landed on a nearby dock with a foot-long pickerel in his beak and I
almost broke my neck running for my phone to document that one. When I showed
the pictures to my dad, he said, Oh, yeah, he’s a good fisher and then went
back to reading the paper, I can never tell when he’s going to pretend he
doesn’t believe me.
Have you ever seen a belted kingfisher? I went to high school with a guy named Zack who was on the swim team and the soccer team and used a lot of product in his hair (it was the 90s)—a belted kingfisher is the bird embodiment of high school Zack.
(Also, the Great Blue Heron grows his own washcloth and
if you have an hour or three I cannot recommend allaboutbirds.org highly
enough.)
It’s been two months since I left the city. After six weeks
and one day I gave John a giant hug and released him into the arms of his
friend Karen, who literally thanked me for taking care of him when I dropped
him off, John is perfectly capable of taking care of himself (I think) but he
does inspire a certain motherly instinct. He’s off on a tour de friends, spreading
his sunshine around, and now I make the coffee myself. My dad and his partner say
they are glad to have me stay on and no one has complained about the little
factory I have downstairs, fabric everywhere and pieces of thread following me
around. I have my workstation set up where I can look out on the lake all day
and I feel a terrible guilt, a throbbing dullness, for how entirely not awful things
have been.
A duck has laid nine eggs in a feathery little nest deep in
a thriving bank of hostas alongside the house and one day I was trying to get
the neighbor to peek at the nest. The duck’s not there, I kept saying, not
that plant, the one to the right, and just as this nice, friendly neighbor
peeled back the correct hosta, guess what it turns out the duck WAS there and
holy shit out a duck erupting into your face from eight inches away is only
funny when it’s not your face.
A couple of weeks later we had terrible/wonderful thunderstorms
all night and the next morning I went to check on the nest.
My father came downstairs a little while later and when I heard him, I yelled from the bathroom: “Dad, I need your help!”
“Okay,” he said, and while I don’t know exactly what he was
expecting it probably wasn’t me hunched over in the darkness, a flashlight in
one hand and a duck egg clutched in the other.
After much fruitless flashlight-peering at the egg and
consultation with the internet, my father finally convinced me to put the egg
back in the nest. I think I should have kept it and incubated it myself, but I
was overruled. I am also aware that by handling the egg at this stage (the duck
has been nesting for at least three weeks) if the chick wasn’t dead already it
probably is now, which is not an awesome feeling but at the same time…well,
while the internet blithely promised I probably had everything I needed just
lying around the house, we do not actually have any Styrofoam coolers, so I’m
back to setting up my lawn chair where I can stare at the hostas and wait for
something else to happen.
I’m talking to a moving company about packing up my
apartment and moving everything into a storage facility. I’ve lived in New York
City for almost fifteen years and the thought of not living there used to be unimaginable
but that New York, the one I dreamed of and then finally got to
experience—well, it’s gone, isn’t it? Or at least on hold?
Everyone has their own version of NYC; mine involves a lot
of bars and other places where people gather in tremendous, pressing crowds—the
D train to/from Yankee Stadium, the chattering glow of the lobby of Avery
Fisher Hall, the snaking lines for the ladies room at intermission, choose a
Broadway theater and I can guarantee there are no more than five stalls in the
bathroom did women not go to the toilets when these things were built?
I love to stop in at the pizza counters where you literally
rub elbows with your neighbors, jostling up against a construction worker or a
dude in a suit as the pizza man shouts Next! Next! and you tip
your chin up and say Yeah, gimme two of the plain, and even as he slings
your slices in the oven he’s shouting again, Next! Who’s next! and he
might sound angry but he’s not, he’s just got a job to do and an endless line
of gaping maws to shovel pizza into. Or, at least, he did.
I know NYC will be back, everything will eventually be back
somehow and there will be a “new normal.” I don’t want to not live in New York.
I want to make plans to meet friends for drinks, I want to score seats at a crowded
bar and order a Manhattan or a gin martini, up with a twist, and sip it while I
wait for Gabi or Kristen to walk in, sunglasses still on, dripping with tote
bags, a huge hug and an approving nod that I have a corner spot for us, a cozy
nook where we can trade stories and roll our eyes at the bros in their
Patagonia vests as they shout at each other and order more Miller lights. I
want to text Jeannette, “Two blocks away!” even though it’s really three, we’re
always meeting for dinner at places where everything on the menu sounds
horrible but is always delicious, just order the cauliflower with capers and
walnuts, don’t think, just do it. I want to cram into the tiny doughnut shop
with John, impatiently waiting for the tourists in front of us to decide on the
one doughnut they want, those fools, we order 10, then take our boxes north to
the park. I want to do that thing where we slip through the knot of people
waiting obediently on the corner and press into the street, don’t watch the
light, watch the cars, cross as soon as you get a chance we’re not in a hurry
at all but we can’t just stand around waiting. I want to go to the library on
42nd Street, I want to dodge the Mickey Mouses and Spidermen and the
dance crews on my way there. I want to say “Hold on, sirens,” then mute my
phone while an ambulance or a police car fights through traffic for an
agonizingly long time, the person on the other end of the line going “Hello?
Are you there?” until I can unmute and shout though the noise, “Yeah, I’m here,
hold on,” and dodge down a side street, through the smoke of the Nuts 4 Nuts
cart and around some homeless dude’s set up and into the relative quiet. I want
to linger at the top of the stairs at the 50th Street station and
listen for the buzzer that tells me the E train is coming first, I want to go
through the turnstiles and have the illuminated sign confidently inform me that
two downtown 1 trains are arriving in two minutes, a feat that should be impossible
but who knows with the MTA.
But it’s like I’ve stumbled on a hole in the fence, like somebody
snipped snipped the wires and now there’s just enough room to wiggle through. I
could wait around until somebody else comes by and fixes it, or I could duck
down and check out what’s on the other side. There’s so much I haven’t seen, so
many things I haven’t done, places I haven’t been, and I can’t help myself: I’ve
got to keep moving. I’m not waiting for what used to be to come around again.
My dad took me down to the city to get my bike. We planned
the trip carefully, minimizing exposure through deliberate dehydration and
stopping only at the garage where there are no people. It took one trip to
empty my little cubby out, then one more to bring the bike down and we were off.
The George Washington Bridge has a startlingly
picture-perfect view of the city, one I always thrilled to each time I crossed
over the Hudson on my way home. This time I had it just in glimpses over my
shoulder as I headed west, stealing quick looks, just catching snatches of the
skyline before turning north and riding away.
Comments
Post a Comment