Bryant Park

Excerpt from a piece I am working on.

Just outside of the hotel was this small deli.  It was one of those places in New York that endears you to the city.  Look down, and you’ll miss it.  I grabbed a coffee and a Cuban sandwich, and walk up 46^th to 5^th St.  I continued walking until I got to Bryant park.  It was mid morning on a Wednesday, so there were multiple open tables next to the lawn.  I sat down and placed my sandwich on the table.  I wasn’t quite hungry, and wondered why I even bought the thing. 

It was overcast, and rain threatened to fall.  I started people watching, but I mostly sat and stared at the library sipping my coffee.  The chilly morning air turned the coffee a perfect temperature.  I blew off a veteran who came by asking for change.  One of the things the people of the city have taught me is that if you don’t make eye contact, people will just as soon leave you alone.  I watched people �" people much like myself �" sitting alone at the metal tables and chairs in the park.  Each one was engrossed in either a smart phone or tablet.  I watched couples and friends sit and talk, ignoring the drizzle that had started to fall.  I sat there holding nothing but a quickly cooling cup of coffee and a sandwich that I had no intention of eating.  I clutched the sandwich and looked around for the homeless veteran, but couldn’t find him anywhere.

I sat alone, thinking about Elizabeth �" standing over her body, looking into her casket.  I thought about how gracious her mother was, standing there, greeting people.  Tears welled in my eyes when I recalled the moment our eyes met.  I knew she was moved by my presence.  Liz had been a dear friend, and was so young.  I needed to see for myself that she was gone.  It was the only way I would have believed it.  And here I sat, still trying to understand how someone so young, so vibrant could so suddenly pass to eternity.  Nostalgia overwhelmed me.  I remembered riding bikes through Lincoln Park, Liz part of the group of us.  I reminisced about the times we played horse in my parents’ driveway and hung out at the local twisty cone shop. 

My thoughts soon returned to Liz’s mom.  That look on her face.  It was gratitude.  I could not understand it. I could not understand how she found neither the strength nor the grace to show gratitude to everyone that came.  It overwhelmed me, and when I embraced her, I broke.  I shattered, becoming an incongruous mess in this poor woman’s arms.  This poor woman who had endured more turmoil in the last seventy-two hours than I have in my entire life was comforting me.  There I was, succumbing to the moment the way an eggshell succumbs to precisely located pressure.  I replayed all of this, sitting in the park. 

My thoughts returned to Elizabeth and what she left behind �" her husband, her daughter.  I realized that through all of my recollection I was evading the root of what was bothering me.  Liz dying forced me to take a hard look at my life.  I began questioning everything that I’d done up to this point.  What was I doing with my life?  How was I treating the people in my life?  When I knelt in front of Liz and clasped her lifeless hand, it hit me that I would never have gone back to see her had she still been alive, and this troubled me.  I had tried so hard to distance my life from my past.  I had been so successful at it that I had completely sacrificed all of the people that had helped shape me along the way.  Seeing her lying there changed my life. 

My mind started to race, and I started to panic.  I needed to know my purpose.  I thought of my family and wondered where I fit in.  Am I just a cog in this great machine, or am I someone far more important?  Am I in a symbiotic relationship with humankind?  Or worse, am I a parasite?

Not even the caffeine was keeping me from feeling exhausted, so I stood and stretched.  I needed to escape the thoughts swirling in my head.  I needed to talk to someone.  I started walking back toward the hotel.  I looked at all of the faces.  The tourists are as easy to place as the New Yorkers.  I take particular care in examining the faces of the women.  I can’t help but notice the lack of softness on the faces of the women who live in the city.  I think about how hard the city tries to break you, because it does.  And then I saw her.

There was a break in the foot traffic between 6^th and 7^th, and as I scanned the faces, there she was, waiting for me to look her way, and she was smiling.