New York on pause, end of Week 5:
This Friday evening, closing in on the end of another long day of remote working and learning and squabbling, Eli sat on the couch next to me tinkering with some Legos. For no good reason, I set my laptop aside and laid my head in his lap. After a moment he put his Legos down and started to stroke my head, just like I did when he was a baby.
When Eli was small, old enough to understand that he was growing bigger but not quite sure how it all worked, he thought that as he grew older, I was growing younger. He thought that one day we would meet at the same age and then we would switch places. He would say things like, "When I'm a grown-up and you're a baby..." and "When I take care of you..."
Just because I'm ostensibly the adult in this crisis doesn't mean I know how to handle it any better than Eli does. After all, both of us have lived through exactly one unprecedented public health crisis in our lifetimes.
Every night at 7 p.m., we open up our windows to clap and clang our pots and pans. It's really less of a gesture of appreciation for our essential workers than a fleeting moment of connection with our neighbors and fellow New Yorkers. Are you out there? We are in here. I think it makes us all feel a little less alone.
For the past few weeks, someone across the street has been blasting Sinatra's "New York, New York" out their window during the clap. Tonight, when it was over, I returned to my laptop in the living room with a glass of wine when I heard softer music wafting across Queens Boulevard. I got up and returned to the kitchen window, straining to hear the encore.
It was Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water":
When evening falls so hard,
I will comfort you
I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
This is hard. It may be the hardest thing I've ever lived through. I hope that it is.
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