October Sky

When the alarm rang, I had slept for mere hours. Outside my window was only blackness, the building was still sleeping. I snuck through quiet streets to the subway, and on the train, the few passengers were scattered across the seats. Workers. The city took on the air of a small community, and people dared whisper good morning into the quiet stillness. I walked back, toward the water, and saw the dark, looming buildings of Manhattan slowly light up. Satmar Williamsburg asleep, I pulled out borrowed keys and tip-toed into the pasta factory.

Amid the unwrapping of gifts and eating of surprise breakfast-in-bed, the sun rose over Brooklyn, and through giant windows, it warmed the loft, the people in it. We rode the rush hour train to Union Square together, sardines in a can, everyone rushing, everyone in their own bubble because this is Manhattan and we all enjoy the show. I had errands near Wall Street, comfortably dressed amid a thousand suits. Just beyond the glass buildings run the oldest streets in New York, crooked, dirty from hundreds of years of traffic, narrow. By now the morning sun stood high; I decided to walk home.

Suits and business gave way to tourists and Broadway. I turned a corner and found myself on Tribeca cobblestones, quiet residential streets where hip, hard-working families had all gone away for the day. Stuck at lights, I stared into the sun, and soon enough I was back in my West Village, in the part of New York that is most like home.

Darkness gives way to light. In just one morning, I walked through so many different worlds, in just this small part of my city. Later that night, in a cab leaving Grand Central cocktails, we agreed that a Manhattan cab ride is still magic, everytime.

She asked me if I feared the dark as much as I used to, if I trembled at the thought of winter with the first turning leaf and the anticipation of what is to come. I had to think about it for a while, the answer not immediately clear.

No, I said finally. Not since I moved here.