my neighborhood is breaking my heart

you stood beside me near the onions. at 5'2" to my 5'10" i felt like it was my duty to take the one at the top of the bin to your right and let you take from the ones in the front. you seemed so small in your navy blue,knee-length polyester skirt, taupe orthopedic stockings, tightly laced black shoes with just the slightest heel, bolstering you up just one more precious inch. that inch matters to you, just like inches matter to me, but you wish for more and i wish for less. it is because of the 8 inches i towered over you that i saw the top of your head, adorned with a silk scarf tied under your chin, just as my grandma mary wore hers. you reminded me of her, a tiny woman with slightly fogged spectacles and perfectly applied lipstick.

i watched as you inched into the market to count change from your clasped coin purse to pay for your root vegetables on this blustery may day. and i watched as a man, probably not much older than me brushed past you, rendering you invisible, and knocking your onion to the ground. i had chosen my apples and walked inside just in time to witness this man with ridiculous glasses, a hooded sweatshirt with a script-like print screened obnoxiously on every surface, and jeans that were much too tight go on his self-absorbed way with four bananas in a plastic bag.

maybe i was paying too much attention to the people in our neighborhood today. for you see, my greek, new york version of my grandma mary, i received some bittersweet news. we are trading in these beloved tree and flower-lined streets, with their immaculate family homes, front yard gardens, friendly faces, and decades of tradition for new and unchartered waters. we are trading it in for a space of our own, a sun-drenched, fourth floor walk-up apartment with 'brehm/sundberg' on the buzzer and the mailbox. we did not want to leave our peaceful astoria haven for the wilds of bushwick and the disaffection of the l train. but, gentrification gave us no choice.

for you see, my greek, new york version of my grandma mary, you are lucky that miklos purchased your house on 35th street after the war, so that you would always have a place to call home. but, we are being pushed out. probably by the same type of person who pushed you out of his way over a bag of bananas and somewhere to go that must have been very important. i walked the familiar path home with you in my thoughts and i wondered about what makes a home? is it people or places? because astoria has been such a good neighborhood home, but our physical home has left much to be desired with its bad plumbing, bad lighting, and constant interruptions. now that we are leaving, heading to a place with boarded up windows as our neighbors and an incessant basketball game at the plaza masquerading as a park outside of our windows, i feel a gnawing in my stomach as i think of leaving for something that is at once so much more, but at the same time so much less.

and i thought of you, my greek, new york grandma mary and how you must feel to have wrestled with being pushed out of so many spaces in your life, and so, i opened the door for you patiently as we left, and let you go on your own.

so you think i'm a worthless flounderer

there is a man who sometimes lives under the metro north rail before you get to my train stop. i say 'sometimes' because he does not live there in the winter, or when it rains really hard, or in the evening. he lives there during the brightest and warmest spring, summer, and fall days. actually, most days i think i am wrong to even say that he lives there because i saw him sitting on a stoop across the street once, and i have also seen him on the train talking on a cell phone.

this man confuses me with his shopping cart full of oddities like blankets, musty, yellowed paperback books, and cigarette butts. the creaky old wooden palette crate he perches his folding green and white woven lawn chair upon is like a throne, and his tattered baseball cap with a grizzled ponytail snaking down the middle of his neck creates a sense of someone who chooses to exist on the fringe of 'normalcy'. i have often seen him engaging passersby in idle chatter, but i have also seen several people perched at his feet like disciples, listening with rapture as he smokes and speaks.

who is this man? why have i never spoken to him? who am i to assume he is/was/chooses to be partially/fully homeless? maybe he was once a great poet, historian, painter, scientist, mathematician, father, or activist. where does he spend his days without the overpass and stranger-friends? does he comb the streets for treasures, or continue to make modest, or valiant, attempts to integrate into the world that passes by? for after all, this is new york, and everything is always just passing by. maybe he just wanted to stop living this life, without ceasing to exist. perhaps this life would not let him live. why did he choose to stay?

i think about this man and the barrage of questions he raises to me as i sit lost on the n train. i think about the assumptions we make about other people and how hard they are trying. how hard it is to keep trying - all of the work we do that goes unnoticed, masked by a final product, or by no product at all. i think about this man and i wonder who he depends on, who he needs, what he needs, what i need, and how wrong i am to assume anything at all about where he lives or does not live, what he does or does not do, how he tries or does not try.

i think that the next time we meet i will talk with him, and i will tell him i am sorry for the judgments i have made over this past year. and i will tell him it is admirable that he still tries, despite all of it.

my street was on fire and my dog died

you are an old man on your old bike. your face has seen so many years, with its creases and excess skin, its yellowed teeth ever-so-slightly emerging from the cave of your mouth, which one day i noticed had a crumble of food lodged in its deep, dimpled crevice a long forgotten remnant of your morning biscotti. you can eat this biscotti now with your egg and pancetta because she is not there to tell you about your heart. now, you are in the business of telling people about your heart. you tell the polyestered men escaping their endlessly aging wives at the italian-american club, where you sit for two hours every afternoon, idly passing the day, idly passing through conversations, drifting in and out of words, memories, and lives.

you do this before you get on your bike. you tell pete and silvio about your heart before you ease one leg over its low, curved seat and hoist yourself onto the pedals. you tell them what the doctor said before you put out your cigarette, don your cap and cardigan and deliberately force your legs to move one before the other, slowly, but with ease and assurance on the pedals of your rusty old bicycle.

now you tell me about your heart. you tell me how it hurts that she is gone and how her love was what kept you going all of these years. now, it is that oxidized chain that moves you through life. the doctor asked your sophie what kept you going on your steady diet of cholesterol and cigarettes. and she said, 'love.' but now that she is gone, what will it be when you can't get on this bike anymore? when one day they call your son, nick, and he has to come pick you up off the floor of your car-less garage where you have fallen, trying to get back on your bike just one more time?

you tell me all of these things with your eyes when i see you coast past the sunnyside print and wallpaper company underneath the train tracks. and for that minute, it does not seem to matter that there was an explosion today on thirty seventh street, or in baghdad, or that there is no money in my bank account and i have no way of finding my way. because as you drift past the chipping paint with that biscotti on your lip, your eyes meet mine, and they tell me that your heart will be ok, because we are pedaling through this life on love.