I Just Bought That

9:08am. 

Great. 

Running late again. 

Hopefully the train won’t be too crowded. 

It’s raining? 

Awesome.

Do I have my umbrella? 

Nope. 

Shit.

Forgot to get cash from the bodega last night. 

The bodega on the corner by the subway has an ATM and sells umbrellas. 

Do I really want to pay rainy day bodega umbrella prices? 

Do I have a choice?

The answer to both is no.

Seriously?

You’re going to cut in front of me to steal a seat when you see I have a cane? 

Asshole. 

The joys of commuting on the New York City subway. 

Not nearly as glamorous as it looks on Seinfeld or one of those other shows set in New York.

The seat thief leaves their earbuds in and doesn’t look up even though I am standing right in front of them. 

I feel a fart brewing. 

Side effect of early morning coffee. 

I manage to turn around and aim my butt at the offending seat occupier and let it rip. 

Oh yeah, I had Thai food last night. 

The seat thief inhales deep and yells profanities and invokes variations of deity names.  

Twenty-five minutes and a sore knee later I’m at my stop. 

I navigate the crowd up the stairs to street level and try to stay under as many awnings as possible. 

For the first time since the last time it rained there is a line in the bodega. 

Bodega cat winds between everyone’s legs leaving dander and cat hair in his wake.

I grab an umbrella, a Hal’s seltzer, and a pack of smokes. 

$43.50 later I’m on my way.

Since I’m already late and paid luxury prices for a $4 umbrella I need a coffee. 

My cart guy ran out of Anthora cups a few days ago and hasn’t gotten more yet. 

I blame that on my no good, very bad, rainy, wet day. 

There’s something about those blue and white Greek style coffee cups that I find comforting. 

No rhyme or reason to it.

I just do.

Balancing a dangerously hot cup of coffee, my new umbrella, and trying to light a cigarette is as much of a workout as I will get for the foreseeable future.

Lean into it.

Take a sip, take a drag, wait.

Four steps across the street and a massive wind gust hits.

I hear a snap. 

I feel rain on my head. 

My rainy-day-price-bodega-umbrella is now in two pieces. 

The handle, which I am holding, and the top part that is supposed to keep me dry is skipping through traffic. 

I just bought that. 

Now it’s gone.

Aritfacts Lost and Found

Over a year after leaving New York I still find little artifacts from what now feels like another life completely foreign to the present day. The other night I was loading the dishwasher and grabbed a detergent pod from its package and noticed the price tag said Downtown Natural Market, the local-owned store we went to in Jackson Heights. 

Immediately I thought back to when we discovered it and were so happy that there was a good, non-chain, grocery store that had a good selection of organic food so close to our apartment. We were in there constantly - usually because I wanted to make a dish and needed just one ingredient. We’d go in with Joni and with the best intentions of getting just that one ingredient and an hour and $75 later we were headed home. 

I remember they had the chemical-free and natural products that we wanted - including the dishwasher pods. Fifteen months after we left Queens I used the last one. If I had been thinking I would have kept the price tag to stick in my notebook. A small artifact from a different time. A good time. 

We had a great apartment in a great building and were loving being new parents to the best Tiny Human ever! 

Everything has changed in the last 15 to 18 months. We went from an apartment in a pre-war building in New York to a mid-century 3 bedroom house with a yard just outside Detroit. 

We still have the greatest Tiny Human ever and we still have a dishwasher and I just got more pods. I don’t know when I’ll discover these next artifact from the Before Times but I’m sure there will be another since we still have a few boxes to unpack. 

Author’s note

I posted something written in a similar manner a while ago. This isn’t super polished or edited or workshopped and isn’t meant to be. I usually end up recording these memories in the notes app on my phone as I’m trying to fall asleep so I get the main points down and then fill in the rest. There’s something cathartic about writing about this time in this way. In March and April of 2020 everything was happening so fast we didn’t have time to process what was happening. We only had time to react and implement what would keep us all as safe as possible. We’re all still safe and happy and healthy so we must have done something right. 

Another reason writing these memories has taken me so long to post is that it’s taken this long to process what happened. We look back with the benefit of hindsight and can see how a couple different decisions or choices at any point could have resulted in a vastly different story and not necessarily a happier one. We’re happy and healthy and believe that we’re where we belong.