A New York Summer

I’d really prefer to be writing this in a notebook, but figures the one time I’m inspired, I leave my note pad at home. Thank God for the wonders of technology. 

Summers in New York can test even the most dedicated heat lovers. Trash sizzles on sidewalks. Subways crowd with moist bodies and sweat sprinkled foreheads. Homeless turn street corners into bedrooms, park benches into beds. Cockroaches scurry down streets, beneath buildings, across bedroom floors, through kitchen cabinets. Summer in New York is a wonderful thing.

On an 89 degree Sunday afternoon in the first week of August, refuge can be found in Central Park. In a shady patch on the hill behind the Met, the temperature seems to drop 10 degrees. A hawk circles overhead. Squirrels scamper up the pine tree bark then down again to munch on Doritos scraps left behind by the French family picnicking. A jazz saxophone’s melody glides through the air from across the lawn, cooling the thick air with a smooth, low hum. 

On the opposite side of the patch under the pine, the sun beats down on New Yorkers who prefer to use the park as a beach. To them, the grass is sand and the whirr of engines on 5th Avenue are comparable to waves crashing in the Atlantic. Their attire is bikinis and swim trunks; a bronze tan their most beloved accessory. 

For the New Yorkers with no Hampton house, no extra vacation time, no ticket to the country or coast, there will always be the shady patch of grass on the lawn behind the Met. The beach with no ocean, the crash with no waves. Summer in New York is a wonderful thing.