‘The Voice, It Turned Out, Belonged to a Small, Older Woman’

Supermoon

Dear Diary:

I was walking down a street on the Upper East Side one fall weeknight, lost in some personal problem, when I heard a voice shout: “Stop!”

The voice, it turned out, belonged to a small, older woman in a maroon coat.

“Back up and look up,” she said.

I did as I was told.

The several steps back I took brought me out from under an awning so that suddenly I could see the moon, big and brilliant, hanging over the street. I hadn’t noticed just how bright a night it was.

“It’s a supermoon,” the woman said. “I heard about it on the radio. NPR. I just had to come out and see it.”

“And,” she continued, pointing the pint container in her hand heavenward, “why wouldn’t I get myself some ice cream, too?”

“It’s wonderful,” I said, and we stood right there, listening to the happy clatter from a nearby Italian restaurant and admiring the supermoon together.

— Sarah Skinner

Celebrating on the 2

Dear Diary:

I was on an empty, Manhattan-bound 2 train from Grand Army Plaza. A big, bearded man with a Kith bag got on at Atlantic Terminal.

Soon, I heard a pop that sounded like a Champagne bottle being opened.

Indeed it was.

The bearded man, who was dressed in work clothes, proceeded to pour the bubbly into a plastic cup.

“What are we celebrating?” I asked.

“I got a promotion,” he said.

“Congratulations!” I said.

He smiled, raised his cup in a toast and took a sip as the train rattled its way under the East River.

— Beth Aviv

Fire Escapade

Dear Diary:

A man who appears to be in his 40s throws open a third-story window at the corner of Bowery and Grand Street and climbs onto the fire escape.

He lowers the ladder, the rusty metal clanking is it descends, and climbs down quickly.

There is a hole cut into the awning of the bakery on the first floor. I watch the man pass directly though the letter B and then carefully drop the final few feet to the street.

He looks around, dusts off his hands and jogs away.

A second later, someone else pokes their head outside, looks around and then closes the window.

— Anthony Baker

Mornings With Mom

Dear Diary:

Our mom, Deborah, died in 2011. She was a New Yorker.

After 14 years, upon my leaving the military, my sister and I finally had the time to go through her stuff. Plus, I am studying law at Columbia now, which means we can visit the storage unit in Bedford-Stuyvesant once a week.

We call it Mornings with Mom. It’s not cheap to keep the unit, so the goal is to empty it out as quickly as possible. But our progress is delayed by nostalgia and curiosity.

It’s hard to simply save our mom’s journals. We get caught up in reading the entries aloud to each other. We reminisce over what we remember: family photographs, clothes our mom loved to wear that still smell like her closet, and other trinkets.

We find some gems we never knew existed: Mom’s application to law school, newspaper clippings she saved that are still relevant today, some truly fabulous shoes.

We reread our favorite children’s books and vow to read them to our cousins’ children. We save the M.R.I. scans of the masses in her breasts, though we are not sure why.

We find names of her friends in a Filofax from the 1980s. Some still live in New York. I call one of the numbers.

“This is Deborah Edelman’s daughter,” I say. “She passed away in 2011, but my sister and I found your contact. Do you remember her? If so, would you like to meet?”

We meet for drinks, swap stories and become friends.

This summer, box by box, my sister and I are working our way through the collection. When we finish going through enough for the day, we call it quits and get a drink.

— Julie Roland

Nice Place

Dear Diary:

When I lived in Park Slope over 20 years ago, I once had to call an ambulance because of a sudden, violent case of food poisoning.

Two paramedics, a man and a woman, entered our third-floor walk-up with a portable chair. Strapping me in, the male medic quickly inserted an IV line into my arm.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his partner circling around and admiring the apartment.

“Nice place you’ve got here.” she said. “Do you own it?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, all but unconscious.

Once I was in the ambulance, she returned to her line of inquiry.

“Do you mind me asking how much you paid for your apartment?”

“$155,000,” I croaked.

“Wow! You must have bought during the recession.”

“Yeah” I said.

They dropped me off at Methodist Hospital, where I was tended to by a nurse as I struggled to stay lucid.

At some point, the same medic poked her head into the room with one last question:

“You wouldn’t be wanting to sell any time soon, would you?”

— Melinda DeRocker