Getting Younger
Dear Diary:
I was running errands in Cobble Hill with my adult daughter, Anna, when we encountered a large group of 5-year-olds walking in a fragile, paper-doll chain.
We said hello to each adorable face, cheering them on as they did their best to stay attached to one another.
“Hold hands!” Anna yelled after them.
“Don’t let go!” I cautioned.
A few minutes later, a group of 3-year-olds toddled by, tethered by one of those belts that preschools use to prevent accidental strays and runners.
“Step aside for the people,” one teacher warned.
“Say, ‘Excuse me’ and ‘Thank you,’” instructed another.
They did, and Anna and I did, too.
Shortly after that, a parade of still tinier humans — this time in strollers — rolled by, powered by their caregivers.
We greeted each little face.
“The farther we walk, Mom, the younger they get,” Anna said.
I nodded.
As we approached Anna’s building, her upstairs neighbor bounded down the stoop with her newborn snuggled against her chest.
We burst out laughing.
— Jill Kampfe
Heart Stopping
Dear Diary:
He thought he saw me first. But the truth is we both saw each other at the same time.
It was 8:30 a.m. at East 53rd Street and Second Avenue. He was in his Jeep waiting for the light to change.
I was ready to cross the street, but something made me turn, and I saw him staring at me.
His strong, handsome face and salt-and-pepper hair and mustache took my breath away. My heart stopped. He said later that his heart had stopped when he saw me, and that he knew I would be his.
Then the light changed, and we both moved on.
Ten hours later, he walked into my place of work, and, amazingly, we were face to face. Our lives changed forever at that moment.
Now it is 50 years later, and we still have those moments when we gaze at each other, and our hearts stop again.
— Rose Ross
In Sheepshead Bay
Dear Diary:
I sit next to him at the counter at Lundy’s as he scarfs down raw oysters and clams with a zeal beyond my comprehension. They are smelly, slimy and, temporarily, alive.
I drink my water and watch. It is just part of the all-too-regular trip to Aunt Jenny’s to pump out her perennially wet basement.
The rickety wooden house is along the water in Sheepshead Bay and deceptively close to Manhattan Beach’s brick estates. The fishing boats come in loaded with lobster in midafternoon. Uncle Frank’s boat is in the flotilla.
“Go pick up a couple on your way home,” Aunt Jenny shouts to him. “And get me some eels.”
He brings the eels back and dumps them in her half-filled bathtub. I cannot look, nor can I look away.
“Grab me one,” she yells.
I slip back into the kitchen empty-handed. She laughs, grabs an eel, chops it up while it is still alive and tends to the pieces as they jump in the frying pan.
The musty smell of eel cooking and wet walls follows me to the old blue Henry J parked on the tight street.
I sit in the back seat with my sister next to the brown bag rattling with live lobsters with corks on their claws, as they, too, try to escape.
We are going home.
— JoAnna DeCamp
Swipe and Scrape
Dear Diary:
I went to a nail salon in the West Village on a balmy spring evening. It had good reviews on TikTok, so I had decided to check it out.
The nail technician used an electric nail file that made a whirring sound to remove my existing manicure. Unfortunately, the gel polish on my middle finger’s nail had started to peel, leaving it half stuck and half separated. The electric file wouldn’t work.
When I pointed this out, the technician reached into a side drawer. I saw an unmistakable flash of yellow, black and blue as she pulled out a MetroCard.
She slid the card between my nail and the peeling gel manicure. She gently pressed the card forward, trying to further separate the polish from my nail.
Our eyes met, and I couldn’t help but smile.
After employing this technique for a minute, she took out a pair of nail clippers and cut the lifted polish off with a swift snip.
I walked out with a cute pink manicure.
— Jennifer Suzukawa-Tseng
Doesn’t Add Up
Dear Diary:
When I was a graduate student in the city years ago, some friends and I ended up at Ratner’s deli late one night.
Noticing a decadent cake in the bakery case, I asked the waiter about it.
“It’s a seven-layer cake, half chocolate and half vanilla,” he said.
Confounded by the math, I quipped: “How many chocolate layers and how many vanilla?”
“What am I?” he said. “A mathematician?”
— Allan Berkowitz
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee
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