Getting a Lift
Dear Diary:
I recently met a friend and his daughter for a drink on the Upper West Side. As my friend was walking me home, we came upon a group of young people — two men and three women — under some building scaffolding. The men were doing pull-ups almost effortlessly.
I rushed forward.
“Hey, I read that if you’re a certain age and weight you should be able to hang for a certain amount of time,” I said. I had just turned 80. “Can you lift me up?”
The men obliged. Once I started to hang, my friend pulled out his phone to get a picture.
The young women began to chant: “One 1,000, Two 1,000 …”
After about 20 seconds, I asked the guys to let me down. Once I was on the ground, I asked them how they had done it so easily.
“We are Alvin Ailey dancers,” they said.
— Meredith Bernstein
Praying Mantis
Dear Diary:
It was one of those humid July days that take everything out of you. I was walking along East 57th Street when I noticed a praying mantis on a dusty tree with battered bark.
I had only seen perhaps two or three mantises in my life, and I couldn’t fathom how this one had wound up on a tree on a busy Upper East Side street.
I saw an older woman walking down the block. She noticed me staring at the tree.
Was I OK? she asked.
“I am now,” I said.
— Paul Aaronson
A Brooklyn Ocean
Dear Diary:
I was forced out of my Carroll Gardens home so a developer could tear it down. As a divorced mother, where would I find a three-bedroom for my two teens and me at an affordable rent?
I searched high and low and ended up moving south to Sunset Park. I found a raw loft space, which I fixed up. (Yes, I invested my own money in a rental.)
The apartment was directly above a 24-hour sex shop and it had a view of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. I refused to open the windows and bought air purifiers.
Our first night there, I cried. What have I done? The noise from the B.Q.E., the constant shaking of the apartment — it all felt unbearable.
I was so depressed I wanted to leave the city altogether, but my kids were still in high school. I had no choice. I was trapped.
The next morning, I went for a long, anxious walk. I bumped into a barber who had been born and raised in the neighborhood, on Third Avenue.
I asked how he dealt with the noise and traffic.
He laughed.
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “It’s my ocean.”
The big trucks, he explained, were crashing waves; small cars, ripples; and the whirring engines, the steady flow of water. He told me he missed these sounds whenever he went to the country.
His perspective changed everything. The second night, I slept like a baby, with a sound machine accompanying the “waves” of nighttime traffic.
Two years later, my home is a haven for my kids and me, and I fall asleep each night to the soothing rhythm of a Brooklyn “ocean.”
— Mara Stephens
Gershwin Plays
Dear Diary:
I was an art history graduate student in the mid-1980s with an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval department.
At some point, I was assigned to accompany a staff member to an apartment in an old walk-up building that I think may have been in Greenwich Village. We were there to collect a painting or drawing that would be part of an exhibition unrelated to the medieval department.
A lovely older man welcomed us into a cozy apartment that was brimming with books, art, and personal treasures.
The talk turned to the man’s player piano, and he kindly pulled out original piano rolls of George Gershwin performing.
I was absolutely entranced as we listened to what was essentially Gershwin giving a performance in a warm, intimate setting.
I have completely forgotten what we were there to pick up but I have never forgotten the charming musical interlude.
— Leslie DiNella
Pork Chop Scar
Dear Diary:
I was standing on a packed subway train on my way into Manhattan when I overheard two women having a lively conversation.
“I just don’t eat pork anymore” the louder of the two said. “See here? Pork chop scar!”
“What do you mean?” the other woman asked, turning to get a look at her friend’s face.
“Right here,” the first woman said. “My right brow bone. See? Look closely!”
I couldn’t resist trying to get a peek myself as her friend leaned in for a closer inspection.
“Like how?” the second woman said in amazement.
“One day, when I was a teenager, I came home from school absolutely starving,” the first woman said, “and I peered over my mother’s shoulder as she was in the midst of seasoning some T-bone chops for the grill.”
She then recounted the exchange that followed:
“‘What’s for dinner tonight, Mom?’”
“‘Pork chops,’” she replied.”
“‘Oh no, not pork chops again!’”
“Thwack! Pork chop scar!”
— Jacqueline Rush Lee
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee
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