Northern Lights
Dear Diary:
The northern lights, or aurora borealis, were visible from New York City, and I missed them. A potentially once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, and I was dead asleep in my Lower East Side apartment.
On the way to a hike in a state park outside the city the following Saturday, the 15-seat van was full. We chatted about how Kali had met his wife at a TED Talk, whether Trevor Noah was a sellout and what our dating deal breakers were.
Genesis said she wouldn’t date someone who didn’t celebrate their birthday properly.
“How you celebrate your own birthday is how you’ll celebrate mine,” she explained.
Shante agreed but said that her ideal partner would celebrate other holidays properly, too.
We talked about our love-hate relationships with voice notes. Genesis loved them. Shante didn’t even listen to them. My father had just sent me a 17-minute one that I listened to twice.
Just before we got to the park, Kali mentioned the northern lights. I confessed how much regret I had been feeling for not seeing them.
I was hoping everyone would say they weren’t that great — barely indistinguishable from the lights of the Empire State Building or Freedom Tower — and that I hadn’t missed much.
Don’t worry, Shante said. She had been outside looking up that night and hadn’t seen them.
I asked if there had been too much light pollution from the city’s buildings.
No, she said. She had been looking in the wrong direction.
— Benje Williams
Exceeding Expectations
Dear Diary:
It was my first autumn stroll in Central Park after getting divorced. I was reminiscing about my baby boy’s first time there in 1997. As I walked, I came upon a good-looking couple with a stroller at the edge of the lake.
The mother asked if I would take a photo of them.
“It’s our baby boy’s first time in Central Park,” the father said proudly.
We did an impromptu photo shoot, strangers bonding over a common goal.
“I hope they came out OK,” I said, handing the phone back.
“Yes, definitely,” the boy’s mother said. “This so exceeded my expectations.”
As I walked away, I began to relive my own experience as a new mother of an infant son, swaddled by feelings of high expectations, first times, new beginnings.
The leaves were starting to turn but still had a way to go before the colors reached their peak. They were not yet exceeding expectations, and I intended to be there when they did.
— Linda Coleman
Instrumental
Dear Diary:
After a long Saturday teaching lessons at Manhattan School of Music, I rushed down to Penn Station to catch an Amtrak train home at the last minute.
It was full to bursting as I got on.
“Is that a viola?” a red-capped conductor asked.
I was impressed.
Yes, I said. The instrument I was carrying on my back was indeed a viola.
“I’m a bassoonist,” he said. “We have two Juilliard grads working this train.”
— Sheila Browne
More or Less
Dear Diary:
It was 1994, and I was living in the East Village. On my way home one day, I stopped at the Second Avenue Deli.
After waiting in line for a few minutes, I stepped up to the counter.
“One pound of chopped liver, please,” I said.
The counterman waved his hands dismissively as if batting the idea away.
“No, no, no,” he said. “That’s not the way to do it here. What I’ll do is I’ll make you a chopped liver sandwich, and that way you get more than a pound of chopped liver.”
“Otherwise,” he added, “I gotta charge you more for less. Makes no sense!”
“Oh, thank you,” I said. “But really, I just want a pound, and I’d like to get it in a plastic container.”
Before I finished speaking, though, he had unspooled a long sheet of white deli paper and loaded a thick slice of marble rye with a softball-size dollop of creamy, fresh chopped liver redolent of sweet garlic and raw onion.
When my request finally registered with him, he stopped and fixed me with a long, disappointed stare.
“Look,” he said, “what’s the problem? I make you a nice chopped liver sandwich, you take the sandwich home, you unwrap the sandwich, you throw away the bread! What’s the problem?”
I conceded that it sounded like an excellent course of action.
— John Berlind
Deep Question
Dear Diary:
I was shopping for a Christmas tree on Second Avenue and 20th Street. As I approached the line of trees, I noticed two huts nearby.
One was clearly marked “SoHo Trees.” The other one was unmarked, and there was a man standing in front of it with bags of basil.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you connected to the trees?”
“Spiritually?” he replied.
— Amy Morrison
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