The small things will stay with me the most.
[Although, this said, their longevity in the memory at once makes these events into something more and of deeper significance, compelling me to write about them before any other travel stories.]
How I would internally call the crossing light the ‘green man’ as I do in Australia once it turned to walk, even though the signal man there was white. How a toddler’s tantrum as it reverberates around an underground platform is full of the same indignant, hot language that can be found anywhere.
Where a full moon, as you fly above the clouds or from the ground, stands out and appears to glow just for you, even amidst the city lights, in one of the most powerful cities in the world.
We walked; we used the subway. They say New Yorkers are thin because they walk everywhere, and I can believe it. My spirit responded to the body’s call for service to make it to our various destinations throughout Manhattan. I didn’t sleep well, but didn’t need to – instead, I’ve come home to fall asleep on the couch at dinner time. Riley last night wrote me out a prescription to ‘rest’ and so I shall.
But the walking, that’s what I want to keep up. This morning I marshalled the kids up to the front door to walk to school, and want to sustain this momentum for as long as possible.
Above all, there was the look on my son’s face when he saw me for the first time after returning, when I picked him up from school. How can such delight be described? The goofy, unshakeable grin; blinking fast, as if checking I was an apparition that might vanish again as quickly. Or how my daughter, first out of class when she’s usually the last, came up to me to throw her arms around my waist and didn’t let go. Their hair a little longer, height perhaps a little taller (or so I imagine): they’d changed in those tiny, barely recognisable ways that make the passage of time so unbearable to some.
Yes they’ve changed.
But so have I.
More to come…
