Over the course of the Christmas week, New York City---its body, its sky, its shores and waters, its tunnels and shiny silver surfaces and settled, darkened windows---the creature that is New York City---had a separate agenda from the festivities of us humans. It was distracted by a force greater than itself. Yes, like a benign, monstrous shape in its own process of transformation, or purification, or metamorphosis.
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One morning, a taxi driver who hailed from West Africa took us down Park Avenue to Grand Central Station. All around us, taxis were spinning and whirling to get up the hill that we had hardly noticed as a hill. The sun was shining and the taxis were stuck, the taxi drivers were practically crying with frustration, and people were helping and having a good time slipping around and feeling the wilderness, as they tried to push the taxis up the hill.
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The snow is soon tended to, the taxis on the streets shush gently along. The winds are fierce, and the snow left along the edges of sidewalks is black or yellow, and too hard to jump in. The kids try anyway and are disappointed, but now we must rush across an avenue---Quickly! Quickly!! I said hold my hand! quickly! hurry, love, please!----and suddenly, burdened with two school bags, pictures that must not be crumpled, gloves that DO. NOT. WORK., whah, I'm tired. I'm hungry whah. I want to take a taxi but we don't have the money for taxis, whah. Everyone is whah. The subway is packed and no one likes my stroller hitting their calves. And Haakon tries to get up now... Please sit Haakon please... Is this 77th? Excuse us! get out quickly guys! Hurry! Yes I'm coming hurry! excuse us thank you excuse us thank you thank you thank you blah....
Steep narrow stairs lead up to 77th Street and so we begin to ascend. With the kids dragging themselves ahead of me, and me dragging the stroller behind me, I suddenly feel a weight lift. A woman has---without asking---picked up the stroller and lifted it so high that my burden is practically gone. "It's like an angel has come!" I say to her. "Yes," she says. Her accent is heavily Japanese. "I am angel!" she is matter-of-fact. She puts the stroller on the sidewalk and turns away flitting off in the opposite direction. It is, I promise you, as if she alighted, and then departed.
*
And what would you like for Christmas? asked Santa.
A metal detector, replied the five-year-old girl with the pink bow in her blond, curled hair; the delicate dress and matching sweater she had chosen so carefully that morning.
Santa, startled for a moment, pulled back and had a real----real---jolly laugh. The elves went into hysterics. Liv started laughing too. The mother of the family waiting in line behind us burst out, which made her kids laugh, and their laughter send a spark back down the line like some sort of fire of joy. Everyone was delighted! I felt my face break into a real smile, it felt strange! And how I loved my girl for her truth and clarity! We had all been cruising through the Santaland experience with our pretend awe, and our pretend ooohs, and our pretend Isn't it Magical children? And the elves had been all jumpy! jumpy! hurry along! And suddenly everyone burst out in real laughter. Real joy. We were no longer being rushed. We were no longer pretending. We were just: hysterically laughing.
*
The days turned warmer, the snow and sky were gentle----a perfect moment, balanced. We made a snowman in the park about the size of a three-year-old boy. He had pennies for eyes, and he borrowed Haakon's Santa hat, and let me tell you this: many tourists came up and politely asked if they could take a picture, sometimes with the builders, sometimes just of the snowman, sometimes of themselves posing. The children were perplexed, like, Why would you want to take a photo of this dumb little snowman? But ok.
We were on a small hill next to the 66th street by-pass. Across from the road is the children's petting zoo, capped with flowing, tent-like nets that kept all sorts of birds, both plain and exotic, from flying away, and now they had began to squawk. The outside crows were cawing too, and pigeons were lifting up when a gorgeous, white, bold hawk swooped down from the nearest tree, made his presence known, then sailed back up and rested on a branch. I've seen this hawk before, but never alone---usually there are a few admirers gawking around him.
He stayed with us for sometime. Are you bringing me a message, hawk? Are you a sign of something to come? It's hard not to love a force of such sheer beautiful powerful nature descending down in the middle of the smoky, roaring city. It's hard not to feel it is a blessing.
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"Christmas is a time to hear again the message of the angels as they announce God's love born among us at Bethlehem," wrote the Rector of the church we attend. I learned something of God's love this year, and I am sure that it still---after all theses many yeas---resides among us. I'd say God's love is in the all Golden Things that glitter the world around us---the spinning taxis, the stranger's help, the child's words, the hawks descent. But it's also in the divorce that brings pain; the poor decisions that bring loneliness; the illness that brings death. God's love is the core of everything. It's the core of every effervescent, fleeting, painful, and beautiful thing----
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On Christmas Day, it threatened rain all day. The city was silent, silent. It was gloomy and dark, but comforting inside with the tree and the presents and the nothing-to-do but play! (Liv did not get the metal detector, though Santa mentioned in his note that the elves were working on it for next year, and she was fine that that.) In the late afternoon, just as the rain began, Liv and went for a walk. We walked all the way to the MET and back. She stomped through many puddles. We were holding hands, singing different songs---songs we didn't know the words of. We made them up. We walked and walked all along Fifth Avenue in the dark and in the rain. It was beautiful, beautiful.
Image and art by Margaret, Words by Emilie
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