Saturday in Manhattan

It’s a thirty-minute drive to the Upper West Side most days, during off-hours. I left late because that seems to be the pattern these days, and my chatty neighbor Dan, whom I hadn’t seen in a month of Sundays, was walking to Temple and stopped to catch up. I cut him short, and I’m sure the rabbi was happy that Dan made it to shul on time.

I live a mile from the Hutchinson River Parkway and was futzing with trying to get my iPhone connected to my Subaru Crosstrek through CarPlay while the dashboard kept beeping at me because I was taking my eyes off the road. It’s been a problem since I bought the car.

I called my Aunt Lisa and told her that I would be in around 10 instead of the agreed-upon 9:30, and she was fine with it. I find that I worry about what other people think of my foibles much more than they do, but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t need meditation, so there is that.

My aunt and I had a date for brunch, weather permitting. She’s only eleven years older than I am. Since her recent hip replacement and issues with her knees following a fall, she uses a walker and, unlike members of the U.S. Postal Service, believes there are some atmospheric conditions that one shouldn’t brave.

I was about to say adding insult to injury, but that wouldn’t be fair because I did find a parking space on Riverside Drive. Unfortunately, it was at 110th Street, not nearly close enough for me to meet her at her front door, which was our custom. She lives on 114th Street between Riverside and Broadway, Columbia territory. So I called her again and asked her to meet me at the restaurant.

I made it up the hill, slightly out of breath and with a pain in my back every time I inhaled from a muscle that I didn’t know I’d pulled in yoga yesterday.

Second or third guessing myself, I waited in front of the restaurant for less than a few seconds before walking past it to meet her halfway. We made a handsome pair, she with her walker that has wheels and a seat, and me grimacing every few breaths.

My pain calmed down once we were seated in Le Monde, the French restaurant that has become our regular dining place. The hostess whisked her walker away, and we fit into our seats after taking off a few layers of clothing, it being the first truly cold morning of the fall.

I ordered a decaf cappuccino and orange juice, and Lisa stuck with water. I bragged that I hadn’t had caffeine or a drink of alcohol since the day my son, his wife, and I left for Europe in July. My son had insisted that even one glass of wine was too much with the buckets of medication I was taking, which included muscle relaxers and pain meds.

I realized halfway through my bragging that I had probably told her this on one of our previous get-togethers, but she just smiled and nodded at my masterful accomplishment.

When the waitress returned with my drinks, Lisa ordered a mushroom crêpe, and I ordered the Croque Monsieur, which sounded more like a lawn game than a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.

We exchanged updates on family, and Lisa showed me a picture of my great-niece Josie, whom I’ve yet to meet in person. She’s a Southern Belle, having been born in Atlanta. She was all dressed up, her hair had been done, and she looked beautiful.

Which brought us, somehow, to the topic of grandparenthood.

I began telling Lisa about her mother, my Bubbie, who had nursed Norma back to health after emergency surgery when we first lived together. I would come home from work to hear about their walks arm in arm in the rain and my grandmother saying, “Here’s a nice card,” when they played 500 Rummy. The woman who had raised me was now making chicken soup for my bride-to-be. Yes, I found myself in tears in the telling.

Aunt Lisa and I dined and laughed while she snuck French fries off my plate. She ended up taking my leftovers and her half a crêpe home with her. Although my scale doesn’t think so, I’m on a diet.

I paid the bill, which is unusual, as she usually claims it as the elder.

I walked her to the door of her apartment building, meeting one of her neighbors along the way. Someone held the door open for her, and we said our quick goodbyes.

I walked to the 110th Street subway station, expecting to be whisked to 96th Street by the 1 train, where I would transfer to the 2 or 3, get off at 14th Street, and amble over to the Whitney.

I toyed with the idea of stopping at the fortune-tellers who had predicted a long and healthy life for me and an introduction to romance but warned me not to accept introductions to anyone by someone whose name began with the letter M. Funny story, but for another time.

As I stood in the ancient subway station, a mumbled announcement came over the loudspeaker. Although I couldn’t understand it, I began to see people exiting and realized something was up. The next time the static-filled voice came on, I caught something about police activity and instructions to take the northbound 1, where we could catch a downtown train at the next express stop.

I ascended to the street and walked a block to a bus stop, thinking about my options.

I was sitting midway down the bus, in one of the low seats that line the aisle, not sitting in the elderly section up front as a point of defiance. What I hadn’t realized was that I was now occupying the stroller seating, which could be lifted to allow those just entering life to ride in comfort in their strollers, out of the way of the center passage.

I got up to move into the space in front of the doorway just as an elderly man with crutches got on board. He had a tall wire cart on wheels, stuffed to the brim with a black plastic bag.

I’m not sure how the conversation began, but he discovered that I was a writer and told me that he had hundreds of bestsellers in his head and wanted me to teach him how to get them out.

He was only going one block, and I explained the mysteries of writing to him.

Put your butt in the seat with pencil and paper in front of you and write.

In Yiddish, it’s called sitzfleisch. The ability to sit. The words will find their way out.

I helped my new friend and writing student off the bus by handing him his wheeled cart, feeling my lower back give the tiniest of protests, and then we were off again, local stop after local stop.

I got off in the 80s and decided that the Museum of Natural History might be a worthwhile destination.

I hadn’t been there since my bride and I had taken our sheltered godson from the insulation of his home in our little town of White Plains for his first visit to the cavernous halls of the museum.

As I approached, I saw hordes of parents with children in tow entering the museum and decided a walk across the park to the Met might serve more than a few purposes.

A new hobby of mine is acquiring museum memberships. I now hold four, and the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers was my first.

It began with my friend Geoff, whom I’ve known for decades. We met on Metro-North, introduced by mutual friends while sitting in one of those six-seaters. His wife, Lilly, was part of our commuting circle.

Geoff retired from an executive position at Madison Square Garden and formed a band that plays in local bars and restaurants.

When my bride passed away, I began following the band and ended up sitting with Lilly and their friends. I was introduced to a couple, the husband a lawyer and his wife, Marion, who worked at the Hudson River Museum.

Norma and I had loved to wander through museums in Manhattan but had never gone to this little museum set on a hill above the banks of the Hudson River, with a stunning view of the Palisades across the way.

I was impressed with the range of art displayed, from the staid, dark colors of the Hudson River School to the cartoonish, life-size installation by Red Grooms titled The Bookstore.

As I left the museum, I purchased my first membership and have been on a roll ever since. I am now a member of the Met, MoMA, and the Whitney in addition to the Hudson River Museum.

Each of my membership cards is safely tucked into my iPhone wallet, which I display as I walk past the throngs of tourists.

The thing that brought all this to mind was that, as a member of the Met, I had received advance notice of the Pollock-Krasner show. The notice included a little history of his fame and how her body of work and style of painting contributed to his success, although her own work never gained the same attention.

So the Met it was.

The path led me through familiar places that Norma and I used to walk through, and Central Park was teeming with people. I remembered her striding ahead and me breathlessly following her up the steps of Vista Rock to Belvedere Castle.

Of course, there was a wedding photo shoot going on, but so much of the park is background for photographs of lovers and the newly betrothed.

The trees were turning, and cameras were snapping photos of the skyline of buildings above the trees. Despite the chilly morning, it was warm enough now for people to be lying on blankets on the Great Lawn, and the bright colors of the autumn leaves were reflected in the surface of Turtle Pond.

As I walked the paths, looking at the faces of those coming toward me and the backs of fathers with a kid on their shoulders, dog walkers, and tons of joggers, I kept flashing on Norma’s face.

She would fictionalize the life and times of the people we would see when we sat on a bench in the park, listening to the solo saxophone player or the quartet of strangers that would assemble in the little clearings along the way.

Was the father with the horizontal stripes on his white sweater French? Were the couple behind me speaking German in clipped tones? Was that man walking with his daughter or his mistress?

People-watching is much more satisfying with someone to share your guesses of place of origin, profession, and temperament, but as a scribbler, I stored my reckonings, saving them for a more sedentary day in front of my computer screens.

I had been checking my trek across the park against Google Maps, retreating and rerouting to stay on the recommended path and to avoid the Ramble, which would have added miles to my crosstown march. If my rock-climbing, Kilimanjaro-climbing youngest son had been with me, there is no question we would have been scrambling through the Ramble.

Finally, huffing and puffing, with a bladder that had been trying to get my attention, I saw the path I was on spill out onto the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue.

The sidewalk was filled with stands selling jewelry, which I often bought just to surprise her. But instead of a tug at my heart, the sight made me smile at the memories of the look on her face when the reveal took place.

She would be the first to tell you that diamonds didn’t matter to her. Our wedding rings were handmade of silver by the jeweler whose store was beneath our apartment above the bridal gown store on Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains. The cost of the engraving inside the rings was more than the price of the silver.

But Norma loved beautiful things: art, flowers, and jewelry. Oh, and she also loved books, being a bookseller. Funny that she fell for a writer, and I thought it was my charm and good looks.

I walked under the canopy of trees just south of the museum and hurried to the membership entrance just before a gaggle of students entered. I made my way to the men’s room and then, after following instructions to wash my hands, found the membership queue.

I showed my electronic card and climbed the steps to the first floor of the museum. I wandered through the maze of rooms and walked against traffic down a long hallway, following signs for the Pollock-Krasner exhibit, past gaggles of folks listening to a docent explain the fine points of a sculpture.

Finally, I made it to the set of rooms for the exhibit.

Growing up as the photographer’s little helper in my father’s darkroom, I have found that I’ve developed some skills at capturing moments in what used to be film.

I pulled my phone out to capture some of the canvases as well as the fixed gaze of some of the onlookers. As I focused on the artwork itself, I began to ponder how this art changed the world for other artists.

I enjoyed Picasso’s whimsy but didn’t find this satisfying and thought I needed to read more about its impact on the world of art to truly understand what I was looking at.

I made it through a few rooms when I realized that it was just too crowded to enjoy the viewing. It wasn’t that I was claustrophobic, but with a trip to San Francisco just a few weeks away, I didn’t want to contract a disease, even one from a fellow art lover.

My only regret as I left the museum was that I hadn’t visited the museum store, a favorite of my bride’s, where she would mine the shelves and counters for the perfect nugget for herself or for a gift.

The Met steps are a signature view, with the banners that hang from the exterior walls. I descended, trying to avoid photobombing the many families lining up their children just so to capture the grandeur.

Not sure if any of those photographs make it to the confines of a frame or even into an actual album, but they will pop up in memories on Facebook.

Parched, I bought a bottle of water from the halal cart. Looking at my watch, I realized it was pill time. Taking them from my pill case, I threw them back and gulped the water before turning south to catch the crosstown bus to the subway at 72nd Street.

I made my way up to 96th Street by the express and transferred to the 1 for the few stops until reaching 110th Street.

I crossed Broadway and walked west to Riverside. I was pleased to see that my Subaru was still in the spot where I’d left it and let out a sigh of relief when the book I’d been listening to on Audible began as soon as I pushed the start button.

Which meant that my Crosstrek was playing nice with CarPlay.

The End.