saying what’s on your mind in 86 excruciating steps

19Jun07

Walking back towards the subway on 34th Street, an onslaught of people paraded past me in the rush hour sunlight. Long shadows against the bright sidewalk made everyone’s figures lean east. I waited for a bus to take me the three avenue blocks to my train and watched a funny little woman with an oversized cigarette exhaust fumes around her grimy capped head. She was doing the crossword puzzle with a bulky backpack morphing out of her tiny frame like a giant parasite. Her extra long pen danced with her cigarette every time she leaned over to peer at the puzzle through round black frames and write in her answers. If you never saw her gaunt weathered face and didn’t look too closely at the sooty patina covering her, you might have mistaken her for a young teenage boy.

I realized that I was staring at her and snapped out of it. There was still no bus in sight so I started walking.

Smells are starting to seep up from the streets now that summer has blanketed the city with humidity and heat. Vanilla, musk, cilantro and something I couldn’t place, something organic making its way back to the place it came from, the smell of something slightly rotten dampened the mix.

I caught glimpses of people who seemed to be moving extensions of the concrete they were walking on. Usually worn and haggard, these natives of New York (where else could they have come from?) were sometimes stylish like the lady with the humongous sunglasses and classic chignon who hadn’t changed a thing about her for 30 years, so everything about her was scuffed and missing that shiny finish that comes with newer and better rested people.

But sometimes they were young, like the rail thin woman with the sailor stripes, ubiquitous cigarette, skinny cropped jeans and …. really hairy legs. Ipe! (sorry dude)

Other visual smatterings came into focus for a split second as I got closer to the subway entrance. A very pregnant woman wearing a sheer white jumpsuit over her dark tight stomach, belly button poking out to make a little directional indicator. Families with kids and strollers just standing on the corner while the cars bleeped and whizzed by.

Some man whispered hello right into the back of my head as soon as he was past my line of sight. I never understand these guys when they do that.

I readjusted my grip on the plastic bag that was heavy with my new camera before I ran down the escalator. National Guardsmen briefly registered in my foggy windshield and I held my breath for a second hoping that they wouldn’t pull me over to scrounge through another random person’s big black purse.

Finally standing on an express train home, I noticed how different the crowd was from my usual train. The cars are structured differently too so that everyone gets jammed up near the doors, somehow penned in by the poles and the continuous seating along the sides. I had managed to shimmy past people mid way between doors where it was pretty much empty.

The plastic bag was new and slippery. It felt thick and very environmentally unfriendly like it would never deteriorate in that landfill that it was headed towards. I couldn’t wait to see Max, and the only reason I was purposefully delaying my homecoming today was because I had to buy this new camera. I felt naked without one ever since I discovered that my point and shoot was busted. I think one of the boys, either the mister or Max, was responsible for that rattling sound inside the carcass of the old Sanyo.

The more I’m away from my son, the more important it is for me to have the technology to record his face, video his walk, write about how I want to stay home to raise him. I didn’t panic outright during the day that my family was without a working camera, I don’t take photos of him every day, but I was uneasy, maybe even a bit tense.

Because I’ve been mulling over a strategy to stop working for a little while, I’ve been walking around more unfocused than usual. The thought that I wouldn’t be able to get him on “film” oddly made me feel sorry for myself.

*Man up* Look at all the women who manage working outside the home and dealing with it just fine.

I’ve been reading about women who wish they were working, and I know that I’d have moments of regret if I was home full time. Grass is always greener to me when I’m not standing directly on a particular patch. I rarely take anyone’s word on matters of importance. I wish I would.

I just spoke to another architect and mom who has a small practice and she promptly stuck a pin in my bubbleheaded notion that everything would be perfect if I could muster enough courage to work with (maybe even for) my husband.

But you have more flexibility right?

She hesitated before kindly deciding to humor me, and said that she could, if she really wanted to, go home over lunch to see her one year old. But she works a lot. She doesn’t really have more time to enjoy motherhood.

I was disappointed by her response and decided to keep searching for one that would echo more exactly what I already know I want to hear. (welcome to my husband’s world)

In front of me, squashed between an oversized jock and his Giacometti-thin mother, was a beautiful hapa kid who had inherited his mom’s noodly proportions and bee stung lips.

She looked on with the sort of patience that everyone wants their mother to have while this adorable boy jabbered away about his Bronx Zoo brochure that was starting to come apart from too much handling.

I couldn’t believe how thin she was. She was a whisper of a person, but I knew that it didn’t mean she was weak.

At first, I could tell that she was tired, I recognized that trick when you lie in bed in the morning trying to wake up to watch your child run around with one eye periodically opening to see if he’s okay. She had her head resting against the plexiglass billboard behind her with her eyes closed, reverse winking with one eye to peek at her lanky son.

I thought to myself, I know you are tired and I know this is hard, but you are so lucky. I see that you know that and you’re loving this time with your son.

At some point she really nodded off, her head sinking lower and lower, and I got to sit down but I couldn’t see these two amid the constant replenishing and vanishing of the subway riders. When we got to my stop, I was so engrossed in trying to catch another peek at the lovely mother and her now sleeping son on her lap, that I didn’t realize that I had arrived until she got up with her very tall kid in her arms (he must have been 6 or 8), a shopping bag in one hand and her son’s backpack in the other, and I looked around to see where she was getting off.

I jumped up and followed her off the train, my hands itching to help her carry something. Her matchstick legs slowly tickled the subway platform as she defied gravity and carried close to a 100 pounds of child, books, and produce to a bench to wait for her son to wake up.

It took all I had not to run the rest of the way home.

Alberto Giacometti
Stehende III
bronze 1962

Filed under: luff, massive transit, small people, tome   |  7 Comments