1) babysitting
2) subway interactions
3) Santas Claus
4) buying Chunky Monkey ice cream
5) bananas on my door
Babysitting
This was my second time babysitting two wonderful kids. There is a cat named Little Man. They (not including Little Man) ate tortellini, which happens to be one of my favorite foods. I played duck duck goose with the younger girl and some of her dolls and stuffed/beaned animals, and then we read The Berenstain Bears before she got in bed. The 10-year-old-boy and I discussed books - including our own aspirations (both of us are writing stories currently) - and played Scrabble. As I was washing dishes, I thought about how calm I felt, how calming this all was. I love being with kids. I love petting cats. I love bonding. Babysitting is being.
The boy took out the second book in the Eragon series for me to read while he read before sleep, and the father had recommended a New Yorker fiction article by Nathan Englander. I read the article first and had just finished when the parents came home. Eldest will wait for next time.
Subway interactions
I have written about the subway before. There are many manners of riding on the subway. The headphone manner: you are not closed off from others through body language, but you make yourself separate, involved in a different world from the one around you, one that should only be intruded upon when necessary. The already involved manner: you are traveling with someone or someones - perhaps your child, your boyfriend, your posse - and are engaging in conversation or cuddling. The "I am trying to nap" manner - self-explanatory. The "When will this train get here?" manner. The vacant manner, common in the mornings and late at night. The similar-in-phenotype yet different-in-genotype preoccupied manner. The prayer manner, which, to an observer, seems similar to vacant and preoccupied and, probably, to "I am trying to nap (standing up)" if your eyes are closed.
I frequent the roaming eyes manner: you are interested in other people in general, smile upon making eye contact if you overcome your shyness, ask questions, make comments, and engage in conversation on occasion, especially if you find yourself talking to someone who is not from New York. Yet I find that the "absorbed in your reading but can be interrupted" manner is often the most lucrative in terms of social interaction. My most involved and interesting conversations occur when I am studying Jewish liturgical sheet music. Tonight, I had a brief chat about my future after a young man noticed that I had a GRE book on my lap. I myself met a pianist on the way down from Washington Heights after I discovered that her book was Russian. (If you want my attention in a public setting, speak or read in Russian. I have been known to follow around Harvard tour groups in order to drink of it.)
Subway interactions - so fun! Unless you step on someone's foot. Then you feel bad for a while.
Santas Claus
On my way to babysitting, I noticed this man:
He was not the only one. And many of them were drunk, as another subway-goer commented. (Regardless, I saw one mother-and-child pair ask for a photo op. All the ones that I encountered were in good spirits!) I asked another Claus for some explanation, and it turns out that there was a SantaCon tonight. You show up with two cans of food while wearing a Santa Claus outfit at one of two starting places, and from there you head to bars around town who are also participating in a charitable project. I think that being a Santa Claus gives you leave to converse with other Santa Clauses. (Or should it be "Santas Claus", like "knights-errant" and "Brothers Grimm"?) Another tip for city interactions: anything that brings you closer together in dress, attitude, or other discernible quality also entails a sense of affinity that often can lead to conversation or at least a knowing smile.
I found myself thinking about causes, and what you do while you are supporting a cause. I might flesh out these thoughts, but not right now.
Here are some more Santas for you. I asked in advance before taking their picture. (The answer of the two who heard me was in the affirmative, in case you were wondering.)
Buying Chunky Monkey ice cream
I had just babysat. I had money in my purse. I would have gotten a cone, but that place on Lexington was closed. Instead I went to the neighborhood convenience store and bought Chunky Monkey ice cream and two oranges. Need I say more?
I think the two men who run the store recognize me each time now. I have demonstrated a seaweed habit and like to think that they have noticed.
Bananas on my door
Last night was a long night for one that had a bedtime of eleven o'clock. I had reserved a place at a Chabad meal twenty blocks south of me. Services were to start at 6:30. I arrived perhaps ten minutes late - not sure, wasn't wearing a watch - and found a locked building and no doorman. I couldn't ring the bell. I waited for a good twenty minutes, sang to myself a bit, and watched a man try to cajole people into entering the fur-selling store next door. (Furs were on sale!) Perhaps I had accidentally headed to their office address instead of their religious-services-plus-dinner address. Regardless, I was short davening and a meal.
Headed back north, stopping at two places of Jewish prayer on the way. Prayed at one - gorgeous, gorgeous sanctuary - but was kicked out very kindly when the building was to close. The second one I arrived at after services had finished. There were young adults milling and chatting in the entrance-way, but a couple of men that I asked could not point me to the sanctuary. They were there for a Manhattan Jewish Experience dinner. Had they prayed elsewhere beforehand? I do not know. I did not ask. A non-Jewish man who worked there was the one who told me services had finished, and who told me no, the room was closed, I could not go in and pray. I almost cried once I had left the building. Sometimes things hit me hard.
I made my weary way back north. The doorman brightened my night, as he often does. I stayed downstairs for probably a good hour, our chatting punctuated by his occasional elevator calls. I lamented my unpreparedness for eating dinner in the apartment, and we discussed food, nutrition, and weight for a bit among other topics. Thank goodness, I had the basic Shabbat dinner elements of wine and two unbroken bread items, and later in the night I let him know that I had also discovered an apple and some yogurt and had enough for a veritable feast. (It turns out that pasta sauce and mozzarella cheese can be good even cold on bread.) So while I did not have food with company, I still ended my night with a more-than-sufficient amount of both.
I saw him today on my way out to babysitting. We were both to be working until eleven o'clock.
I came home to bananas on my door.
"Miss Molly" -- sounds like Daniel Frim!
ReplyDeleteTwasn't! But you're right!
ReplyDeleteOr, in the case of the charitable bar-hopping, was it a Santa cause?
ReplyDeletePerhaps!
ReplyDelete