I left work early to go to a doctor’s appointment on the Upper West Side. I took the train to one of my old subway stops and walked up the steps just as school was letting out, peppering the sidewalks with high school students flirting away. Seeing this scene in the afternoon light reminded me of graduate school. I would take a quick run on the same streets, into the park and around the reservoir in the afternoon to clear my head. The freedom that comes with a student’s schedule!
I finished up at my doctor’s appointment, then I dipped into a hardware store that sits around the corner from my first apartment in the city. I walked the aisles looking for a spray bottle, but I instead remembered a weekend nearly three years ago that I went to that same hardware store to build bookshelves, feeling so proud that I could do that on my own. (Stubborn independence is an empowering side effect from divorce).
After leaving the hardware store (with no spray bottle), I started making my way to the subway stop. I strolled by a building where my friend Natalie lived before she up and moved to Canada. I smiled as I walked by Carmine’s, where my husband and I had our wedding dinner with our family and closest friends almost one year ago. A few blocks later, I looked up at The Melar building where another friend, Kelsea, used to live. She and I only crossed paths in the city for about four months, but Kelsea K. is one of those people you connect with immediately and love forever.
As I approached the subway stairs, I felt so much gratitude: gratitude that I get to live in this city, gratitude that I have memories here and gratitude thinking, dreaming of what’s to come.
