‘I Had Decided I Wanted to Spend Some Time Outside After Work’

Shady Spot

Dear Diary:

It was a Thursday afternoon, and I had decided I wanted to spend some time outside after work.

Typically, I designate weekends for recreational activity. But having been inside all day and with the sun still out, I embarked on the 20-minute walk to Prospect Park.

I thought about sitting on a bench facing the pond, but decided that was too easy. I kept looking until I found a grassy spot, partially covered by the shade of a tree with overarching branches.

The reeds at the water’s edge split to form what seemed like a man-made fishing alcove, letting rays of sunshine through and offering a view of geese floating by.

As I put down the blanket I was carrying and got settled, I saw that the tree had a yellow heart painted on it. It must be someone’s special spot, I realized.

I felt honored to have found it and hoped I wasn’t intruding.

— Angel Musyimi

Mesmerized

Dear Diary:

It was a damp evening in March 1966 when the charter bus I was on pulled into Midtown Manhattan. The rain had stopped, and the air was heavy.

I was 15 and part of a group of teenagers on a visit to New York City from central North Carolina, accompanied by several chaperones. The trip was to include visits to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, an Easter show at Radio City Music Hall and a day at the U.N.

Tired after a 12-hour ride, we hurried off the bus and into the hotel lobby. Remarkably, after we had unloaded our bags, we were allowed to go out for an hour to explore the area, bound only by the admonition to stay with a tour mate.

It was an hour of sheer magic. As I walked outside through the hotel’s revolving door, my senses were deluged by the sounds, the smells, the lights.

The sidewalks were crowded. People hurrying by spoke in melodious foreign languages. Cars and taxis sped past, sounding their horns. Street vendors hawked goods displayed on blankets spread on the sidewalk and sold steaming hot chestnuts from carts.

The traffic lights and pedestrian crossing signals were reflected in the wet pavement. Neon signs blinked from storefronts. Window displays teemed with jewelry, garish clothes and souvenirs. Restaurants and diners beckoned with the aroma of freshly made food.

Mesmerized, I vowed that someday I would live in New York City.

Time passed; life happened. Occasional visits to the city reinforced its charms.

Finally, on March 1, 2016, retired, downsized and decluttered, I got off an Amtrak train at Penn Station and caught a cab for my new home in the West Village, fulfilling a dream 50 years deferred.

— Dianne Reid

Sunday Phone Call, Nov. 24, 2024

Dear Diary:

An old voice in my head says it’s Sunday
just loud enough so I pause.
I wrote about our Sunday chats
thirty years ago when you could kvell,
hearing your voice in the poem,
asking, “Do you have things in the house?”
Things: groceries and treats.
Some grandmas need to know
what’s in your icebox.
And I know your number SP7- 4072,
the Spring Street “exchange,”
a neighborly mystery.
It’s Sunday afternoon,
so I thought I’d call.

— Rachel Eisler

Coming and Going

Dear Diary:

It was 5:30 a.m., and I was cycling up First Avenue to meet my bike group in Central Park. The city’s early shift was clocking in: doormen hosing down sidewalks, food vendors setting up their carts, doctors in scrubs streaming into the N.Y.U. hospital.

At a red light in Kips Bay, I pulled up beside a college-age man in jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt. He was swaying slightly.

“Hey,” he called out, squinting at my bike shorts and helmet. “Are you just starting your day or ending it?”

“Starting,” I said. “You?”

He grinned and raised an empty hand in a phantom toast.

“Ending,” he said. “But I think we’re both crazy.”

The light turned green, and we parted ways: he toward his bed, and I toward my morning ride.

— Casey Fenster

Walking Slowly

Dear Diary:

I was walking slowly up the steps at the Lexington Avenue-59th Street subway station. When I got to the street, a well-dressed woman who appeared to be in her 30s or 40s tapped me on the shoulder.

“Hi,” she said.

She asked whether I spoke English.

Yes, I said.

Sir, she said, when you walk up so slowly, the whole stairs back up.

I was puzzled. I explained that I used a cane and could not walk that fast. What am I supposed to do?