The Wonders of NYC

Mommy, the sidewalk is sparklelous!

Pigeons!

Look, skyscrapers!

Mommy, what's that man doing in that box?

One tends to take one's surroundings for granted. When you walk down the same sidewalk every day, you stop noticing the small things, the details that give texture and beauty and whimsy to the world around us.

Coming back from lunch the other day, Miss M. stopped in her tracks, smitten with the sparkling sidewalk ahead of us. Most of the time, concrete is just concrete, drably providing a smooth surface to walk on. Sometimes, though, the particular admixture is full of shiny stuff that picks up the early spring sunshine, and looks for all the world like diamonds twinkling at your feet. The four year old sees the diamonds. And I remembered the snow fall in the town of fools, in Zlateh The Goat. Do you know that book? It's short stories for children by Isaac Bashevis Singer. And every time the sidewalk sparkles, whether with "diamonds" or broken glass or snow fall, I think of that book, which I read as a child.

My office is in a fairly low-rise section of the city - our building is 8 stories, many are only 4 or 5, and the tallest are about 20 stories. But, to a child who lives in a two story house, surrounded by two story houses, who attends daycare in a two story house, anything bigger than that is a skyscraper - including the modest 6 story office building at a corner where we were waiting to cross the street.

And the pigeons. At every pigeon we saw she bellowed "pigeons!", delighted when they flew up and away from her. Most people seem to think pigeons are "dirty, disgusting, filthy, lice-ridden birds" - but not the small child. She's thrilled to see them - they're animals, up close and chaseable.

As we were returning to the subway to return home, she said "Mommy, why is that man in a box?" in a loud voice. I turned with rising mortification, to see a young man sitting up in a not large cardboard box, laughing. Somehow, the direct question, the question one usually scurries past, completely disarmed the man in question and the pedestrians behind us. He grinned at her, and me at him. Was he homeless? Disabled? Strung out? I don't know. I've never seen someone tucked in that spot before, and he had no pan-handling sign. But he had a wonderful spirit in a potentially awkward moment.

I hope that the people near us when she wondered at the sidewalk, gaped at the tall building and shouted at the pigeons were amused, just as I hope the people near to the man in the box noticed him instead of turning a blind eye.