Grateful
O, what a lovely day it was yesterday! Daffodils have made their entrance onto the city stage, and were nodding their lovely heads in the breeze. It was warm enough for me to leave my winter coat at home, and it was the first day since last October that my boots stayed in the closet, and my green shoes came out to play. The sun was shining, yet its touch was gentle. People at the bus stop and subway station were lighthearted, and the 1 was running. I think it may have been a little early to turn the air conditioning on in the train, and I did have a little shiver and an inner whinge about that. But for heaven's sake! I was high in the air on an elevated train track, and then plunged deep into the earth, zipping along, on wheels, through a tunnel dug in the beginning of the last century, and did anything from any disaster movie I have ever watched happen to me? No. All was calm, all was bright, all hail to the Transit Authority.
I have become quite fond of the 1 train since I moved to the Bronx. It's a subway for most of its Manhattan run (except for the 125th Street stop), but, running north, it pokes its head out of the tunnel at Dyckman Street (roughly 200th St.), and continues on elevated tracks, racketing across the river at 222nd or thereabouts. From the Broadway Bridge, there's a big-sky view looking west to the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Hudson River, and the Palisades. That bridge is "the Grandma Bridge" to me. For many years, my grandparents had an apartment in Washington Heights, in northern Manhattan. When my family drove in from upstate to visit them, the crossing of that bridge was the exciting almost-there point in our journey. Now it is part of my prayer geography, a place where I always think of Elsie and Leonard, and of how blessed I was to have them so very long. I was 50 when they died within a few months of each other (as is so often the way). Age did not wither them till they were in their 90s (nor custom stale their infinite stubbornness), and they are still very present to me.
Once across the river, the train continues deep into the Bronx all the way up to 242nd Street and the gorgeous Van Cortlandt Park where there is still a stable. O wonderful, wonderful, most excellent park! I still have my well-worn paddock boots. Someday soon...
A fellow redhead