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Through the Park(s)

January 24, 2006 By pia

Friday was an amazing day; to be anywhere but out was to miss the single best day of the year, and in many prior months. I walked through Central Park to get to my dentist’s appointment on Fifth and 61st. Usually I walk the long way, down to Central Park South where I do take the time to look at the ducks in the duck pond, because I’m allergic to many of the trees and grasses in the park.

Winter is my favorite time there which is good because I find going to Riverside Park too windy. I like living near two half year parks; it makes me feel that my summer home is virtually across the street from the Hudson, and my winter home is near my childhood spiritual home, the rocks in Central Park, and my actual home for those pivotal, I don’t have kids so I can do whatever I want at night, years.

Not that they’ve ended; but almost everybody I know has kids at home. Rafe doesn’t but his daughter is 25 and half way finished with law school. Rafe is an incredible person, and I shouldn’t have pointed out all his “bad” quirks.

When my father died, Rafe would come over every night. When my mother died, Rafe took me to and from the funeral; my mother’s friends were all very impressed. My mother had been astounded by our friendship years earlier.

I reminded her that she had some very close straight male friends. My mother was too classy to counter with the “but I’m married” argument. True she only occasionally met them alone for lunch. But I could tell from the things she said which person in the couple she preferred. True they didn’t come over and stay until two AM without their spouses. My mother might have had a point…but she came to appreciate and like Rafe.

On Friday, hungover as hell, I forced myself to walk. The dentist appointment was only five minutes and I was too hungover to do anything but walk home. Rafe’s hair salon is a mere four blocks, one Avenue from the dentist building as my sister and I call the building at 61st and Fifth. The office pavillion seems to only house dentists, some of whom we know personally. Always pray that I won’t run into any of them after a long appointment because I look like hell if hell were haggard with glass shards sticking into feet.

But on Friday the oral surgeon just took out stitches. When I walked back I realized that I had memorized much of Central Park years earlier when I lived on 63rd, and the zoo was my backyard. While I had the clock with birds that chime the time memorized; I also didn’t take Central Park for granted, for the first time, forever.

Actually when I lived on 63rd I went to Europe often, but when I would walk into the exterior of the park in spring when the trees were beginning to be in full glory, the cherry blossoms were out, I would look at all the splendor and wonder why I was going to Europe when I could find so much wonder in Manhattan.

When I looked for my coop realtors didn’t understand why I didn’t want to live on Central Park West; I had already lived near Central Park, I wanted the other one that people consider less desirable. They don’t know what it’s like when the river breezes flow in on a sultry humid night and it feels like the ocean; I pretend that the traffic on the West Side Highway is the sound of the ocean–it’s very muffled.

Somedays I never make it down to Broadwy; Riverside Park has everything that I need. The upper park has a great promenade; the lower park has a river walk, the boat basin, an incredible cafe and some medicore ones–only opened from Memorial Day, though. The pier on 70th Street is always open, and sometimes I forget that I live in a crowded city.

Filed Under: my parents, New York Stories Tagged With: my parents, New York Stories

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Comments

  1. marinadedave says

    January 24, 2006 at 9:55 am

    You start so well. You write of such positive moments in your life. You progress… then you forget the happiness and put yourself… into a phase of wonderment. I don’t know. Am I happy or am I sad?

    You explain to the world. You ask.

    It’s a great time to be alive and have friends.

  2. frogma-bonnie (aka bonnie) says

    January 24, 2006 at 12:41 pm

    stuck…in…office.

    Sunday too. Ugh. Extremely unusual for me to work weekends but there was a big quarterly report I had to do, plus two smaller deadline projects, and I’m moving down a floor this week, and the deadlines plus the move had me so stressed I decided to sacrifice Sunday to getting the big ugly one out of the way. I did & felt much better. Outside would have been nice though.

    Well, thank you for letting me live vicariously!

  3. turboslut says

    January 24, 2006 at 4:30 pm

    Just to let you know that I have moved you to the members list on Creme de la Creme. Sorry for the delay but I have been away. Enjoy, T xxx

  4. Dawn says

    January 24, 2006 at 10:52 pm

    I love visiting the city through your eyes—I don’t get there as often as I’d like(will change that when ny move happens!) and yet the visits through you can fill me up as well.

    Thanks Pia.

  5. Doug says

    January 24, 2006 at 10:55 pm

    That post felt like walking in the park. Thanks for sharing the day with those in other climates.

  6. jacob says

    January 24, 2006 at 11:31 pm

    that was great stuff, it was smooth and enchanting.

  7. Miz BoheMia says

    January 25, 2006 at 1:11 am

    I was in New York once when I was 19. I went with my mom, brother, sister and two idiot men that came with us. We drove from Washington DC to New York, they dropped me and my siblings off at the Empire State Building, went to a business meeting and picked us up to drive back down.

    I remember streets crammed with traffic, trucks full of graffiti, a sea of people in the streets and I was on the outside looking in (well, really in a cab looking out but you get my meaning!).

    It was unfulfillin and I have always wanted more! I think that is why Sex and the City was also so enchanting for me. I loved the vision that is New York, and getting snippets of her here and there.

    I get that same feeling from your writing! I am gonna have to pop on by for a visit some day!

    Bohemian smooches to you dear Pia… hope the mouth is doing OK and that sleep is plentiful!

  8. StationeryQueen says

    January 25, 2006 at 4:38 am

    Thanks for the walk. Haven’t been to NYC in two years. Must. Get. Back.

    p.s. I’m linking to you. Hope you don’t mind. 🙂

  9. Janet says

    January 25, 2006 at 5:18 am

    This post reminds me of great reasons to live in the city. I don’t know if I could ever do it, but the simplicity of a stroll to get to and from anywhere is lost on someone from NJ, like me.:(

  10. shayna says

    January 25, 2006 at 7:05 am

    I love ya, pia! 😉 I love your writing so! 🙂

  11. cooper says

    January 25, 2006 at 8:04 am

    That made me peaceful, I often feel peaceful here but not that peaceful and never in Central Park. Maybe i need to look at it differently.

  12. sage says

    January 25, 2006 at 8:41 am

    I thought you’d be hung-over after the dentist rather than before getting there

  13. Bone says

    January 25, 2006 at 9:04 am

    You know these New York posts are always my favorites, Pia.

    Would love to be there. Thanks for taking me there for a moment.

  14. cat says

    January 25, 2006 at 1:12 pm

    I have never been to NYC, but reading your posts Pia…I feel like I’m transported from my cloistered little world into the one you experience. The city is an entity unto itself and *you* bring it to life with your words…for me, it’s become almost a fairy tale destination. Thank you for making NY so beautiful.

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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