what memories are for, part three

what memories part three

at three years old he could not yet guess that what was the very best day of his sweet life was coming to a close.  we had said good bye to the bus driver and stood in the cloud of the bus’s exhaust fumes as it pulled away on one of the busiest, dirtiest, loudest streets and most romantic streets; 42nd street.  42nd street is one of my favorite streets in manhattan because the romance of it is lost on everyone except we that have wonder in their hearts.  42nd street slices through manhattan not at the geographical center but at it’s heart.  If you fly into newark or jfk from anywhere in the world you can take a bus to the city and it usually puts you down somewhere along the length of 42nd.  if you are first time visitor to the city, coming from, perhaps, france or tibet, chicago or palermo, what you will find is  movement, everyone is moving.  42nd is not a street for lingering, from 42nd you are always going to….you are often crossing over, on or through.  you will see those that have stepped down off of the bus, the uptown or the airport, who stand for a moment to get their bearings, looking for their next mode of transportation.  there are the suburban trains going north for the college kids with their huge rolling luggage to be transported down the alley, across the busy street and into the arms of grand central, there’s the taxi, the final route for european and asian tourists who have saved themselves some dollars to spend on their vacation and have only 10 or 20 blocks more to go – good to take a taxi – and get to the hotel – there are the newly arrived immigrants who will step down from the bus, not onto the little drop of land called ellis but onto 42nd street  stopping for a moment only while they look for the bus station and the bus that will take them to relatives in ohio, michigan, illinois.  they stop, eyes wide, unblinking, could all of america be this?  could we have been wrong?  and on they walk.  and with all of those glorious people there we were two tired, gloriously happy people; a 41 year old mom and a three year old brown eyed, brown curly haired boy in a little jacket and a green straw cowboy hat, walking toward what had just that day started to be our favorite landmark in new york city; grand central station.

grand central station cannot be a stop on tour of manhattan, it must be several because the brilliance of this spectacular building that was almost town down (oh folly all of you who have no wonder in your hearts), the brilliance is that gcs is less a building, less a location than a moment in time and therefore to experience it you must experience it over a period of time.  you must see the light from the sunrise slanting throught the eastern windwows down onto the commuters rushing oddly quietly to their jobs and their morning cup of coffee, you must be there under the clock to watch as the wednesday matinee attendees step down with from the train and rush to meet the older woman in the lovely red coat and the sensible shoes standing next to you “oh, i’m so happy this day is here! “  and finally you must, really must, walk down a bustling 42nd street as dusk is descending and melting into the flow of the now weary caffienless workers pour through the doors of the great cathedral of transportation.  you will flow with them down the wide corridor and then into the wide open grand hall which has been transformed as the last bit of sunlight has drained from it’s windows and now finally the spectacular ceiling, evening, lovers blue with twinkling stars and constellations, drawings pointing out what you may have missed from all those night skys you have seen in your past.  if you are lucky or wise, you will miss your train and give yourselves another sixty minutes to sit on the stairs and watch all the people all those kinds of humans, all of them with their dreams, watch them and how they walk, run, stoll, skip and drag themselves from one place to the next.  and you will see the others, the ones who stop, look up, pull out the camera, giggle, turn around with their chin help up as they try to take it all in.  you may, if it’s your first time, think that all these twisting, turning, gazing people are tourists but we are not, we are just taking a moment to realize the wonder of it all.