The 7 train platform was an inverse Red Sea--or confirmation that I am, as grudgingly suspected, not Moses--as the listless, shambling commuters coalesced to form a shaggy mass of humanity obstructing my path to the escalator to the main level of Grand Central Station. In the busiest city in the world, known for its hectic, running-around-with-hair-on-fire pace, the 7 platform offers a brief respite from the speed of living here that is simultaneously refreshing and infuriating.
My eyes on my phone as I read and respond to emails and review work notes from last week and the weekend, the escalator-bound crowd forms two files: those who will walk up the escalator on the left, and those like me who will stand in place on the right. It is a forty-four-second period wherein I don't have to walk or hold onto a pole to keep from falling down on the train, and it's one of the few moments of quietude in my morning. I put my phone (or book, when the morning isn't already busy) away, stand with my eyes closed for a few seconds, and take in the City.
I reach the landing, swiftly execute a RIGHT-WHEEL facing movement in unspoken concert with my fellow travelers, and step onto the second escalator, this time for about twenty-seven seconds. I reach the main level of Grand Central Station and the scene reminds me of that scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, when Harry Potter and the rest of the Order of the Phoenix emerge from the clouds to find a full-scale battle raging before them.
Several hundred harried, frustrated, insufficiently-caffeinated, late-for-work commuters are scrambling like cockroaches in a forgotten storeroom when someone suddenly turns on the light. Each to their own exits, stairwells, escalators, and corridors, they move with the urgency of military surgeons in a battlefield hospital. Shouts of "OUT OF THE WAY!" and "WATCH IT!" echo in the caverns under 42nd Street as a trumpet-playing busker pours everything he has into the melody of Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)", its forlorn notes reminiscent of Christmases past, Christmases alone, and Christmases spent with those who will not be with us this year, or ever again, for whatever reason.
Eyes to the ground, I step off the escalator and angle for the stairway down to the platform for the Downtown 4/5 train. The 4 train just pulled up and its doors open as I approach the top of the stairs. I hurriedly descend, my feet a blur, and lithely pirouette through the crowd and into the closing door a moment before it would have caught my briefcase in its teeth. I catch my breath, shuffle over to a pole to hold (as it leaves Grand Central, the Downtown 4 reaches a top speed of approximately Mach 1.2 as it careens around what feel like hairpin curves en route to 14th Street-Union Square).
Around me, the crowded train breathes a collective cleansing sigh. A businessman in his late fifties or so, wearing a sweater with the insignia of his Ivy-equivalent alma mater to match his signet ring, perfectly-coiffed salt-and-pepper hair, and print New York Times, offers his seat to a tired-looking though beautiful Latinx woman, appearing to be in her early thirties. She politely declines.
The man renews the offer: "Are you sure?"
She again declines.
He shakes his head in agitated disbelief, seemingly frustrated by her mere existence in the midst of his morning commute, clearly far more important than hers, and incredulous at her refusal to accept his gracious offer. An elderly Black woman stands feet away, shifting her weight from one foot to another in apparent discomfort.
The City is alive again, if only for a moment. What the coming weeks and months may hold is not known to any of us, but for a brief period this morning, it felt like New York City did before the pandemic hit.
Happy Holidays. Lift each other up. We're all in this together, and we're all on the same team. Let's act like it. Mask up. Get vaccinated and boosted. Offer a hand. Hold your tongue. Feed someone. Give someone a hug. Love recklessly. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Live your values, and not just your political ones.
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