Today I smile, nod, and walk out the door and across the street
to the park.
February is the longest month of the year.
Winter has been on us for so very long and spring seems like it
might never come. The sky is gray and thick with clouds, the
kind of clouds that menace the city, threatening not Christmas
postcard snow, or a downpour of cold clean rain, but bitter
needles that immediately melt the snow, so that it feels like
what is coming down from the sky is actually yellow-gray slush.
The sidewalks are banked by mounds of black-fringed snow and
every step off the curb is a game of Russian roulette which
might end with glacial black water sloshing around your ankle,
soaking your sock and shoe. Normally I hunker down; I build
fires in the fireplace, wrap myself in chenille throws and wool
socks, reread Jane Austen, and will the short, dark days to
creep by more quickly. This year, however, I long to embrace the
unrelenting grimness of New York in February. This year I need
February. Even now, at the end of January, it is as if the city
has noticed my dejection and proceeded to prove its
commiseration. The trees in the park seem particularly bare;
they poke at the dreary sky with lifeless branches that have
lost not just their leaves but the very hope of leaves. The
grass has turned brown and been kicked away, leaving a mire
covered by a scrim of dog-shit-spotted ice. The Bridle Path and
the path along the Reservoir are muddy and have buckled in
places, gnarled roots and knots marring the once smooth surfaces
and tripping up the fleece-clad runners.
But the Diana Ross Playground is full of children. New York
children will play outside in all weather, except the most
inclement, their nannies and mothers desperate to escape the
confines of even the most spacious apartments. On the dreariest
winter day, when the swings are wet enough to soak
water-repellent snow pants right through, when the expensive,
cushiony ground cover is frozen to a bone-breaking hardness,
when the last bit of metal left in the meticulously childproofed
playground is cold enough to cause a plump pink tongue to stick
fast to it, until an unflappable Dominican nanny pours the last
inch of a Starbucks mocha over the joined bit of flesh and
teeter-totter, the kids are there, screaming their little-kid
screams and laughing their little-kid laughs. I quicken my step
until I am galumphing along at an ungainly jog, my extra weight
pounding into my widened hips, my bones aching with every
jarring thump of heel to path.
I allow myself to slow to a gasping walk as soon as the
children's voices fade into the background hum of the rest of
the park. In the summer Central Park sounds like the
countryside--or a version of the countryside where birdsong
competes with the hiss of skateboard wheels on cement and with
the flutes of Peruvian buskers playing Andean melodies as
interpreted by Simon and Garfunkel. In the spring, when the
cherry trees are in full blush and the hillocks around Sheep
Meadow are covered in yellow daffodils, it is easy to love
Central Park. In the summer, when the Shakespeare Garden is a
tangle of blossoms and wedding ceremonies and you cannot walk
two feet without stumbling over a bank of asters or a dog
playing Frisbee, loving Central Park is a breeze. In the winter,
though, the pigeons fly under the naked elms, keeping close to
where the conscientious, lonely old ladies with their paper bags
of bread crusts congregate on the snow-dampened benches of the
Mall. In the winter, the park is left to those of us whose love
is most true, those of us who don't need swags and fringes of
wisteria, those of us for whom snow-heavy black locust trees,
mud-covered hills, and the sound of the wind creaking through
bare branches are enough. I have always understood that it is in
the escape provided by these 843 acres that real beauty lies.
The pastel Mardi Gras of spring and summer and the brilliant
burnt reds and oranges of autumn are just foofaraw.
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