After Nina had called the Chinese food emporium to order our take-out meal, I set off to pick it up, just a couple of blocks from her house. Arriving at the bottom of her smelly stairwell I saw through the glass door of Fine & Schapiro Kosher Delicatessen that it was pouring. Raining as the Germans say “ from buckets” or as they also call it a “cloud breakage”, graphic terms for the German kind of rain, considering that it hardly comes close to what we know here as our usual tropical downpours.
I peered through the glass and noticed with amazement that even such a rain does not stop life in New York City. Sure, not really surprisingly, the street is still teeming with taxis, vans and buses. But what caught my attention were the numerous pedestrians who kept their posture and paraded proudly through the rain, some with umbrellas, some even without, some men, some women, some couples. They just kept walking, upright, unhurried and clearly unfazed. Not a trace of this furtive scurrying that suburban people exhibit when they emerge from the protective shell of their cars and somehow try to duck under the rain like under the beam of a projector when sneaking out of a lecture to go to the bathroom.
Just when I admired these born walkers and scanned their footwear for sloshing water, a delivery man emerged from the deli with a bag full of food. He was clad in a bluish rubber jacket and matching pants and even rubber boots. He swung on his bike without any hesitation, without giving the falling water any heed and began pedaling into the street, no light, no helmet with the front of his rubber wear now somehow draped over the handlebar, a man on a mission on the way to hungry people.
This intrepid biker delivering his food reminded me that, one it was my mission to get the food for my hungry peopleupstairs and two, that what I found so astounding now was really how I had lived for decades when I walked and biked to school in any weather imaginable, except, as mentioned, tropical downpours. Yes, I was practiced in this, so why linger at the shop door?
With a mix of resolve and nostalgia I opened the umbrella and stepped out into the rain. I tried to keep my head up and almost succeeded to walk naturally, had water not intruded my shoes as soon as I stepped out onto the pavement thick with water. When I saw the elegantly dressed women in front of me with her flimsy footwear who was charmingly engaged in conversation with her male companion, their arms hooked, one umbrella covering the two insubstantially, I had to admit that suburban life had turned me irrevocably into a pussyfoot, a rain sissy, a water coward, a nice-weather-walker at best, unfit for the sidewalks of Manhattan. Walking a bit too swiftly, and jumping a bit too far across the gushing water in the gutters, I cherished this newly found, entirely unexpected link between my childhood and Nina’s Manhattan, consolation in the defeat.
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