After a few days of riding trains, walking crowded sidewalks, and listening to late night jazz, Shaggy Hair Boy and I went to Central Park. He’d seen it on the map, that big green rectangle, and he kept exclaiming about it. “There’s all these buildings, crowded together, and then this big-ass park right in the middle of it all.”
We started at the southern edge of the park, with the plan to just wander north until we came to the Museum of Natural History.
“It feels good to just stretch out,” said Shaggy Hair Boy. “Everything in the city is so cramped.” We’d eaten bagels and soup at a deli earlier that afternoon. To fit at the small table that was shoved up against the window, we’d had to move pull our chairs out one at a time and then slide in sideways. I don’t notice those things because I’m small, but my son has long arms and legs.
The afternoon sun was warm. We walked past ball fields covered in snow and a big pond filled with ice. Every once in a while a horse and carriage would clip clop past. A group of kids were throwing a Frisbee disk on one lawn. Trees curved their branches over our heads as we crunched over the icy paths. “It’s so funny to find this whole park here,” Shaggy Hair said again, looking around. “Trees and everything. What a good idea.”
