Breathing

My friend and I met for coffee on Sunday morning in a crowded shop in the West Village. Soundtrack: Nick Drake, the clatter of dishes, the din of conversation. My friend had endured a great loss in this year, but she spoke about it calmly. “I was with her at the moment she died,” she told me. “I had placed my hand upon her mouth to see if she was breathing, and I literally felt her last breath. It was just a puff, right into my palm. Just a little puff of air.”

We stepped outside and were startled by the cold. It seemed that winter had suddenly arrived, and the only way to walk was to hurry along, and so my friend and I went our separate ways. I buttoned the top buttons of my coat, wrapped my scarf more tightly around my neck, and  saw my own frosty breath in front of me as I headed back towards the apartment where Monte and I were staying.

There were Christmas trees for sale on the corner. I closed my eyes and inhaled their evergreen fragrance, imagining snowy mountains, sleigh rides and carolers, midnights clear. I had been kvetching all week about the intrusion of pseudo-Christmas everywhere, the insincere strains of Yuletide muzak, the relentless push to spend money. But the smell of Christmas trees revived something pure and hopeful in me; it felt good to pause among them. I breathed deeply, and I sighed.

The day before, Monte and I had disembarked from a subway train and bypassed a crowded escalator, choosing to climb a mountain of stairs up to the street. There were stairs, then more stairs, and we strode up briskly, flight after flight, a bit of the old competitiveness kicking in, an exhausting acceleration to the top. My heart was pounding by the time I reached the sidewalk, and I gulped the cold air, and felt pleased with myself for no reason.

We had come to New York to see our daughter, and that would be our Christmas. I had been worried about it, though: How are they affording this? What are her plans and her purpose? Where will she be staying? Only days before her scheduled departure, I’d seen tweets from her and her boyfriend, asking whether anyone had a place in New York where they could crash. I was appalled; I offered unwelcome advice; I lay awake in the night fretting. But someone did have a place for them –– a rather nice place, as it turns out, and the plans unfolded as they went along, and it all seemed satisfactory. I had forgotten an important fact: the young live in another world. They have their own language, their own code, their own methodologies. They breathe a different air.

And that daughter? She looked beautiful and happy. Step back, let go, exhale, said the universe.