It's Gotta Cut Over

I’m glad I was able to share the illusory ‘White Christmas’ with my children, with my whole family.  There were a few inches of snow on the ground in the Hudson Valley, from the day I drove up, not long before the twenty-fifth.  My younger one had lost her phone in the snow, before I came.  We all went out to look for it, fruitlessly.  And with each passing day the snow slowly faded, but a white covering remained nonetheless.  Not every Christmas season works this way.

I’d arrived originally in Newark, spent time in Brooklyn and trained it up to Westchester County during my first twenty-four hours back home.  None of them had snow.  Last night we returned to Westchester County, northern Westchester, in Bedford Hills.  It was cold and wet but there was no snow.  This was our staging ground to take my wife and kids down to Newark airport this morning.  My father counselled us to allow for two hours, which seemed tremendous to me but he was the local and it was going to be rush hour.  We sailed over, dropped everyone off, got them ticketed, hugged and bon voyaged, returning back to northern Westchester in not much more than two hours total, rain and rush hours notwithstanding.

Now I am in Manhattan for a business meeting.  It’s pouring cold rain, I’ve discovered.  A colleague has suggested we meet at 54th and 6th.  At first I’d just considered walking but with time pressing I hopped on the Lexington Avenue line up out of the Grand Central.  I planned as well to walk from 51st and Lex, but noted a sign for the M and the E Trains.  I pressed upon my decades old New York know-how, trying to unwind the M Train’s progression.  It used to sail passed my window, regularly, audibly, on the Williamsburg Bridge.  It heads back over to Queens up here.  But what does it do in midtown?  It’s gotta cut over.  I pass a stairway and opt for the escalator and I’m glad I did, as its’a tube-station’s-like descent down to the track.  The M takes me to Rockefeller Center, which is perfect.  Exiting, I’m very glad I found the M Train because the rain is driving cold as I get my bearings there in front of the MoMA.  Up at the corner I spy the lights of the Hilton where my colleague is waiting for me. 

Later he and I stand on this same corner, debriefing the evening’s meeting.  I’m conscious of catching a train homeward but I’m also enjoying the conversation.  My un-hatted head was being pelted with near frozen mist and I wrestled between driving the conversation forward and wrapping it up and finding shelter. Eventually, we called it a night and parted.  I stared down at Radio City Music Hall and considered, once again for about seven steps, whether or not I should walk to Grand Central.  Soon I was in a cab, running my fingers through the mop on my dome, trying to warm things.