Spring Fever

If the day should ever come when I'm no longer waking at 4:00 a.m. to start my 2-1/2 hour commute, I hope I will be able to hold on to Thursday's lunch hour as a memory of the good parts of working in NYC. Lately, I've been feeling so oppressed by this city - the crowds, the greyness, the expense, the cold wind whipping down the streets in my section of lower Manhattan, the dirt on the streets, my workload, the exercise of sheer will it takes to get me out of my bed at 4:00 a.m. and into a cab hurtling through the darkened streets of Philadelphia to make my predawn train to work. As I've said to some of my friends, I get all the downside of NYC and none of the good parts. My crazed schedule and my daunting workload have not allowed me the time to enjoy what the city has to offer.
But on Thursday I allowed myself to escape during lunch. It was an early spring day - the kind of day when people take to the streets, the parkbenches are loaded down with quickly discarded coats and jackets, little bits of green start poking out of the ground and the budding trees. I walked into Chinatown. I watched the kids at the playground. I stopped in a tiny restaurant for some Vietnamese bun. I jostled among the crowds on Canal St. I returned to my office feeling just a tiny bit lightened.
Here's to spring in New York City.