The Power of a Swing

New York

Yesterday was a grueling day in many respects. I arrived back in New York to a mountain of obligations and business matters that were both complex and, to be honest, a pain in

 the neck.  They ranged from the simple like packing up the Christmas holiday decorations and cards that I had left tucked in a corner in my rush to leave for SE Asia to following up on a particularly annoying  letter from Blue Cross announcing that they wanted a refund from me of $375 for surgery that had been done in March 2007 because they overpaid the hospital. As I've said before: Who Could Make This Stuff Up?

It is still chilly in the northeast but I decided after an endless battery of conference calls and follow up emails, that I would go to Central Park. It was just before sunset. 

My plan was to walk briskly and take in the late afternoon smells and sounds; to see how close the park seemed to bursting into greens and yellows, pinks and purples. It is my favorite time of year.

The northwest wind was daunting as I crossed Central Park West at 81st to enter the park. But once I had walked down the path aways, the park dips down a bit and the wind doesn't have the bite that it does on the street. I headed toward  the Delacorte Theater, home of the wonderful Shakespeare in the Park series in the summer, and headed east toward my beloved Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is Monday, so the museum is closed but even so, as I peeked into the floor to ceiling glass dining room, I could see the French style bisto chairs flipped on their backs waiting for the morning and new customers.

As I walked I relaxed into the beauty of the day--clear blue sky with only a wisp of a cloud anywhere in sight, the trees red brown, the buds little nubs on the thin branches just waiting for a little more sun, a little more temperature before they sprouted. I reached the reservoir on the east side of the park and decided to do a little running--why not? The reservoir is bordered with hundreds of cherry trees that now stand dark and still waiting for their time. Runners, walkers, New Yorkers, visitors--they were all there. I smiled to myself at the beauty of the skyline from there--all of the apartments on Central Park West--the Beresford, the Dakota, once lonely upstarts when the upper west side was the frontier of Manhattan--now packed in with dozens of buildings of all manner of architectural styles.

I walked slowly back toward my apartment on the west side after I exited the reservoir. And for some reason, I saw a group of swings that I don't remember ever seeing before. I stood and watched three adults--two swinging vigorously, the third, sitting pensively, his back to the rest.

I hesitated thinking: "I'm too old to do this, really...", and started walking toward the west, watching the setting sun over the Dakota towers. "No one is too old", I heard myself mutter.

Besides, I justified, the sunset will be great from the top reaches of a swing.

And it was. My swing had it's own squeak every time I pumped higher and higher as if to remind me that I might want to cap it before I got too high. The air was getting cooler but it didn't really matter. I noticed two new spruce saplings that the Conservancy had protected with small wire fences, and a lovely granite formation just beyond the swing area.

And then I realized that I was smiling. No, that I was happy. For that one moment, I was the kid whose mother would say: " Not any higher, now, Mary Catherine. That's high enough, " as she watched me out the kitchen window. And it was spring, and I was alive. 

And all the vagaries of day to day life had not made me forget the grace of a simple moment.

MC