April 2023

It’s the most beautiful time of the year! My view beyond the fire escape brightens with sunlight on brown-tiled roofs backed by treetops wearing the new green of spring. It’s time to stock chips, sandwich stuff, yogurt, and cookies for the evening picnic after Laurence’s workday at Elmhurst Hospital.

Pink cherry tree blossoms carpeted the lawn of Brooklyn Botanical Garden. The lilacs’ scent carried me ‘back home’ to a playhouse in the bushes west of (I say west because that’s how Kansans talk) the farmhouse. (The nieces and nephews also had a playhouse there. Will Emma Claire, Max, and Levi of the next generation?) Tulips circle the Dancing Maidens in Central Park. And a row of white redbuds bloom at the head of Juniper Valley where I walked alone one day this past week. Did you know there are white redbuds? The red redbuds look magenta to me and bloom as beautifully here as they did behind the Melvin Becker family vacation rental in the Ozarks.

My friends and I ate a packed lunch on the picnic lawn of Prospect Park. Olmsted and Vaux designed this park after doing Central Park. It’s said to be their crowning jewel. The park saw two million visitors in 1868, the year it opened.

It’s the time of year when the city cannot hold us, and we’ll go into Grand Central – that magnificent station – to ride the Metro North train to a stop in the Hudson Valley. Yesterday, after a writing class with the Akinyombo children in Poughkeepsie, I went with Todd and Donna Schmidt to walk a few miles of the wooded Aqueduct Trail near Sleepy Hollow (think Washington Irving and the Headless Horseman). Most notably, we spotted the 1.4 million mausoleum of Lenora Helmsley through the trees and also of Walter Chrysler. If beauty mattered, I’d ask to be buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Meanwhile, Laurence had arrived in Tarrytown, and was waiting for us in a park by the river. We picked him up, ate barbecue on Main, and then went back to the river to see the sunset. The fiery orange ball colored the sky and slipped behind the hills. The architectural wonder of the Tappan Zee Bridge glowed with lavender lighting. We rumbled back into the city on the train with its view of the Hudson River.

Soon now we’re going to meet friends in Flushing Meadows. I expect thousands to be there with their soccer balls and barbecues. It’s spring, and our small apartments cannot hold us.

Happy spring to you. Plant some radishes and garden lettuce for me. Berniece