Welcome to this week’s edition of The Nature Crow, my column in which I explore and reflect on the wonder of nature, human and otherwise. The Nature Crow is a section of my larger Substack publication, Look Homeward, Horse.
New York City shines like a beacon, glitters with lights on streets and in windows, and beams with the dreams of eight million souls on any given day. Recently, however, the city experienced an extra fresh and spangly sparkle. Not because the Knicks won the National Championship. Not because the violent crime rate is lower than it’s been in the past five years. Not because Lei won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant on the very day our daughter Anna started working there. No, the fresh little light that brightened the whole city was the presence of Ruby, our brilliant gem of a granddaughter, who visited New York with me to celebrate turning ten years old.
Spreading trails of cheer, Ruby scampered high on brick walls and low in subway tunnels. “Look, Mimi, this is such a cute dog!” she cried upon seeing the first twenty dogs on our visit. She stopped to pat each one.
“You can’t pat every dog in the city,” my daughter Anna and I said, so she turned her attention to the pigeons.
“Hello, buddy,” Ruby whispered, crouching to encourage each pigeon to come eat from her hand, never successful but ever determined. “That one is so cute!” she squealed, pointing to a brown pigeon, or a black pigeon, or a pigeon with a limp, or any old pigeon.
How she loved FAO Shwartz, where she left with a handful of Schleich horses and a precious stuffed animal, a pigeon of course. She named her pigeon Liberty and carried it everywhere, and the streets sparkled in her trail.
Oh, to be ten years old in New York City! To count the trees, the skyscrapers, and the ferry boats while skipping circles around your grandmother and aunt. To play on the public playground and discover that even though the children around you speak different languages, excellent playmates are excellent playmates, and communication springs from a whole lot more than words. To have an ice cream cone for dinner at Lady Moo Moo, where folks bring their dogs into the store with them to order. The dogs, having received word of Ruby from Georgia through the dog grapevine, tugged at their leashes for a gentle scratch on the head.
How the city thrummed as we made our way through Central Park, where hundreds of fans gathered for a public watch party for game four of the NBA playoffs. Thousands of pigeons cooed their hellos as we approached Lyric Theater on 43rd Street, where a performance of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” awaited. Of all the 1,622 fans staring slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the magic on the stage, an extra circle of pixie dust enveloped orchestra seat 22, Row X, where Ruby sat, perched on her Wizard Cushion, leaning in to catch every word, every effect.
After the show, we met the luminous Emmet Smith, who acted in the starring role of Albus Potter, backstage. And oh, what magic lay behind the curtain! The actors! The dressing rooms! The ropes and ribbons and rotating stage! And then, Emmet pulled a prop from the very play, a letter, and signed it over to Ruby, thus sealing the wonder forever in ink.
We made our way home on the subway, still brightly lit in the City That Never Sleeps. Ruby rested her Harry Potter hatted head on my shoulder. The city and the thrill of the day whooshed by as we headed to Brooklyn and Anna’s home. But now the city was glum, and everyone stared at their cell phones, watching their beloved Knicks lose to the Spurs in a sound stomping at half time.
We left the subway and what was that? Was that a rowdy round of cheers we heard? And that? Another? Soon we turned onto Irving Street and walked right up on a sidewalk watch party where grown men jumped up and down in front of the projector which displayed a nail-biter of a basketball game. And the Knicks were ahead! Then the Spurs were ahead! Then the Knicks! Then the Spurs!
“Have some steak! Have some shrimp!” one of the men yelled over the ruckus to us.
“Today’s my birthday!” Ruby yelled back, and yes, it was true.
“Ruby’s birthday?!” the neighbors cried. “The Knicks have to win now!”
And they did. And the streets erupted. And the fireworks blazed in the sky. Ruby ran in circles with a young boy about her age, and everyone hugged and chanted, “Knicks in five! Knicks in five!”
In the morning, Ruby and I hailed an Uber and headed to the airport. All over the city, in Bushwick and on The Little Island and in Central Park and throughout Rockefeller Center, New York City’s angels waved young Ruby on her way. As for the extra sparkle that Ruby brought with her, it stayed with the city’s pigeons, whose iridescent feathers shimmer ever onward a little brighter than they did before Ruby came to the city.
Thank you for being here. I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of The Nature Crow. If you are of an ilk that prefers holding a physical book in your hand to a screen, consider one of my two books of collected columns, both available on Amazon.
Have a great day!
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A beautiful piece Mary truly encapsulating the excitement and pulse of the city.
Ruby will cherish this trip
Ruby will have this New York and her 10-year-old self of wonder and joy and her Mimi and every perfect thing about this city, in her self the rest of her life and will come back to this, even as an old woman. You and I both know this because we carry our own little girl selves, too, in some city of magic. Oh - and that Albus Potter letter! Star-struck and a little jelly!