The sun comes up

1.
Sal owns a little coffee shop across the street from the school I work at. There's no name on the outside of it, or anywhere inside either. We just assume it's called Sal's. In the window, there is a light up neon coffee cup and the word "rolls", also neon. Sal never opens the gate that protects the windows, so except for the door being open, and the crowd that sits on the bench outside, the place always looks closed. Inside, there are two large tables and some plastic patio chairs, and almost always between 9 am and 5 pm, there's a big card game going on. The card gamers, and the crowd watching the game, are friends of Sal's, men from the neighborhood between the ages of 50 and 70. They nod at me when I come in. It's cluttered inside; there are statues of the saints scattered around, and the walls are covered with framed posters of Frank Sinatra at different ages and points in his career. And the Pope. There are pictures of the Pope behind the counter, on the back wall next to Frank's pictures and on the wall and next to the cooler, which is filled with Manhattan espresso soda that no one ever seems to buy. Beyond the front room, through a little doorway, Sal's house begins. His kitchen is right there, you can see right into it, and his mother is there, always, in a flowered housedress. She is in her seventies, maybe early eighties, and watches a little black and white television and waits. There is no menu at Sal's. When I go there for lunch, I just ask Sal, "Whadya got today?" I say it with a not very good Carroll Gardens accent. Sal tells me the special that day. "We got meatballs, real good, on a hero" or "I got chicken cutlets, all breaded and with sauce" or "we cooked up a whole roast beef for today". Sal's mother makes everything herself: the sauces, the meat, sometimes she bakes the rolls too. She is a wonderful cook. She makes what she feels like making, on any given day, which I like. I like walking in not knowing what I will leave with. Outside on the bench in front of Sal's, Ronny sits in his sunglasses, whatever the weather, and wants to talk about books. He reads books about the most obscure topics in the world. The life of ants. The history of the necktie. How roads are planned in rural communities. I'm never able to add anything to his explanations, but I ask questions and I'm interested, and he likes that. Ronny thinks I should marry a good Italian boy, one of his nephews, or the son of friends. He has photographs of them in his wallet, big thick-necked men with crew cuts, grinning in front of birthday cakes, or at the beach, or in bars on Long Island. I tell him I'll think about it. The man with the fruit truck sits on this bench for much of the day too. I don't know his name, and he doesn't know mine. He always asks about my family and my job and whether I go to mass regularly. As he organizes the apples and mangoes in boxes on his truck, he worries about souls. "There's a church right there," he always says, pointing across the street. "But I'm Episcopalian," I tell him. "They won't even let me go to mass in there." But this excuse doesn't seem to faze the fruit man. "God don't see it that way, honey, ok? He just wants you in there." The fruitman plays with his worn baseball cap as he talks. He taps his knees nervously with his hands.

We were sitting in the grass, and I was looking at your feet and feeling shy. You asked me what I did all day, and I told you about school. But I forgot to tell you about the other people I see every day, these people I don't know, but love anyway.

2.
My parents are visiting from Wisconsin for the weekend. They got in late last night and this morning they took the subway down to Park Slope. I watch them as they cross the street, my mom such a sweet smiler, hurrying across the street, my dad, grumbling and purposeful in his street crossing. They get to the corner where I'm standing. We are all grinning. "It's our Sesa," my mom says, using my childhood nickname. I throw my arms around them.

We spend the early afternoon at the farmer's market and walking through the park, my arm around my dad's shoulder for a while, then my mom's. It's a lovely fall day and we are walking and laughing and I'm so happy to see them I feel shaky. In the park, we run into two kids in my class, or rather they run into us; we are talking on a park bench and making fun of the recumbent bikes. My parents, as always, are charming conversers. They talk to the kids' parents, offering advice and anecdotes and kindness; the kids, for their part, are completely floored by the fact that not only do I have parents, but I go to the park, and I drink apple cider. Talking to them, I remember a time I saw my third grade teacher buying broccoli at the grocery store and was shocked for days that she had a life outside of school. And that it involved something so specific as the cooking and eating of vegetables. My mom walks through the park observing little things everywhere. Today I notice the way she talks about these things the way someone else might suddenly realize they have their mother's eyes or their father's nose; I see the same kind of things she does and I talk about them the same way. We are both fascinated with small things, and little changes: the leaves turning red on just one branch of a tree, the way the bees have slowed down in the cooler weather and seem to be flying in slow motion, a picnic basket being carried by, the dragonflies flitting crazily around the meadows.

Later in the afternoon, my parents go off to a show near Union Square with a friend of mine, and I go off to meet friends at Greenwood cemetery. The catacombs are open today, which doesn't happen often, and I want to see them again. We wander through the graves, not talking much. There is mysterious piano music coming from somewhere, and we walk over hills and down little paths, making a game out of finding it. The music leads, as we suspect, to the Steinway family tomb, which is open today too. There is a piano player outside (the source of the music), and we consider asking her to play some Billy Joel. The catacombs are beautiful, and today, they echo with the voices of people helping out with the tour; they are reciting the names of people interred there. Gary takes my picture in one of the little rooms that line the corridor, and the result is the kind of camera shy moment I've gotten used to after this many years: eyes ridiculously wide and a little wild. Uncertain whether to smile, what kind of smile.

We throw ourselves down in the grass for a while, reading the inscriptions on ancient tombstones and looking around. Using my bag as a pillow, I lie back and look up at the sky, which is gray and bright at the same time. The grass is soft and long. I think: it would be so easy to fall asleep now. But I don't have time. It's quiet here, and beautiful, a perfect fall afternoon, and I can't stop smiling.

I meet my parents in the city for dinner, and afterwards, we stroll through the East Village. They are full of questions about the neighborhood and the buildings we pass. Then it gets later and they are ready to leave for their old and familiar hotel on the upper west side, the one they have been staying in since I was 7. I am going back to Brooklyn, and I am eating the cream puff I just bought from the Japanese cream puff shop on Broadway, Beard Papa's, and as always, I am clumsy and full of pastry concentration. There is powdered sugar everywhere, drifting down onto the platform where I am waiting for the subway. Then there is movement in the corner of my eye and I look up, startled. My mom is standing across the station, on the opposite platform. She is beaming. Through the artificial glare of the subway station lights, my parents and I wave and wave to each other. Then the uptown R train thunders into the station, and out again, and they are gone.

*This update typed while watching bad movies with Troy, Katie, Brian and Jacob.