My rounds usually include the pharmacy – have to refill that inhaler prescription, just in case – Key Food, and today, the liquor store, for some cooking sherry. The woman in front of me continues to make trips to the back of the store, ferrying three 1.75 liters of Skye vodka, and several bottles of wine to the counter. She must have a car because I can’t imagine how she is going to carry all that liquor home.
While I fill a pie crust with apples it slowly starts to dawn on me – all my beloved New York places that are closing – the coffee shops, the book stores, even the Botanic Garden. Really? Well, I suppose the desperation for nature during this beautiful spring would prevent Brooklynites from socially distancing. New York has changed so much – even the skyline of 2005 that we just saw in Mr. and Mrs. Smith the other night is no longer the same – and what keeps me grounded is my burger at Gracie’s Corner, where I’ve eaten since my family had “an account” in the 1970s, and my book habit at the Strand. How odd that in some kind of last-supper endeavor, I had just planned on visiting all the diners on my New York Diner Map – it was going to be a spring-into-summer project. I was even dialing up old friends for research: “What’s the name of the one that was on Columbus and 86th? Was it Three Brothers? Or Three Star?
Yes, the things we take for granted, until, just like that, everything has changed. And everything you do suddenly comes into question.