Spring Storm

Umbrella Aftermath

Sometimes you just have to take it as it comes. We were in New York City, my sister, niece, and I, on our annual (or if we’re lucky, biannual) excursion to Manhattan. This is not something we take lightly; we plan, we consider, we process, and we research because New York is, hands down, our favorite city to explore (with the exception of Paris, which is mostly dream anyway).

We breathe in the warm, tar-scented air in the catacombs of Grand Central, join the throngs surging up the ramp, and emerge into that golden palace under the glittering constellations. This is my definition of being born again, especially after a long, gray, Cape Cod winter.

And even though it’s April and it’s cloudy and cool, we have always had good luck with New York weather, which is a good thing because we walk miles and miles for the two and a half days we’re there, enough to completely erode new taps on my boots and add another layer of rust to my creaky knee.

We see gorgeous Morgane Le Fay dresses spinning in mid-air on Wooster Street and weary black skirts jammed on circular rounders at the Arthritis Thrift Store up in the seventies on Third. We see little fingerling potatoes in baskets at the Union Square Market and green grasses atop the High Line walkway. We see tea shops with portraits of the Queen on Greenwich and fanciful French chocolates on Watt.

So that Saturday afternoon, sitting in a tiny restaurant called Moon Cake, we saw the rain begin and thought, “Oh well, it’s just rain…we’ll manage it.” And we did, for an hour or two, until the wind picked up, and we held our black umbrellas like shields against the force of it. But it really wasn’t until evening that we felt the true force of a New York spring gale. The minute I stepped out of our hotel to leave for dinner, the wind bit into my umbrella and snapped a tiny plastic ring that held all the vital parts together. The umbrella collapsed on my head like a witch’s version of a dunce cap.

Coming out of the restaurant a couple of hours later, I was swept across the street by the driving wind and rain to a Duane Reade, where I hoped to buy another umbrella…a notion if there ever was one. My remarkable, intrepid niece somehow got us a cab, and that night I listened to the rain beat on the air conditioner and the winds whip up and down Irving Place.

The next morning dawned fresh and cold and bright and still, the streets littered with cherry blossoms and the skeletons of umbrellas. Some splayed out in the middle of the avenues like black pinwheels, some clinging to the edges of trash bins, others like the one pictured here surrendering to the elements and letting itself be blown clear across the sea, perhaps to an Irish headland, or the Tower of London, or a cafe on the tiny Rue St-Hyacinthe.