I just bought two enormous cinnamon rolls at Yardsale, a cafe in Brooklyn, and am drinking an iced americano because it’s that kind of morning, the kind where iced is the way to go. Each of the cinnamon rolls is topped by an ushanka of white frosting, equal in height almost to the pastry itself, and it occurs to me that I’ll need a knife to knock the towers down.
I followed a mother and child into the shop, which is where I was headed anyway as I’ve been a lucky and long devotee to their babka. The daughter carried a backpack and the mother carried the daughter as a backpack and they talked about a journey somewhere on a bus that they would rent with a group. The girl’s shoes had satin bows and faux pearl chains on them.
Now I sit in the window to watch the morning alone for a moment. There are the sounds of traffic, people chatting, Patsy Cline on the stereo. A conversation about fan fiction, the comforting clatter of horns, brakes. I watch a little bus go by, and a street sweeper that swirls up brown leaves into the air, and a minivan that gives up its effort to parallel park on the opposite side of the street and flips around to glide easily into a space on this side.
So many stories in this small section of a single street in this enormous and bustling city, so many worries and so many joys, so many hopes and so many heartbreaks. I do better when I remember this about the world, that we are all carrying the multitudes we contain.
A woman walks in to ask for a hot chocolate. I notice a mezuzah on the door frame. She walks out again. It’s Friday, and we all have places to go.
