Divergent

Talking on the phone this morning to our boy who drove off to work a few hours ago. He was sitting in his car on a street in Harlem waiting for someone to open the gate to the job site. I was in my room waiting for morning....which was actually kinda, sorta, here.

He was struggling for air...I could hear him breathe...and we  talked about it. How thick it was and hard to breathe down there. Up here, with this cold rolling down from Canada, the air is like cold water or some amazing magical elixir that inspires and invigorates. I find myself dragging in great lungfuls when I take the doggy out or go for a short bird walk.

It's as if you can feel it all the way to your toes. 

I asked him what it looked like where he was, so he texted me a photo. Tall buildings, a scattering of construction equipment, Christmas trees of lights clustered here and there. 

I could hear buses grunting and puffing and he mentioned a blond in airplane pants walking past.

We talked about the Latin names of trees..don't know how we got on that...the fact that the sap is finally running I guess...and got through some Acers and Quercuses before the subject changed....

A few minutes later Daisy and I were outside the back door, with a mango sunrise popping over in the old horse pasture, oh so delightfully farther north than just last week. Inky outlines of the trees in the hedgerow stitched a pattern in dark and light against it.

Red-winged Blackbirds were singing for the first time this year. 

A Northern Cardinal pumped out a song so frantic I wondered if he ever stopped to draw a breath. And, oh that air...

It isn't quite nine degrees here....8.6 in fact. Down there it is 22. There the light comes from security fixtures, here from the rising sun. They have cruddy air, we have air so clean it squeaks, I swear. They have blonds; we have blond coyotes. Buses or bird song, take your pick.....

It's all NY, but what a divergence...and in much more than temperature.

I am grateful that we get to live on this side of the divide....