Kind of a Big Deal by Mary Ann Marlowe

Author:Mary Ann Marlowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mary Ann Marlowe
Published: 2020-09-02T00:30:17+00:00

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Lucy

I wished I’d gotten Noah’s suggestion to wear comfortable shoes before I’d walked three blocks across Manhattan. On the map, everything looked so close. How could it take so long to walk three blocks? Of course, people always complained that the National Mall was way bigger than they’d expected. Maybe we humans didn’t have the capacity to understand how vast the world actually was.

I’d thought I knew how crowded a city could be, but it felt like the entire world had come to New York. Times Square had been a crush of tourists, hawkers, and a whole lot of filthy costumes. Pushing a stroller through that madness had nearly driven me to give up and spend the rest of the morning in the hotel, ordering room service. Mom insisted it would get easier once we got across town, and it had. But then I was assaulted by the smells. And I couldn’t understand why anyone bothered to take a car when the roads looked more like parking lots.

“People come here on purpose?”

People lived here?

Noah lived here?

We made it to the MoMA somehow unscathed. I’d meant to drag Mom and Owen to see Van Gogh’s Starry Night, make a quick tour, and then take an Uber to the Guggenheim for another whirlwind visit. Then we could grab lunch before I needed to meet a curator at the Cooper-Hewitt. But once in the MoMA, Owen wanted to get out and walk, so then we had to stop and check out every sculpture. We ended up losing two hours and decided to grab a bite there.

To get Owen to agree to the Friday morning art museums, I’d promised him we’d go to the zoo in Central Park on Saturday. I planned to squeeze in a peek into the Metropolitan Museum. I’d also told Owen we’d try to make it to the Museum of Natural History at some point, but I was beginning to think I may have over-planned for two days. It might require a second trip to take it all in.

And I hadn’t even thought about the other sites we’d have to neglect.

In D.C. we’d just go across the Mall and into another museum or to the Capitol building or the White House. You could see most everything in a couple of days if you planned well. Here it took more effort to get from place to place. But knowing we’d have to grab a taxi to get to the next museum had encouraged us to stay longer and pay more attention. I wondered if people would get more out of the National Gallery if it were more isolated. It would be easy to get lost in one museum, and we still had so many more to see.

Maybe I was beginning to understand the appeal of New York a little bit. I was tired, but so energized by all the possibilities.

Mom went through the cafeteria line while I settled Owen in at a table. “Hey, buddy. Did you like this museum?”

“Oh, yeah!” His shoulders seesawed in his little dance.

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