The Moment Just Before

WRITE ON NEW YORK

Just before you fall in love. Just before you drink your wine. Just before you pack your bags. Just before you see your kid for the first time. Just before you write.

Just before the buds open, the flowers break through the ground, the world bursts into green in the first shock of leafy spring that changes everything you see into something softer and more wonderful. It only lasts a moment. Everything is waiting.

The birds know. They’re celebrating. Flying high in the trees, calling out, letting themselves be spotted perching on the naked branches, too giddy with the coming of warmth and the frisky pleasures of nest-building to bother with you, walking by, looking up. It only lasts a moment. Soon it will be all about the gathering of daily food, the constant fixing of the nest, the tiresome routine.

Just before is the rare time. When it passes, when whatever you’re just about to experience actually happens, it may not be as glorious as you expected. Anticipation beats reality. Anticipation is yours. If you can imagine the thrilling first kiss, the blissful run, the ecstatic move into the sky-high penthouse you’ve always dreamed of, you’re in good shape. You’re ready.

In the city right now, not only in Central and Prospect and Pelham Bay (the largest park with 2772 acres) but also in tiny front lawns and brownstone gardens and neighborhood green spaces, and in the squares of dirt that surround the street trees and in the canopy (of 5.2 million city trees) and window boxes and on pots on terraces, buds are swelling.

There will come a day, soon, when the encouragement of water and sunshine will coax the bursting forth. You know the day I mean. You look out your window, and everything is covered in fizzy new green. And then it’s over. The time just before comes to an end. It only lasts a moment.