Summer is summering, and an empty New York minute

Waiting out a heatwave and a (mostly) photo essay of The Cloisters.

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There’s a point in summer when I suddenly become painfully aware of time. It’s like a light switch. It usually comes in early to mid July when back-to-school ads start creeping into our headspace. I’ve already heard whispers that Halloween has already landed at some big box stores.

Absurd.

This is the point when I mildly panic at how fast summer is flying by and I shift from luxuriating in unscheduled days to furiously making reservations and putting things down on the calendar. It happens every year. We scramble to do all the summer things we like to do, ticking things off a list, before school begins again: a picnic in the park, a drive up to a Hudson River town, a trip to Robert Moses Beach, an outdoor movie, to name just a few.

There’s something to be said about the comfort of familiar seasonal rituals when July and August have always been like the wild west in terms of unscheduled routines. This year is an end of an era, as there are no guarantees that either kid will be home during summers in the future.

This is hitting particularly hard. There’s extra pressure to do all the summer things this year. The kid is feeling this too, which is not surprising since we seem to share the same sentimental brainwave. The things on her summer bucket list lean heavily on nostalgia, as if she is desperately trying to hold on to the edges of her childhood by revisiting places that she remembers fondly. A request for specific restaurants, a particular flavor at a certain ice cream shop, a visit to an often-frequented rose garden when we’re back in Seattle later this month.

One last summer to still be a kid. One last summer to relive childhood memories before moving to a new life in another state. It’s been interesting, from a mother’s perspective, to observe how the mind of your child works in order to cope with impending change.

And so we go out in this heat.

Every year, New Yorkers who choose to stay in town during the 4th of July experience a different New York when the city empties and the streets are eerily quiet. For those of us who have nowhere to go and no summer houses to escape to, we’re rewarded with a few days where we don’t have to fight crowds.

If there is any day of the year to zip freely around in your car without any worries of street parking anxiety, then it’s the 4th of July. It’s a good day to hit that popular restaurant or venue too. No lines, few people. It’s a noticeable change and it feels so civilized to be able to go to a museum at a leisurely pace and take it all in without being shuffled along with the crowds. That day, we took advantage of free passes that we’ve had tacked to our fridge for months and drove up the West Side highway to The Met Cloisters.

It’s amazing how you can consider a place one of your favorite spots in the entire city, yet nearly a decade can pass since your last visit. The kid had no recollection of it even though I kept insisting that surely she must remember the butterflies in the garden or the stone stairwell leading up from the entrance. It was a new experience for her, which at 17 and having lived here her whole entire life, cemented her love of the city even more.

But when city life gets too much, finding pockets of quiet that make you feel like you’re not in NYC is golden. The Cloisters, in upper Manhattan, is at the top of this list. The gothic chapels and quadrangle-shaped cloisters are reconstructed from stonework and architectural elements that were transported from mainly four abbeys from France in the 1930s. When I try and process the amount of time and patience it must have taken to carve tiny biblical scenes in ivory or the detailed illustrated manuscripts in gold leaf, I have to remind myself that artisans had something that we lack now: less distractions.

The three enclosed gardens are filled with flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruit trees that were all grown and used in medieval times. The museum has a table that identifies various plants that are currently in flower right now and I love this little detail so much.

“This doesn’t feel like NYC at all,” the kid exclaims standing in a garden surrounded by quince and fig trees that looks out onto the Hudson River.

“No,” I answer back. “It really doesn’t.”

Right now, we’re in the middle of a prolonged heatwave. It sounds like much of the world is too. The air is still and heavy, making it hard to even breathe. Soupy is a word I use to describe these unbearable humid days. Waiting for subways in airless subterranean platforms is not for the elderly or weak, much less the rest of us.

But we’re motivated by how quickly we’re crossing off each day on the calendar. We shake off our lethargic energy as we wait for the day the heat and humidity will break, and start to tick things off our summer list.

P.S. I’m taking a break from weekly drawings. I’ve had to pick up some extra freelance work as we adjust to a new routine and budget. Something’s gotta give, and it’s always been the art. Same problem, different year. I really don’t know how to change this.

I might do more photo essays like this too and a little less writing the rest of summer. I hope you don’t mind. Could just be a summer slowdown in growth and views, but as I examine and question how best to use my time to support my family, financially and otherwise, everything is back on the chopping block.

Stay cool, stay hydrated.

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Related reading

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Links and things

• For New Yorkers, Culture Pass, is a fantastic program that gives access to city museums and other cultural institutions with your library card for free. A former co-worker takes full advantage of this program and I have no idea what took me so long. It does take a bit of checking in with reservations as they fill up, but we’ve used it twice this summer already and this is how I’ll be going to museums from now on because let’s face it, entry fees aren’t cheap.

• Telling My Daughter the List of Things I’ve Been Wrong About (The Rumpus)
  A beautiful long-form essay from poet, Sarah Carson, who is writing about single motherhood.

• Michelle Zauner on rediscovering her own version of Korea (The Korea Times)

  Michelle is living my dream. Or maybe my kid studying in Seoul right now is living my dream. Or maybe I just need my own dream.

• I Have a Simple Solution to the College Essay Problem (Slate)
  It’s summer, which means millions of kids are spending their summer break writing college essays. I think the kid has some PTSD from the 19+ revisions that she worked on this time last year.

• Clackers: The Toy That Was Banned Just Because It Injured Kids (Groovy History)
  Nobody I ask ever seems to remember this toy, which I can attest was truly dangerous! I can’t even count the number of times I hit myself in the eye or the bruises I ended up on my arms.