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Sunday, September 23 Moving on
And now comes this thing they call "moving on." But how? How? This weekend, I let myself be social with someone other than dust-covered volunteers. I had dinner with Tray. She was wonderful, talkative and clearly worried about me. After dinner, and glasses of wine in a local place that played old Motown and '70s dance music, Tray said she needed to find a swing. It's an odd thing about this lady, who spends most of her life, being terminally adult. Tray has always been in charge; from the large company she runs a sizable part of, to somehow managing this high pressure job while tending to her precocious, adorable 4-year-old daughter. Tray is what you a call a self-imposed Super Woman. So what does she do to refuel? She swings. I've been best friends with her for 20 years now, but only discovered her little swing secret in the last year. I learned about it when we were searching for a place good enough to feed us, along Brooklyn's new restaurant row, Smith Street. "First I have to swing!" announced Tray, and I had a moment of confused horror, thinking she was either about to join a spouse-swapping group, or drag me to big band dance hall. But no, it was just a playground. She laughed at my bewildered expression as we waited for one of the real kids to give up their joy ride to the grown-up lady with the wild black hair. And then Tray climbed on her rubber strap and took off. She swung high, so high I got frightened watching from the safety of the ground. To tell you the truth, I've never been much of a swinger. I suffer from a life-long problem with motion sickness. I once even got seasick on a sea-saw. What can I say? I'm a bad ass mama, but when it comes to swings, I'm a total wuss. But I watched her then, and understood, like I understood this weekend, when we saw each other for the first time since the world ended on September 11th, that once her feet kicked off and she left the ground, Tray was truly flying. "I looooooooooove swings!" she said that night in Brooklyn, and she was a wonder, her dress flying up in the slapping wind she was creating, her hair jetting Medusa-like around her head, in some state of half-afro half-curl. She was beautiful. The playground in Tompkins Square Park was locked when we went on our swing search. "I guess the police figure they'll sell the slides for crack," I said, joking. "Don't worry, Tralena, I'm sure there's a see-saw treatment center that will take you off your swing addiction." But there wasn't, of course, and I fed her into a Yellow Cab, sad to see the disappointment on her suddenly girlish face. She had spent the week dealing with the duties of keeping her life together and that of her family, while her place of work was embedded in smoke, so close to ground zero that she had to produce two forms of ID to get to work. "I'm going to find a playground in Brooklyn," she said, seemingly unaware of the fact that it was close to midnight. I have no doubt that she found one. I thought of her swinging high into the air as I closed my eyes in the early morning and the image of her flying was so sweet, it rocked me to sleep.
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