Jackson Heights: A Walking Meditation in the Rain
The dark-haired little girl walks alongside her mom. Mom’s umbrella is upright, as one does in the rain, over her own head. The girl holds her black little-girl-sized umbrella horizontally in front of her, like a shield, in a battle with the world & the elements. With her other hand, she drags an empty baby doll stroller behind them, as one does when one is little.
A grey-haired man of indeterminate age and unknown ethnicity walks towards me. We cross each other where the sidewalk narrows – shoulders almost touching – as we pass the after-school playground with the primary-colored slides and jungle gyms, behind the Methodist church with its bright red doors. My eye catches on his red & yellow sneakers, a solitary splash of color, as he moves past the discarded orange and yellow children’s play tables left leaning on an old tree near the curb. For an instant we’re aligned, like planets in a solar system, the jungle gym, me, him, the discarded plastic tables, a tree. In that moment, I notice, he only has one hand.
Two older (than me) Hispanic ladies talk as they walk, side by side, not looking at each other. The inner woman pushes a black wire grandma shopping cart – with both hands – lightly packed with nothing worth remembering (to me). The outer older (than me) lady does most of the talking. Her wooden cane positioned in her companion’s shopping cart, at an angle through the wire lattice, she uses it like a rudder, steering the two of them safely down the sidewalk cracked by the roots of old (older than the three of us) trees.
A New York-based nonfiction writer, jodi sh. doff’s work frequently includes autobiographical elements of dementia caregiving, righteous feminist indignation, drug use, alcoholism and the struggle of being an unreliable narrator of your own life. Her work has been included in multiple anthologies and online in Hippocampus, Oldster, ShortReads, and LitroUK among others. https://substack.com/@onlythejodi