New York City, April 2, 2015

★★★★★ Brightness coming sideways from the east inked most of the raised letters of the Martin Luther King Jr. quotes — “human dignity” — on the rusted-steel sculpture outside the high school. Indoors had been nauseatingly stuffy, but now, outdoors, it was time for the new light jacket, over the new discount-priced cotton-blend sweater. On the way back uphill from the preschool, leaving the river winds behind, it was time for the jacket, in its first day of service, to come off. Bright dust drifted in the stairway up to Prince Street. The sun was both soft and dazzling. All around, coat fronts were hanging awkwardly unfastened, or the coats were already slung over arms. A girl exited the school door and thrust up an arm, with a shout of “Spring is here!” The seven-year-old swapped out his quilted parka for a hoodie and set off to fetch his brother from preschool, bouncing and thrumming. It was like June, he said. A marvel. A knot of school safety police broke into an intermittent trot toward some sort of trouble by the bodega. A police van joined them; a youth on a bench across the way, watching the fuss, carefully lifted off his ballcap and reversed it. The three-year-old held up his Batman figures to the open apartment window to try to make their capes blow in the breeze, and was tearfully disappointed to be discouraged from dangling one out past the sill, over the twenty-seven-story drop. He was going to stay there in the little space by the window, he said, till he stopped being sad. It was not long. The shirts of winter went into the washing machine for a long, purgative soak cycle. A golden contrail slowly slackened and below it an airplane laid down a new clean silver-blue one. A restaurant had opened while no one was paying attention, so why not order sandwiches? Why not skip the delivery button? The children put their shoes back on and headed out into the evening without even a hint of complaint.