New York City, January 22, 2018

★★★ The morning was chilly without being cold, and damp and grimy without being mucky. Sun glimmered halfway or maybe a third of the way into view. Birdsong bounced around; a sparrow, puffed up and brushy, loosed its voice from a bare branch of a skinny street tree. The sun lost its tenuous hold and a deeper chill arrived. The wait for the first-graders to show up in the schoolyard was boring and uncomfortable. In the span of an hour, the hoodie had gone from being enough to being a little less than enough.