The sky over Brooklyn turned the color of a bruise around four o'clock on Wednesday and I had exactly zero plans for it.
I was sitting in Fort Greene Park, having taken the 2 to a transfer to the G because I'd promised myself a long walk after a long week. Reading a book I wasn't really reading. Watching dogs that were better dressed than me.
Then the first fat drop hit the page. Then twenty more. Then the whole of Fort Greene Park emptied toward the big tree near the top of the hill like everyone had rehearsed it.
A June thunderstorm in NYC doesn't ask permission. It just arrives, soaks the warm pavement until the whole city smells like the first monsoon rain back home, that specific petrichor my Nani called the smell of relief.
I ended up under the tree with maybe a dozen strangers. A guy with a guitar he was desperately trying to keep dry. A mother and her two kids stamping in the puddles, fully embracing it. An older woman who looked at the chaos and just laughed, the kind of laugh that forgives the whole world.
Nobody complained. That's the part that got me. In Fort Greene Park, soaked through, nobody was annoyed. We were all just delighted little animals waiting out the weather together.
The storm lasted maybe twelve minutes. Then the sun came back like it had never left, the kind of golden after-rain light that makes Brooklyn look unreasonably cinematic.
I walked back down toward Lafayette completely drenched, sandals squelching, hair a disaster, grinning like a fool. A Fort Greene Park thunderstorm will do that. Strip away your plans and remind you that the best parts of New York are never the ones you scheduled.
Let the rain ruin your outfit sometimes. It's worth it.
Love,