I spent Sunday afternoon on a stoop in Harlem and I have decided this is the correct way to be alive.
My friend Danielle lives on 130th, off Lenox, in a brownstone that's been in her family for decades. She invited me over for "nothing," which turned out to be the best kind of something.
We just sat on the stoop. That's it. That was the plan. In August, a Harlem stoop becomes a whole living room — kids running the hydrant, someone's speaker playing old soul, a domino game two doors down getting genuinely heated.
A neighbor, Miss Gloria, came out and, without asking, handed me a plate. Rice, beans, some kind of stewed chicken that I inhaled shamelessly. "You're too skinny," she said, which is a sentence I have heard on two continents now, so I know it is universal grandmother.
It reminded me so much of the way my building in Ahmedabad worked. Doors open. Everyone in everyone's business. A plate always appearing. I didn't know New York could feel like that until I sat on a Harlem stoop and let it.
Because the thing they don't tell you about NYC is that the loneliness and the community live on the same street. You can go a week barely making eye contact, and then someone's aunt is feeding you rice on a Sunday and calling you too skinny and the whole city recalibrates.
We stayed out till the light went orange over the brownstones. Danielle's cousin lost at dominoes and took it personally. Miss Gloria refilled my plate before I could refuse. Somebody's kid asked me why my henna was fading and I let her trace the leftover lines on my palm.
I took the 2 train home from 135th feeling stuffed and soft and lucky.
A Harlem stoop on a Sunday. That's the whole review. Five stars.
Come sit outside. Someone might feed you.
Love,