Just Lovely

Dear Diary:

Walking into a coffee shop on Second Avenue and 63rd Street, I was having trouble opening the heavy door. A woman behind me grabbed it and held it open.

“Thank you,” I said. “Are you coming in or are you just lovely?”

“Both,” she said.

Eventually, we headed down Second Avenue together. She said she lived in Las Vegas now but loved New York. She said I looked like a New Yorker.

I said I was.

“Do you know someplace around here where I can get pound cake?” she asked.

I recommended a place three blocks away.

She frowned. I suggested a cafe that was closer.

“Oh forget it,” she said. “My husband doesn’t need it anyway.”

— Marion Barak

Loose Vegetables

Dear Diary:

I was in New York City for a summer program at NewYork-Presbyterian. I would often go downtown after classes ended for a late lunch in Chinatown and to buy some groceries before taking the Q and the 1 back to my Upper West Side apartment.

One sweltering July day when I had been extra ambitious in my grocery shopping, I waited 45 minutes for a 1 train and then had to squeeze into a completely packed car.

As the train left Times Square, I struggled to balance myself while unsuccessfully corralling my grocery bags around my feet.

By the time we left Columbus Circle, my tomatoes had rolled over several pairs of feet, my lettuce was under someone’s seat and I was more frustrated than I had been in a long time.

A gentle tap on my arm pulled me out of my self-pity. It was a young mother sitting nearby. She called her toddler onto her lap and then nodded at the newly empty stroller in front of her.

From there, we traveled uptown in companionable silence as her stroller overflowed with a watermelon, two cantaloupes and three bags of vegetables.

— Amelia Ng

Grand Time

Dear Diary:

I was on a downtown A in November 2023 when I noticed a happy family sitting across from me. Mom, dad and the children all appeared to be having a grand time.

It was relatively warm for the season, and dad was wearing shorts. He obviously did not care if anybody noticed that he was also wearing an ankle monitor on his left ankle.

As a criminal defense lawyer, I certainly noticed. When I got off the train, I smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. He smiled back at me.

— Robert Beecher

Wild and Free

Dear Diary:

We had been married a year and were living in Kew Gardens Hills when we decided to make a Target run at 9 p.m. with our 3-month-old. We could still live wild and free, right?

We picked out two bright-green lawn chairs that would fill our porch (really just a tiny slab of cement off the kitchen). We were not sure they would fit in our compact car, but we bought them anyway. Somehow, stuff always fits, we figured.

When we got to the parking lot, our baby ran out of his patience, and we realized the chairs would not fit after all.

A man approached us to help. The woman he was with called out to him.

“Stop chatting,” she said. “It’s after 10 o’clock.”

“They have a baby!” he yelled back.

He reached down, took the laces out of both of his sneakers and tied down our trunk.

I tried to pay him for the laces.

“Nah,” he said. “Just drive slow and take Jewel. You’ll make it.”

We did and we did.

— Avi Friedman

Summer Clearance

Dear Diary:

This occurred years ago, when I was a newly married New York City public-school teacher furnishing the new apartment my husband and I had moved into.

One late-August afternoon, I met two friends for lunch at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. Afterward, I walked to Bloomingdale’s to see if they had any items I could use in the apartment.

As I entered the store, I saw a sign hanging above the lower level: “Big Summer Clearance Sale.”

I went downstairs. To my amazement and delight, I saw tables overflowing with kitchen items like dishes and small electrical appliances; bathroom towels; and blankets, comforters, sheets and pillows for the bedroom. Everything I needed.

A young saleswoman offered to help me. I soon realized that I could not carry all of my purchases home on the subway.

The saleswoman said that Bloomingdale’s would deliver everything to my home at no charge and within a week.

I gave her my address: 495 East 55th Street.

She looked overjoyed.

“Sutton Place?” she asked.

I smiled.

“No,” I said. “Brooklyn.”

Her smile vanished. But my purchases were delivered within a week, as promised.

— Evelyn Oberstein