I skipped my post-surgery rehab exercises and went for a walk in the park. I didn’t get far before sitting on a bench seemed the better course. It was a warm day, and we’ve had few of those this spring. There was a time when the weather and the feel of it would have put wings on my feet, and I would have joined the runners who were all around me exulting in the light-heart-light-feet morning. Doing that on a day like this one would magically lift the spirit. But then, so can a long moment of quiet on a park bench.

In openings between scudding clouds, the sun spotlights me like a stage actor delivering a soliloquy. A male cardinal – the first I’ve seen this year – lights on a nearby branch, shares the sun spot with me, and renders a bird-song soliloquy. He seems to be performing just for me – maybe telling me about his adventures down south while I was up here watching ice form on the Hudson. Of course, he’s also trying to attract a mate. It is spring, after all.

In front of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument to the Civil War dead, a very much alive twenty-first-century woman tosses a rubber ball to a toddler. I guess the woman is the child’s mother. She might be a minder, though. There are lots of them in this neighborhood where two-earner households are pretty much the rule. And since, like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the newspapers (and on the internet and see on television), the woman may be a groomer. To hear Republicans tell it, wherever there are liberal Democrats, there are groomers, and this zip code is one of the bluest in the country.

After a bit, the cardinal and the woman and child leave me to look down at the Hudson through greening trees and think of other things.

I wonder what an old man sitting on my bench would have thought about when I was the age of that child? Certainly not groomers. Not snowflakes, LGBTQ, QAnon, Covid, CRT, BLM either. Nor the UN, NATO, or EU. Those were concepts and concerns yet to come. It would have been about 1940, so the war would have been on his mind. He probably smoked cigarettes. He gave little or no thought to the environment. The Hudson would have been curdled by garbage and sewage and industrial waste; the air dense with matter no one should breathe.

One thing would have been the same for him then and me now – the warm sun of early spring and the tulips and cherry trees in bloom. Or had the flowers and trees been planted by then? I’ll look it up when I’m back in the apartment.

The subject changes. Will I continue to get stronger and one day be able to walk the several-mile length of Riverside Park like I would do last spring? Perhaps follow the trail by the river south to the Battery at the end of the island. Maybe on a good day, even all the way from the Battery to the George Washington Bridge at the north end? I’ll work on it.

I used to like running long races, but my back no longer permits it. I do still enjoy long walks and hiking. When my spine failed me a few months ago, Ann and I had planned a trip to the Cotswolds area of England for a couple of weeks of what the Brits charmingly call rambling. Nothing too ambitious. No serious hills. Preferably with welcoming pubs along the way. A pint and a ploughman’s plate are a happy pick-me-up on a long ramble. Much more refreshing than choking down Gatorade at marathon aid stations. Now that I think of it, I’m going to put the Cotswolds on the calendar for next fall. I should be ready by then.