Snapshot of my father

Springtime on a park bench in New York City.  Black and white emphasizes the harsh lines of this city.  There are no fanciful West Coast purples, no wild pinks, no terracotta.  Life here is much more serious.  My father stares into the camera with a hard, tight smile.  Both fists are unconsciously clenched.  Soon, he will rise from the photograph and walk on his short legs to the subway station.  If he wanted to, he could easily travel to the Bronx where he played stickball as a boy in a vacant lot.  He could easily see the building where he grew up, easily imagine the couch in the living room where he slept, see the old, cracked linoleum on the kitchen floor, the floral curtains, the overstuffed armchair with its massive claw feet.  He could easily smell the lingering odor of salty chicken soup that permeated the building, easily imagine the anxious, hunched-over attitude of his people nursing and guarding their chance of survival.  For my grandfather, a Russian Jew fleeing from pogroms - the streets of New York were surely paved with gold.  To this day, whenever the glint of glass or metal assaults my eye on the dirty streets of New York, I think of my family's poor beginnings in tis country, of how hard they worked to make a decent life.