What. A. Day.

Well.

I had a whole post written yesterday morning, one that I had yet to totally finish.  I stopped writing to stream an online yoga class.  After class I stepped outside to get a bagel (as one does after yoga, naturally).  After I'd eaten and was washing up a few dishes in the sink, I heard several shouts outside my apartment window and then a lot of horn honking.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Or, actually. Should we say - HERstory.

There are countless articles that will write about all of this more profoundly than I ever will.  I will leave them to it.  But it's worth capturing what my morning was like and what my tiny little pocket of Manhattan felt like yesterday when the tide finally turned, when decency and humanity were invited back into the White House after a long and challenging four years.

When I heard the screams and shouts outside, I hurried to my bay windows.  There is an Italian cafe at the end of my block, and if I lean forward enough by my window, I can see a glimpse of their tables on the sidewalk.  In front of one of those tables I saw a blonde woman jump up from her seat, raising her hands to the air in an act of joy.  More shouting.  More horns honking.  Immediately I turned on the television, grabbed my phone, and opened my laptop.  I wanted to read/hear/see what I suspected with my own eyes.  My phone wasn't loading and the websites hadn't called it yet.  CNN had, but I wanted to hear it from other media outlets too.  I called my Mom.  I could barely form a sentence. "Trump is done! I think he's out!" I started crying.  I hung up, grabbed my mask and headed outside where I ran immediately into sheer, spontaneous joy.  People were literally dancing in the streets, banging pots and pans, yelling and cheering happy shouts of glee.

Me? I couldn't stop crying.  And smiling.  And clapping.  And crying again.

Relief.  A long overdue exhale.  The hope of healing and renewal.  

The post that I hadn't finished yesterday morning was all about the magic of New York; how this city cast a spell on me at a young and impressionable age and how enamored I still am even when things look very different here in pandemic times and the future feels utterly uncertain.  There is no place like New York.

Some day I'll polish that post up and publish it, but I didn't come back to my computer yesterday.  For yesterday ended up being about living that magic, right as it was unfolding before all of us.  A flash in time, one I feel so grateful to have witnessed and to have been a small part of, particularly here on this little island of Manhattan with several hundred other (masked up) strangers.