On Being the Giver
It was a cold and windy night in New York City, as many February nights are despite the steamy August assertions that winter will somehow never come. Four-foot high snow banks lined the streets, grey sludge poured over the tops of my woefully ineffective snow boots, and the streets of the city that doesn’t sleep were deserted aside from a few errant yellow cabs and the fleet of tireless snowplows.
The snow, the tail end of what was being called a “snowmageddon”, had only stopped a half hour before I got to the parking garage where I was to meet my boyfriend’s father, Hume. I had left my parent’s home in Westchester shortly after sunrise. “We apologize for the inconvenience, we will be moving shortly,” lost all meaning somewhere around hour three of what was meant to be an hour-long train ride into the city. Ice on the tracks, they said.
Earlier that day, my boyfriend, Ian, had told me that he had come down with a cold. Maybe a minor flu. There was a storm rolling in and I was a few hours away in the best of weather. He was comfortably lounging on his parent’s couch, their housekeeper Claudia bringing him warm soup and hot tea on a rotating basis. Knowing these facts, I decided that the only thing to do was to rush to his side. He needed me…