Subsiding summers

I have been at New York Center for over a month now. By this time, you would imagine I have become a New Yorker, a flaneur following in the footsteps of the great Parisian poets, and a part of this is true, even if I still get confused at what happens to the avenues after Lexington Avenue. I discover that the city always marvels, never ceases to awe in its rhythmic movement that some find overwhelming.

In the office, we are getting ready for another year. The teachers are on vacation for two weeks, and there are no kids hopping up and down the steps or roming around in the gym. Surrounded by the strange silence broken only once in a while by the ring of a phone, I prepare forms for the parents and translate documents. How do you say pink eye, wheezing cough, or low-fat milk in Spanish?

The clinic is also relatively quiet given that most of the parents take vacations to their home countries at the end of August. Despite the lull, the few families that do not leave trickle in asking for physical forms and prescriptions. I have made all the necessary preparations for the school supplies donation drive we will be having at the start of September, and I have finished the back-to-school brochures for parents that contain useful information about sleep, food, and school anxiety.

Beth Kastner, the psychologist at Settlement Health, is helping me to find a research position in order for me to get more experience for graduate school. I have sent my resume to Mount Sinai Hospital, and certain departments have emailed me back requesting a phone interview. Being able to research in a hospital setting would give me the opportunity to assess whether research is something important to me.

As the autumn chill overtakes the summer heat, I venture out to new corners of the city: Coney Island, East Village, and Washington Heights. In a city such as this, my small-town eye focuses on the quotidian details: the slight tilt of the N train as it turns toward Astoria, the little girl at the clinic who always want to color a picture of Little Mermaid, the farewell between teacher and student at the close of another year, the lonely wanderer in the morn that seems to herald the beginning of another day.