I had one job this morning: get to the studio on time, holding an iced coffee, without becoming a cautionary tale.
I failed at the 135th Street station.
The lid betrayed me. The whole coffee went down the front of my white linen shirt and across the platform in a brown river, ice skittering everywhere. On the 2 train platform in Harlem at 8am, this is approximately the worst place to fall apart, because everyone is grimly efficient and you are now an obstacle.
I just stood there. Soaked. Doing that thing where you laugh because the alternative is crying on public transit.
And then a woman — older, gorgeous headwrap, the kind of presence that makes you stand up straighter — opened her bag, handed me a stack of napkins and a Tide pen. An actual Tide pen. Who carries a Tide pen. Heroes, that's who.
"Dab, don't rub," she said, like a general issuing orders. I dabbed. She nodded approval. "You'll be fine, baby. White always comes out if you catch it fast."
The 2 train came and she got on a different car and I never even got her name. But this is the New York nobody puts on the postcards. Underneath all the hardness, the city is full of strangers carrying Tide pens for emergencies that aren't even theirs.
Morning coffee and the 2 train almost ruined me and a stranger in Harlem saved me, and I think about that ratio a lot. How easily a bad day tips into a good one because one person decided to look up.
I made it to the studio only six minutes late, faintly smelling of coffee, shirt damp but no longer a crime scene. My boss didn't even notice. The city had already absorbed the drama.
There's a Hindi phrase, "insaaniyat," basically humanity, the decency we owe each other. I got a full dose of it on a subway platform before 8:15am.
Keep a Tide pen. Be the stranger.
Love,