Spring in New York is an incredible contrast of the old and the new. On the Upper West Side, this change is complemented by a community comprised mostly of the very old and the very young.

Today, Calvin and I walked for an hour in Riverside Park. There we saw children playing, moving in energetic bursts over the newly grown grass.

We also watched the groups of old people, set out on park benches beside their caretakers, soaking up the sun their younger counterparts sprout and bloom beneath.

One gets the feeling the day rolls pleasantly by for these park go-ers. For the children, I imagine time flies…particularly because they aren’t aware of its existence. For the old folks, I would think the day is short and filled with long periods of day dream.

Perhaps this is wrong of me to say. Perhaps I am mistakenly interpreting the long and displaced stares characteristic of the very old, but they seem to me the gaze of someone who’s slipped away. I hope for their sake that they’ve gone somewhere with tulips just as yellow and breezes just as sweet as they were in Riverside Park just this afternoon.