The subway doors open and a toddler boards, pushed forward by her mother. I hop out of my seat, so they might sit, but the little girl, made much bigger by her puffy lavendar coat, does not want to sit. She wants to hold onto the pole with one hand, hold her half-eaten morning bun in the other, look up at me, blinking.

At my station the escalator is not running again, and so I run up the four flights of stairs to surface. Cross the street to say good morning to the old man who hangs out on the low stoop of a tenement in the mornings, sweeping and chatting. I tip my head to him, and he does the same, without interrupting his stream of conversation.

Into the corner store for a croissant and the man who says "Good morning, Beautiful." He does not know how much I need this today, both kindness and sustenance, kindness as sustenance. I cut through the little park by my office and that woman is there again, the one who takes off her shoes and walks on the gravel barefoot, the tiny cool stones crunching under her firm step. And now I start the business of this day.