The Park

I wrote the following essay for a writing class last fall. We were supposed to do an observational piece -- just go to a place and watch and write. This is what I came up with. It was ultimately used as the basis for another article about this same park, about two blocks from our apartment building.

At eight o’clock in the morning, the sun shines brightly over the southeast corner of Park Newberry, a pricey and immaculately preserved brownstone of condos that border the south end of Chicago’s historic Washington Square Park. The sky on this unusually temperate late-October Sunday is almost completely clear, with only the wispiest of clouds to be seen. Nonetheless, a constant breeze forces locals to gather in patches of sunlight, to read the Trib, talk about grandbabies, let dogs sniff inquiringly at each other’s thither ends, or observe the fall splendor of the park’s abundant trees. The one-square-block park, broken into quartiles by diagonal paths from corner to corner, is showing signs of the season, as are its visitors, most of whom are wearing jackets and some scarves or hats.

On a pair of benches to the north of the centrally-located fountain, now drained in anticipation of freezing temperatures, sit an elderly couple. On one bench sits the man, clutching a newspaper that he only half pays attention to, dividing his time with pigeons that are crowding around him. The fat birds are a nuisance to most; six separate signs around the relatively small park request, “Please do not feed the pigeons.” The man, however, only partially heeds these instructions. He allows one in particular, with a luminescent green neck, to peck the crumbs from a paper parcel on the bench next to him. The others, their orange beady eyes attentive to the parcel, are shooed away with a long branch that the man wields like an old woman would her broom, shooing young idle children off her porch in the summertime. The man has thin white hair and glasses. His black and blue jacket, gray sweatpants, and white Adidas tennis shoes with black stripes almost completely disappear against a red turtleneck layered beneath the jacket. He lounges on the end of the bench, leaned up against the armrest and turned toward the prodigal pigeon, his body and legs turned diagonally against the back of the bench. Periodically, in addition to the paper and the pigeons, he glances at the woman to his right.

A middle-aged woman walking her mottled gray dog stops to pick up a fall leaf from a ring of leaves that have fallen from above. The leaves seem to create a tree skirt around the nearly naked baum. The woman’s dog stops and sniffs the ground as the owner discards one or two before finding just the right one. The dog leads her on.

On the bench next to where the elderly man sits is a woman, his wife. Her gray hair is piled on top of her head in a pseudo-stylish arrangement. She wears sunglasses and gold hoop earrings. Her black jacket and stirrup leggings are black, set off by a red scarf and shirt. Over her tights, she wears a gray plaid wool skirt, ankle-length and pleated. Her jacket lapel is adorned with a brooch – red, white, and green rhinestones that make a strawberry. She sits uncomfortably on the wood bench, adjusting herself on the hard slats while talking with another woman, who has hair dyed an unnatural red – almost maroon – and a toddler so bundled in her pink jacket and pom-pom hat that only her cherub face is exposed. The elderly woman pays no heed to her husband on the next bench.

Five teenagers in jeans and corduroy pants walk by carrying Bibles. None wears a jacket. They chat with each other as they stroll, smiling and laughing, noticing no one.

An African-American woman in her mid-forties walks through the park, cutting across the grassy areas to take a short-cut to the northwester corner. She moves more quickly than most others who wander through the park, but there is something unsteady about her gait. She takes steps like a new toddler who walks quickly to utilize his momentum. The woman wears faded black jeans with big cuffs, old tennis shoes, and a baseball cap. She talks to people as she passes them, commenting on everyone without actually directing her comments to them. The woman eats as she walks, pulling little bits of a store-bought item out of her left hand. In the middle of the park, as she crosses some sidewalk, she drops some crumbs but stops abruptly to pick them up and put them in her mouth. She casts a final thought – “Have a lovely afternoon” – to a woman nearby as she leaves the park.

A thirty-something fit Asian man in a blue button-up and dress pants chases his three-year-old son who is chasing pigeons. The boy, in a cream sweater and navy ball cap, pats the piles of leaves on the floor and screams in excitement when his dad sweeps him off the ground and up into his arms. The father puts the boy back on the ground but takes his hand as they walk. He points up at something out of the park and crouches down to the ground to assume his son’s perspective. They leave the park, still looking up, hand in hand.
The elderly couple from the bench is gone now but reappears later on the outer edge of the park, appearing to have walked the perimeter and reentered to claim another bench, this time together and next to some friends. The two seem to lean on each other when they walk. They have kindly eyes but weathered faces. The man and woman, who speak only Russian, come to the park, they say, “all days.” They are still in the park several hours later.

A blonde Caucasian lady in expensive sunglasses and a pink zip-up fleece vest with white pants and snow white shirt talks on her cell phones as she walks her miniature poodle through the park. She pays little attention to the dog and laughs loudly with whomever is on the other end of the line.

By early afternoon the sun, its rays a little less warming than in the early morning, has moved to the northwest corner of Park Newberry. The flowers that surround the fountain in the center island have all been torn out as cold weather approaches. The grass, which fought against the searing sun all summer in the midst of an interminable drought, is now completely obliterated by leaves, some dead, but many still resplendent with hues of yellow, orange, and red. Night falls earlier now; the sky is dark before evening rush hour backs up traffic on the bordering Dearborn Street. Winter is imminent. The park’s smallest creatures will hide themselves until the spring thaw, but its daily guests from the surroundings will not. They, like the park, will be there – “all days.”