Mother's Day Eve in New York

Buskers, balloons, and Bach: my mom would have loved it all.

My mother, Lucile Irene Loesch Lashbrook, at the kitchen sink in the late 1960s.

The roasty-meaty smells of hot dog carts on the corner. The swoosh of the subway from the grates beneath our feet. We are taking a walkabout this sunny-again afternoon, blue skies after misty gray.

It’s graduation day for New York University. So many purple gowns, black mortar boards, white and silver balloons. Fewer Mardi Gras beads, but some. Selfies with pouty lips, short skirts, peace signs.

Celebrations. Endings. Beginnings.

We—visitors with no one in a gown—walk in a circle around the fountain in the center of Washington Park. Sit on one bench, then another. Pot smoke follows us everywhere we go. Dogs sniff at our feet. Someone tries to read tarot cards for us.

There are buskers: Hare Krishnas chanting and playing instruments, a lone guitarist, a jazz group with saxophone, cello, drums. I drop three bills into the open guitar case. The saxophonist nods a thank you. A man with a camera (not his cell phone) asks if he can take our picture. We say yes, and he does. Then we wonder, what’s he going to do with it?

We head up Broadway, to 802, the old Episcopal church, Grace Church—ornate walls, stained glass windows, spire reaching to the sky—dating back to 1846. There is a free organ concert. A meditation. Forty-five minutes of Handel, Bach, and Mendelssohn soaring to the rafters, wafting over the pews with their velvet cushions and wooden entry doors. Their Welcome Cards that invite visitors to write down their contact information.

The pipe organ inside Grace Church, 802 Broadway, Greenwich Village in New York City.

“Help support keeping the doors open, the lights on, and the music flowing,” a paper program says. We contribute, thank the organist, compliment his mastery. We’re grateful.

It is the day before Mother’s Day. Yesterday, not today.

My mom, gone nearly twelve years, would have loved it all. The color, the sounds, the smells (except for the weed). She’d have wanted to grasp a balloon, pet a dog, sway to the jazz trio. She’d have politely declined the portrait request.

Mom would’ve loved hearing the organ. She would have closed her eyes and smiled, inclined her head toward the sanctuary ceiling. She would have been grateful. But she would have wished she’d heard it in a Missouri Synod Lutheran church instead.