Metropolitan Diary Shorthand

Nothing especially snarky to say about today’s Metropolitan Diary (What? Snarky — us? Never . . .) except that a deft turn of phrase in one of the anecdotes unwittingly (or perhaps wittingly — these New Yorkers, so meta and smart about shit like that!) reveals new shorthand for the feature itself: “All was right on East 88th Street.”

For posterity’s sake, here is the full anecdote:

Dear Diary:

I am the secretary at the Church of the Holy Trinity on East 88th Street, and on the Saturday of the recent blizzard I was helping with last-minute preparations for a party that evening for our departing interim rector. I was also worried that far fewer people than expected would come because of the snow and anticipated wind.

I stepped out on the porch of the parish house to take a breather and delight in the snow-covered dogwood and magnolia. Three corpulent (or very bundled) well-into-middle-age women came up the walkway. One was in a wheelchair. I was prepared to tell them that our Saturday Thrift Shop closed at 3:30, but they went away from the building, onto a path that even on good days is difficult: It is narrow, it has slate tiles, and it meanders. Why, I wondered, were they pushing a wheelchair on this path in this weather?

I got my answer when they stopped in front of a snow-covered bench. On the count of three, two of the women helped the one in the wheelchair up and plopped her on the snow- covered lawn. She sat upright for a couple of seconds, then lay down and started to make a snow angel, flapping her “wings.” After much giggling, the other two women helped back in her wheelchair. Then they plopped onto the lawn and made their angels. More giggling. Lots of it.

The snow kept falling. The people came to the party. All was right on East 88th Street.