the Moshulu Parkway report

7:45 a.m. on a Saturday, on my way to work. A cup of coffee, Jeff Buckley on my iPod, and the momentary surprise of light when the train pulls above-ground in the Bronx: these are enough to make me happy.

I am wearing an enormous scarf, a foot wide and, when draped around my neck, down to my knees on both ends. I crocheted this scarf during the gelid, bitter winter of my freshman year of college. I had come from Virginia Beach to New Hampshire, and I was Not Prepared. My dorm room had its own thermostat, but the heat in the building was capped off at 65 degrees, which is a fine temperature if it is also 65 degrees outside, but not such a fine temperature if it is five degrees outside with a wind-chill of rip-your-face-off, and you've come inside to try to warm up and also, lest we forget, you are from Virginia Beach, where "layering" means that you wear the same surfer-girl mini-dress you would have worn mid-summer, but with a puffy winter coat over it. Before Dartmouth, I was unfamiliar with the idea that a sweater might be worn over a shirt, rather than in place of it.

Now, five-and-a-half years out of college (during which I have, in sum, sunk a small company and told some jokes), I have been mysteriously blessed with a much faster metabolism, buzzing along like a hummingbird; I keep myself warm without effort. After years being forcibly bundled up as a child (hypothermia is epidemic in Virginia Beach!), I take still sometimes take pleasure in the rebellion of not wearing a coat when I ought. The whip of cold wind across an exposed throat reminds me how much I love adulthood, disliked childhood, and love the kind of life you work very hard for and make your own.