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Under the Boardwalk

11 May

For those who aren’t familiar with the New York subway, it was easily one of the best parts about New York. A cheap, reliable way to get around the giant city, normally open 24 hours, there was always a way to get where you needed to go. Rare, even for large cities.

But during the pandemic, the subways were closed for cleaning between midnight and five am, and most people weren’t using them anyways, especially during the night hours as most everything was closed down. I never had that luxury as I still had to commute to and from work. I had some eerie subway rides where I was all alone, not another rider in site. But last week it was announced that after almost a year of this, the subways are returning to 24-hour service later in May. It feels so hopeful and yet so strange to be back on the subway and see it filled with other New Yorkers.

Last Saturday I was riding the subway home from a volunteering stint in Brooklyn. The subway was bustling with people, all wearing their masks and appropriately maintaining social distances. With the return of some sense of normalcy is also the return of some annoyances. People talking loudly on their cellphones. Teenagers swinging from the handles.

I was sitting on the N when I heard a man get on the train. I heard him mumbling to himself. He had a low, strong tenor and walked with a cane. Something in me recognized his voice. I thought back to pre-pandemic times and remembered a panhandler who frequented the N train. He always sang the same song “Under the Boardwalk” by the Drifters, as he tapped his cane on the floor keeping the beat. Sometimes he would be accompanied by other panhandlers who would provide a harmony. At the end of every song, he would say in the same upbeat, singsong way “At least give me a smile, it won’t cost you anything!” The man who walked by me sounded just like him, and as the train started, he tapped his cane and sang the same old song. He sang it quicker. He sang it alone. And he seemed to lose a little bit of his upbeat enthusiasm that he’d sung it with before. No cute quip at the end.

But it was him, and my first thought was, “Oh God, I’m so happy that he’s alive.” Because that’s kind of what post-pandemic New York feels like. Everyone’s a little bit on edge, a little bit more alone, and a little bit down in the dumps. But he’s alive! He made it! So many didn’t, and it’s been hard to hear all the stories of loss.

I didn’t think about what happened to his fellow panhandlers, maybe they just left the city. I hope they’re okay. Even though I almost never give money to people on the subway, I fished out a dollar, my heart elated that this stranger had made it through. It reminded me of early Spring when buds start to appear on the trees and the hopeful heart wonders if the long harsh winter could really be behind us. Alive. Alive. Alive.

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The Fourth Floor

15 Apr

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About a week and a half ago, I got a phone call from my educator telling me that I was being moved from the ER to a makeshift Covid floor that they had installed on the fourth floor above the emergency room. I knew something like this was likely coming as most of my other nursing friends around New York City have also been shifted around to units that exclusively treat Coronavirus patients, but I was still nevertheless heartbroken. I had been training for 8 months to be an ER nurse, and in the matter of a day, all of my hard work felt like it was pulled from me. I was to be given one day of training into a whole different type of nursing. Oh, and I was being moved to the night shift.

It’s grim. It’s bleak. There are moments of light that I grasp onto and try to repeat over and over to myself in my mind, but the image of watching people struggle for air as they slip closer to death without family or friends by their side is haunting. On my first night, a couple of hours into my shift, I was given a transfer patient who was DNR (do no resuscitate) and was completely unresponsive. Her head was contorted backwards with her mouth open as she gasped for air. As I was instructed to do for a new admission, I took vital signs on her and listened to her lung sounds, roiling with the sounds of fluid as she slowly drowned.

I remember thinking, “How do I process this? How do I deal with this and with all that is still to come?” And I realized I can’t. I just have to do my job, and I’ll work through the trauma at a later date. Neither me nor any of my fellow healthcare workers have the luxury right now to take a mental health day or to see a therapist. It’s the first time that this whole pandemic felt like actual war to me. What it must be like to be on a battlefield, surrounded by death and the only option is to keep going, to keep fighting, because that’s the only way through. No end date. No idea when the resolution will come. Just keep fighting.

I love being a nurse, but right now, I dread my job. I never wanted to be an inpatient nurse (which is what I am now), especially not dealing with hospice care. I have a deep well of respect for those nurses, but I always knew it was not the type of cloth that I was cut from, that my heart was not built to endure or sustain this kind of work. But I’ve been drafted, and I don’t have a choice. I ride the lonely subway to work. I put on layer after layer of protective gear. Masks that make me gasp for air throughout my shift, gowns that trap heat and make me sweat, face shields that cut into my forehead. I try to do the best job I can and offer as much compassion as I have stored within me to each patient, then I go home to my lonely apartment and try to sleep through the daylight until the night comes, and I have to go back again.

Moments of light, though. Brief, beautiful, savory moments of light. My schizophrenic patient who is often confused and disoriented and asks me repeatedly if she can stay in bed (she’s homeless and used to being kicked out of places.)
“I’d be very happy if you stayed in this bed until you feel better,” I told her.
“Oh good,” she replied, relaxing a little. “Then I’m going to go back to sleep, and I wish you luck doing whatever you have to do in all that gear. Good night. I love you.”
“I love you too.”

An elderly dementia patient who asked another exhausted nurse to put on a ballgame for him. She explained there is no baseball and that it was the middle of the night. I got one of our iPads for him and pulled up the 1986 world series games for him on Youtube. I set it up on the table in front of him.
“I just wish I could bring you a hot dog,” I told him.
“Oh, I miss hot dogs so much.” He looked at me. “I know I keep asking you, but I’m waiting for your answer on my marriage proposal.”
I laughed awkwardly, not knowing what to say.
“It’s just that you are the most beautiful woman in the world,” he continued. Remember that I am wearing two masks, goggles, face shield, bouffant, gown, gloves.
“You can’t see me under all this gear!” I remind him.
“But darling, you look beautiful no matter what outfit you’re wearing.”

Moments of light. Moments of light. Long 12-hour night shifts with brief moments of light before I walk out into the early morning sunlight and head home to try and sleep.

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March 30, 2020

30 Mar

Working in healthcare right now is full of a lot of highs and lows. I feel lucky that I’m working in a facility in Manhattan that hasn’t been overwhelmed and that my healthcare organization has been able to provide us personal protective equipment thus far. But we still work with the stress of the situation we are in and for what is coming. My nursing union sent an email yesterday to tell us that projections look like we are at “the beginning of the middle” with patient numbers growing rapidly and reaching their apex in about 10 days from now. The hospitals are already overwhelmed, and we don’t know what life will be like in 10 days. We do expect to run out of the supplies that protect us. We are currently required to reuse our mask for 5 shifts. But even as the rubber bands of the mask carve sores into the tops of my ears and cause bruising on the top of my nose and cheeks, I’m grateful for my little mask, because I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to have one.

I showed up to my ER the other day to find a giant truck parked along the side of the building, about the size of the back of a long-haul semi. It’s a refrigerated space to hold dead bodies, and it sits outside of the building as a reminder of how dire things are becoming. Also, outside the ER, scribbled on our sidewalk, are messages of encouragement and love from the neighborhood. I’ve seen videos of people cheering for healthcare workers out their windows. News of the deaths of nurses and doctors in New York City have stricken us with a cruel uncertainty of our own fates. My co-workers and I talk in somber tones about the 28-year-old who had to be intubated in our ER. One of our doctors who had the Coronavirus is recovered and visited us yesterday, warming our hearts to see how healthy he looks after 2 weeks of being home and now Covid negative. We gathered around him like children at story time. Tell us what it’s like. Tell us you’re okay. “Every single breath I took was painful and burned my lungs,” he told us.

It’s dizzying highs and crushing lows. Historically, there is animosity between ER nurses and med/surg nurses. They don’t like us, because we send them our sick patients, and we get frustrated when they give us push back. Calling report to a floor nurse is usually a snarky experience with a lot of sass thrown back and forth. All that is gone. When I call to give a floor nurse report the conversation now starts with sincere “how are you guys doing?” and sharing of compassion and care for one another. My friends from nursing school keep checking in on each other since we all feel so lost to be caught in this storm during our first year of nursing.

I woke up at 3AM t a couple of nights ago with my heart pounding, and I started crying, heavy long sobs born out of anxiety. I’m frustrated that I can’t do more. I’m angry that we are running out of protective equipment. I’m scared for myself, my friends, and my family. I’m nervous about what the next couple of weeks are going to look like and what I’ll be asked to do. And it all hit me in the middle of the night, because my days are spent trying to help people stay calm so that they can breathe a little easier.

Governor Cuomo put a quote on Instagram that struck me.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt

Healthcare workers are just as scared as everyone else, if not more so, because we first hand know what it looks like to not be able to breathe. But we have to keep going. That’s just all there is to it.

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A Post from the Frontlines

23 Mar

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The world is a different place from the last time I was able to write a post. That is an understatement and obvious enough. It’s a time when we are all reaching out more than ever to the people we love and care about to check in. But I find myself reminded that I am in a different position in this global pandemic than most. I’m a registered nurse working in an emergency room in the heart of one of the most affected places on Earth, New York City.

It’s humbling and encouraging and strange to receive messages from family members and friends saying how grateful they are and how “heroic” me and other medical professionals are. I think it’s an odd thing for us to comprehend, because our worlds are still operating. I still go to work, clock in, do my job, eat my lunch, clock out, go home, and rest up for my next day of work. I understand the curiosity and interest in life at the frontlines, and I hope to give some insight into it.

I was told that the first year of being a nurse is the worst and the most difficult. I was obviously not expecting this on top of everything. My biggest frustration at the moment is the very fact that I’m still considered a “new grad” nurse with under a year of experience. I’m technically still in the training phase of my fellowship, and I’m not supposed to pick up shifts. I asked management if maybe we could work around that since these are extraordinary circumstances. They are still on the fence and leaning toward no. So even though I have a nursing license and 8 months of experience, I’m not allowed to pick up shifts within my hospital system. I’m not sure if that will change, but I’ve been in talks with other hospital systems and the state of New York about being on emergency surge lists. Right now I’m trying to use the days off that I have to rest, eat healthy, and exercise. Working on getting my immune system in the best shape it can possibly be in.

When I think about how this thing has unfolded over the last couple of weeks, I know that everything changed for me when I started hearing the stories coming out of Italy. Like most Americans, I had heard of Covid-19 and didn’t want to buy into the panic of it. The panic didn’t make sense. There’s only a 2% mortality rate, so why are we so nervous? I’m a part of a couple of different nursing forums online, and I started to see desperate pleas from Italian nurses. Their healthcare system was collapsing beneath the weight of this virus. Doctors were having to choose which patients could live or die due to the lack of resources, and cities were unable to find space for the dead bodies that were piling up. From across the globe, nurses were begging us to take this seriously, to prepare for what was coming, to avoid their mistakes. It was the first time I realized this was going to get bad and fast.

The cases started to pile up at my ER. Not confirmed cases, of course due to the unconscionable lack of testing, but patients were showing up with tell-tale stories. “My chest just feels tight.” “I felt better for a couple of days, then everything got worse.” “I just can’t seem to get better.” The news articles I read on my phone began speaking of social distancing and working from home. In Italy, people were locked down in their homes, and I wondered if it would come to that. About a week ago, on my lunch break, I left the chaos of the ER to grab some food and saw the park across the street teeming with people. Everyone was smiling and laughing and enjoying the warmer weather. I stared in disbelief. After an exhausting shift, when I got on the subway to go home around 8pm, the train was packed with people in their 20s, most already a few drinks deep. Their laughter caused them to throw their heads back and whoop. I thought of the petri dish of a train car we were sitting in.

The next day was when they began shutting bars and restaurants down. I felt as sad as anyone to watch my vibrant city be shuttered, but I also knew it was the only way. Something horrible is coming. Or more accurately, it’s here. It’s likely on most surfaces, in most bodies, in thousands of homes, and it has the capability of crumbling everything down. I still look to Italy and hope we’ve done enough to avoid the horrors they are seeing, but only time will tell. As I write this, the country of Italy has 63,927 confirmed cases. My city has 12,305.

The spirits among my co-workers are mixed. Some are in a panic, frustrated and stressed about our lack of PPE (personal protective equipment) and dizzy from the hourly protocol changes from the CDC. Some of my co-workers shrug their shoulders and say that we have to keep going and just get through this, and we will be okay. Regardless of reaction, everyone still shows up every day and puts on the masks that we have, the gowns, the gloves, the goggles, and we do what we can. It’s not an ideal position to be in, but it is our job. I think of my professors from nursing school who talked about working through the AIDS epidemic. I think of nurses of the past that treated typhoid fever, tuberculosis. I think of the mother of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, who founded nursing as profession by volunteering to go to Crimea and help treat the wounded soldiers in a war zone. It’s the legacy of our profession, and I’ve always felt deeply honored to get to do it, especially at a time like this.

I fear for my city. I fear for my fellow nurses. I fear for my friends that no longer have jobs. I fear for all the small businesses that I love in my neighborhood who now have an uncertain future. I fear for what my life will be like in the coming weeks, the uncertainty of what I’ll be asked to do. While I know things are going to continue to get worse, I also know that things will eventually get better. I’m looking at Italy as a worse case scenario of what comes next, but I’m also looking to China as to how to get through. The number of new cases there has dramatically dropped off, and they’ve begun to close their emergency hospital facilities. Our time for that will come too.

 

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The Poet is In

24 Nov

It’s become part of a punchline for me now when people ask me what my first Bachelor’s degree was in.

“I majored in poetry, but being a poet doesn’t pay like it used to.”

Always gets a moderate chuckle. But it’s jarring to me to think back to a time when that really was my life plan. I knew it was mostly crazy, and I think I was young and rebelling against growing up. I didn’t want some office job. Like most young people, I rejected the life I thought society was forcing on me. And while I’ve successfully avoided having a desk job for most of my adult life, I did bid farewell to my dream of being a poet laureate. It’s not the creative outlet I wanted to invest myself in. Yet poetry exists in my soul like a latent infection.

Back in April I saw a post on Instagram about a pop-up poetry event at Grand Central called “The Poet is In.” It was an all day event that had poets set up at booths writing personalized poems for people. I left work early and hopped a subway South. I had to be there.

I waited in line for about 45 minutes, not minding at all. I had a book to keep me occupied, and I was so excited. Which poet would I get? That hipster one over there? The wise old man over there? It was amazing to see so many people in line, excited about poetry. That’s what poetry is supposed to be. For the people. To connect with one another and, like all art, to share in a bigger human experience.

I think I would have been happy to get any of the poets, but I felt like fate brought me to Marie Howe. A warm presence with wild hair, it turns out she is actually the one who dreamed up the event when she was the New York State poet laureate. She asked me some questions about myself. About the classes I was taking in school. About what I wanted to grow up to be when I was a little girl. She took some notes as we chatted, then loaded up her typewriter and clacked away. When she was done, she read me my personalized poem.

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I almost cried. I loved it so much, and it felt like the perfect snapshot of that very moment in my life. I sniffled back my tears and profusely thanked her for my poem and for putting the lovely event together.

“You know, I didn’t start really writing my poetry until I was in my thirties,” she told me. “You have it in you for when the time is right.”

I needed to hear that.

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The Summer of Chrissy

9 Jul

I’m free! I can’t believe that a year ago I was scrambling around the city trying to register for classes and balance my school and work schedules. A week ago, I finished my summer session class, and with that final grade posted, I can now start my applications for nursing school. AH! While I loved loved loved my classes, (if I had my undergrad to do over again, I’d major in Chemistry) there were a lot of sacrifices involved. I worked part-time, did a ton of pet sitting, and most of my free time was spent studying as much as possible. I spent many weekends at home memorizing polyatomic ions or the different digestive enzymes.

But that’s over. The grades I worked so hard for are in the books, and I have nothing more I can do until school starts up again in September. I’m back to working full-time at the vet clinic, but I feel like I’ve been let out of a cage. I can read books! I can write blog posts! I want to dance in Lincoln Square! Play softball in Central Park! Drink beers with friends on a rooftop bar till 4am! This is going to be the greatest summer. Every day that I have free, I want to spend wisely, explore my city, meet new people. I feel silly that I always had three days off a week before I went to school, and I never really used them.

But there’s no time to dwell in the past. I’ve got so many things to do. My to-do list is looking a lot more interesting these days.

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Poodle Nanny Diaries

27 Mar

I find myself in a bizarre situation. I have agreed to be a live-in poodle nanny. Hear me out.

A couple of months ago, our landlords told us that they were not going to renew our lease, because they wanted to give our apartment to their daughter. At the time, I couldn’t face the news. I was drowning in anatomy and chemistry exams and figured I’d deal with finding a new place to live when our June 1st move date was up. But a couple of weeks ago, my roommates both found apartments to move into in the beginning of April and began pressuring me to do the same, so that we could all break the lease early.

I started telling my friends that I was looking when a co-worker told me about an interesting proposition from a client who we have all worked with in the last couple of years. This client owns five black poodles, the newest of which are two young poodles that don’t get along with the eldest poodle. They live in a mansion in the Upper East Side, and the client, a woman we’ll call Marie, was looking for a live-in poodle nanny. I was skeptical. It sounded crazy, but curiosity got the better of me, and I agreed to meet with her and talk about the situation.

Attached to the 5-story home is a small studio apartment, a couple of blocks from where I work, around the corner from Central Park. The deal is that I will live there rent-free, with a small stipend for food in exchange for letting the two youngest poodles sleep in the apartment at night. The caveat is that it is something like a nanny job. They expect me to be there at a certain time at night to bring the poodles into my apartment and to stay there. Marie explained to me that she still wanted me to have a life, but that I just needed to inform the house manager of when I was going to be out at night, so that they could arrange for one of their many, many assistants to watch the dogs for me. I’m still unclear on how strict it all is. How much freedom I’ll actually have.

But I was pulled in, lured by the curiosity of the situation, of this woman. I’m so intrigued to find out how they live, how they function. I thought about it for a couple of days and told them that I would give it a shot. We agreed to do a three-month trial to make sure that I like the job and that they are happy with me. It was exciting and strange at first, but now a bit of panic is starting to set in.

How beholden will I be to these people? Do they really expect me to lead some sort of Cinderella life where I have to drop whatever I’m doing at 8pm to run back to the apartment to greet some poodles? Why can’t the poodles just hang in my apartment while I’m not there? How nice is the pool on the roof? I’m trying to calm myself down by remembering how much money I’m going to save while I’m in this current stretch of post-bacc pre-med school and how if it doesn’t work out, I’ll pretty much be in the exact same position that I am now, looking for a new place to live. But I’ll have a story. And really my whole life has just been chasing stories to tell the nurses at the old folks home one day. Maybe this will be an incredible experience, and I’ll love it. Maybe I’m entangling myself with international crime lords. At this point, I honestly don’t know. And that’s where my nervousness and my anxiety is stemming from. But all new journeys start with a little bit of fear and hesitation I suppose.

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30 Before 30: Go to a Live Taping

24 May

In my 30th year of life, I’m attempting to do 29 new things. Full List Here. All Bucket List Adventures Here.

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I’ve been wanting to do this for years! But it’s not as easy to score tickets to these shows as one might think. The tickets themselves are free and are often snatched up by tourists. Over the years, I’ve tried to get tickets to the Tonight Show, to the Daily Show, to the Colbert Report, and of course, to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. All to no avail. It seemed such a fruitless endeavor that I kind of gave up.

As far as television goes, other than the occasional Netflix binge (currently obsessed with “Jane the Virgin”), the only shows I watch on a weekly basis are “Walking Dead” and “Last Week Tonight.” But I recently added a third show to my weekly, lazy tv time: “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.”

I was interested by the first late night show hosted by a woman. (Really? It took till 2016 for that to happen?) But I already had my hands full with number-one-love-of-my-life-John-Oliver. I wasn’t looking for any more political satire in my life. Go women and all, but do we really need another one of these shows?

Yes, yes we do. While she tackles major issues like the presidential election and the Syrian refugee crisis, she doesn’t shy away from dedicating major chunks of her show to women’s issues. Abortion laws, fraudulent pregnancy centers, unprocessed rape kits. She makes my feminist heart pitter-patter.

So I added my name to a list of hopefuls for tickets to the show, not expecting to ever get a call. But a couple weeks later, on a Monday morning, I got a phone call from someone who works for the show. They had a bunch of cancellations and had tickets available. I dragged my friend Lauren with me, and we went to the live-taping.

It was quite unglamorous, although I didn’t expect it to be much. We sat in a holding room with about a hundred other people, until we were ushered into the studio. After 30 minutes or so, Samantha Bee came out to greet everyone and answer a couple of questions. She also introduced some personal friends she had in the audience including her father and her gynecologist. Of course she would invite her gynecologist. Of course she would.

Once the show got underway, it was a bit odd, to be cued on when to clap, and to watch most of the pre-recorded show off a screen. But I was starstruck to be in the same room as that tiny, feminist bastion of hope in her signature blazer and high heels. In between taping and setting up for the next segment, a DJ played “Bad Girls” by MIA, as Samantha Bee danced around while assistants fixed her hair. What. A. Boss.

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30 Before 30: Visit One World Observatory

19 May

In my 30th year of life, I’m attempting to do 29 new things. Full List Here. All Bucket List Adventures Here.

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Manhattan from so far above

On a clear and sunny day, my friend Zach and I trekked downtown to visit the One World Observatory at the top of the Freedom Tower. My obligatory tourist indulgence in a city overflowing with them. At this point, I’ve done Top of the Rock, top of the Empire State Building. So I knew at the very least, I’d get some great views. The whole thing was so orchestrated; though, it ended up feeling surreal.

After going through airport-level security, everyone was shoved into elevators that as they rose to the top floor, displayed on screens a 360-view of Manhattan developing over the centuries. From when it was home to Native Americans, to the first Dutch traders, to the Industrial Revolution, and present day. It was the most interesting part of the visit, but it went by so fast, and everyone in the elevator expressed varying degrees of nausea.

Upon exiting the elevator, we were ushered into a theatre, showing “street scenes” of New York, the kind of imagery constantly fed to people who aren’t from here. Women in high heels catching taxis, smoky hot dog stands, the rumble of a subway train. It’s a little less exciting and hypnotizing when it’s just an expression of your day-to-day. At the end of the movie, the wall lifted to reveal a floor to ceiling window, showing off Manhattan. All the tourists gasped and then clapped before we were ushered into a room where they tried to sell us interactive iPads to carry around. Then we were taken through a gift shop. Then we were forced to take a picture which Zach ended up convincing me to buy, because he’s a sentimentalist, even though I wasn’t ready and look like a goon.

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The green screen photo I CLEARLY wasn’t ready for, but Zach somehow was.

Finally we got to the floor with the views. My phone promptly died after one picture, but it felt better that way. Instead of worrying about the perfect picture, we took our time wandering around, admiring the city from every bird’s eye angle we could find. Once we felt like we had absorbed most of it, we left, caught a cab, giving the driver an address on the West Side highway.

“Oh, you go to the bar!” Our Island cabdriver said.
“You clearly know us.”
“I should park my cab and join you,” he said.
“I’d buy you a drink, man!” Zach told him as we all laughed.

At the Frying Pan, a bar on a pier, we drank cold Pale Ales and ate sandwiches. We laughed about the morning and chatted about innumerable things, the kind of conversation only possible between two people who have known each other 12+ years. Once it got too breezy, we wandered through Chelsea and stumbled upon another dive bar we like, and we grabbed one more beer to cap the day.

THAT’s New York to me. THAT’s the thing they will never be able to appropriately sell to the hordes of tourists. It’s a city full of lovely, kind people, chance encounters, wanderings that usually result in something memorable and familiar. It was great to take in the city from above, but it’s so much better to be living right down in it.

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The Christmas Eve Tahini Sauce Incident

7 Jan

This wasn’t the first Christmas that I’ve spent away from family. One year I was snowed in by a freak blizzard in Seattle and couldn’t get a flight home till late Christmas day. And I spent my first Christmas on the East Coast with my then-boyfriend’s family in Maryland. This was my first year since that Maryland Christmas that I didn’t travel to Reno to see my parents or to Philadelphia to see my family there. I thought I might spend the holiday with a boyfriend, but I had decided to end things the week before.

I had to work late on Christmas Eve, but I found a Lutheran church that had a late candlelight service at 10pm. It’s one of my favorite traditions, so I thought I’d put on my brand new Stitch Fix dress and treat myself.

After work, I had some time to kill before the service, so I went to the only open bookstore I could find and bought myself a new book and a nice new shoulder bag to carry it in. I walked the 30 blocks from Union Square to where the church was located. New York City has been so warm this winter; I used the walk to enjoy the weather and clear my mind.

I made it up to the Hell’s Kitchen area where the church was and thought, “What a nice evening I’m having!” Then, I decided to treat myself further. To a falafel sandwich.

I walked into a small store that had a wide range of specialty falafels. It was full of Israeli people, and I stuck out. Everyone was being exceptionally kind to me, as it was Christmas Eve, and I was clearly alone. I ordered my sandwich, and an older man wearing a yarmulke smiled at me and promised, “This will be the best falafel you ever have!”

The giant sandwich barely fit in my hands as I carried it to the other side of the store where a variety of sauces were. I picked up the tahini sauce to put it on my sandwich, but nothing came out. I gave it one quick shake, and the lid of the bottle came off and the entire bottle of Tahini sauce drenched my sandwich, my hands, my jacket, my brand new dress, my boots. I stand there frozen, holding the empty bottle and watching the sauce drip from my sandwich to the floor. I lift my gaze to look around the tiny shop, unsure what to do.

I was alone on Christmas Eve. No family. No boyfriend. My brand new dress was ruined. I was hungry. My sandwich was ruined. I had told myself all day that I was okay with it all, but I wasn’t, and it took that tahini sauce to make me feel it. But I held it together. I wanted to cry, but I swallowed it down. Until all the patrons of the little falafel shop swarmed me.

The guys who were working there took my ruined sandwich and started making me a new one. The old man who had promised me a magical falafel experience asked me if I was okay. A couple with a baby stroller started handing me a bunch of baby wipes to clean myself. All these strangers huddled around me and tried to make sure I was okay. And that’s what made me cry. Embarrassing tears falling out on their own. I had tried so hard to make the best of things, and it was as if the universe had replied, “Nope. Not today.”

I cleaned myself up as best I could and figured I couldn’t go to a new church covered in Tahini sauce stains. So I gathered my things and rushed out the door as someone yelled behind me, “Miss, you forgot your sandwich!” I couldn’t face them. I was humiliated by my tears and by my inadvertent clumsiness.

I’ve recounted this story a dozen times to my friends and family, often to a reaction of laughing and joking. Christmas didn’t turn out so bad as I spent it with friends. I look back on that night in that falafel shop as an important reminder. Those strangers didn’t have to rally around me like they did. They didn’t have to worry about me and try to make it right. I was embarrassed, but I wish I had the courage to stay and to say thank you. New York can seem like a cold and distant place, and the world at large as hateful things happening all the time.

But there are two ways of looking at my Christmas Eve falafel incident. One: the universe is cruel and unforgiving. Or two: there is an inherent goodness in people, and even though I started the evening feeling alone, I wasn’t. It just took a bottle of tahini sauce to see that even strangers can be there.

I don’t even remember exactly where the shop was, and I have no way of tracking down those strangers, but I am so grateful that they were there that night and that they were kind to me. As I rode the subway home and thought about all that had happened, it was the first time in the whole day that I honestly felt like I was okay and that things would be fine.

Thank you strangers. Thank you so much for that.

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