From London: NYC behind a mask, paint angels, sibling surprise

Hi friends,

Three years ago, I went out for one of the toughest runs I’ve ever done – not because of the distance, but because of the conditions. I was living in London at the time, and Storm Ciara (a windstorm that was so powerful it sent a flight from JFK to London Heathrow in less than five hours) hit the UK.

The city closed many of the parks because of the wind, but I was taking training for what was to be my first marathon seriously. I decided to go out anyway for the 14-miler I was supposed to complete.

The rain was pouring, and the wind felt like it would blow me over at times, but I headed to my usual route along Regent’s Canal. I was fully drenched less than halfway through, with water from the canal splashing up and all over me many times. I encountered just a few other runners, and we all kind of nodded at each other and chuckled in acknowledgment when we spotted the other. As if to say, Oh, so I’m not the only psychopath out running in this.

At times I wanted to quit, hop up to higher ground and get in a taxi to go home. But I felt determined to keep going, and I felt like if I could make it through that training run, I could make it through any run. So, I kept going, and I finished training run back at my home of the time – drenched but proud that I had done it.

Less than two months later, the marathon I was training for was canceled because of Covid, and I was on a plane back to New York amidst closing borders and locked down everything. On many of my toughest days of early lockdown, I thought back to that training run and how just putting one foot in front of the other had gotten me through it. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other like you did that day, I often told myself.

Today’s newsletter comes to you from London, where earlier today, I completed my fifth marathon – in chilly temperatures, bone-chilling breezes, and a steady stream of rain that didn’t let up until I crossed the finish line. It felt very on brand.

It also felt like a full-circle moment. The rain, the dedicated spectators, and the knowledge that I was getting to move through this tough race in one of my favorite cities in the world carried me through. One step at a time.

Connect soon,Katie

This week's 3... 

come to you from Brooklyn, New York; Columbus, Ohio; and Denver, Colorado, and are about grocery/shop encounters, our most recent prompt and one that I think highlights the power of community, even in the local store. We’ll continue exploring this same prompt for the next edition (coming out on May 7). For the next few months, I’m going to experiment with focusing on one prompt per month rather than a new prompt for each edition. I hope that seeing other stories related to each month's prompt will inspire others to reflect on and then share their own related experiences.   

A glimpse of New York behind a mask:

It’s late 2020, AKA the height of “unprecedented” Covid times. After months of quarantine, sirens, protests and helicopters flying uncomfortably low over my Greenpoint neighborhood, it’s starting to feel like this is just the way life is now.

My then-boyfriend (now husband) and I are occasionally seeing friends together in the park and freezing our butts off while struggling to find things to talk about, trying (and failing) to learn how to play chess, hiding from our cat lady landlord who gets more psychotic with each passing day, and are generally bored out of our skulls.

Because he is still having to go into the office each day, I’ve taken over the grocery shopping duties and attempt to shop during off hours to avoid crowds. This day it’s late — the sun has been down for hours and everyone in the Manhattan Avenue CTown is bundled up and thankfully masked.

I can only see my fellow shoppers’ eyes between their masks and hats, and as I’m attempting to find a kombucha flavor I haven’t yet tried, to both get a semblance of a new experience and feign an attempt to replace my nightly whiskey nightcap, a pair of striking blue eyes stops me dead in my tracks.

At first glance, besides the eyes, we actually don’t look that different — two short, curvy women dressed in all black with hints of gingerness below our beanies. My first instinct is that these similarities are what caught my eye in the first place — I’m just one of the three Spidermen pointing at each other — but quickly I realize it’s more than that.

In my Covid-era boredom, I have finally caved to watching Succession, which my boyfriend has been pushing on me for over a year. I initially turned up my nose at the prospect of watching terrible rich white people do terrible rich white things — I have multiple Housewives franchises to scratch that itch. But again, times were desperate, and I had reached the dreaded End of Netflix, so I tried it.

I was hooked IMMEDIATELY. In the immortal words of Kenneth Ellen Parcell, there are only two things I love: everyone and television. And Succession is PERFECT for me — the corporate intrigue, the rich tapestry of insults and profanity, the walk-and-talks, the joke density, J SMITH CAMERON!

But there is no character on Succession that I love more than Siobhan. Shiv is what I affectionately call Dumb *itch Representation.

Despite (and honestly because of) that moniker, I relate to this character — someone with on-paper exceptional liberal values who fled the good fight in DC to come to New York to get rich and more importantly, get respect. A bona fide Daddy’s girl who fundamentally disagrees with her dad on so much but isn’t willing to rock the boat and take a stand.

And here she is, Sarah Snook, right in front of me, looking at probiotic sodas.

I freeze like an absolute dumbass and just stare at her. She gives me the classic head nod of acknowledgment, maybe because we’re in basically the same outfit, maybe because we’re both so pale we’re essentially see-through, or maybe just because we’re neighbors. I nod back, scramble to grab my kombucha, and hit the checkout.

Despite being the most exciting thing that had happened to me in MONTHS at that point, it also felt like a hint of the New York I was missing, where seeing Andy Cohen on a subway platform (yes, I did force him to talk to me) isn’t an out-of-the-ordinary experience.

It was also a reminder that we, everyone who had stayed in NYC instead of running Upstate or home with Mom and Dad, were having this alien experience together. We were all just trying to live whatever our lives were now, trying to get food or cleaning products or whatever without getting dreadfully ill and becoming one of the people those sirens were ringing for.

- Madeline O’Connor, Brooklyn, New York 

Paint angels: 

I was standing in line at a Home Depot waiting to get some stain to paint my deck. A project I dreaded but needed to complete as our house was going on the market.  

The line was rather long, and I noticed the two gentlemen in front of me switching between perfect English and another language I didn’t recognize.  

I was curious, and I also had some time to kill as things weren’t moving too quickly, so I asked them where they were from.

We are from here, one of them responded with a childlike grin.

OK, I smiled back, so what is your country of origin?

They then told me about how they moved to the US 40 years ago from Iran and that they had an auto repair business and now consider the US home sweet home.

Oh, so you learned English when you were young!

Oh, so now we are old?!

We laughed at that one.

We continued chatting, and then as our time was nearing a close since their paint order was almost complete, the older one told me he could get me a discount because they got one through their business. They said they would wait for me at the checkout to make sure I’d get the discount.  

My order was taking a while, so I didn’t expect them to be waiting for me when I got to the checkout – but there they were. My very own paint angels from Iran.  

They needed a job number to assign the discount to, so I gave them my house number – no street name needed. They then punched the street number in, and up came the 20% discount. Off they went while I paid for my paint.  

They then thanked me for being so nice to them, but I think it was the other way around. They were so good to me.

- Jeanne Booth, Columbus, Ohio

Sibling surprise: 

I was back in Denver for 48 hours in between a work trip and a vacation to London. My fiancée and I decided to go to the grocery in the middle of the day to pick up a few last-minute items for my trip.

All the sudden, I spotted someone I recognized but out of context. I realized it was my brother.

Mason?! I asked him. Aren’t you supposed to be at work?

He turned to me, immediately hugging my fiancée Sam, leaving me in the dust only to respond, Yea, so what? Aren’t you supposed to be in London?

We chatted for a few minutes, me explaining that I was on my way to the airport and him explaining he was picking up some last-minute snacks for his wife the day before she left for a trip.

Since I was only going to be home for such a short amount of time before my London trip, I hadn’t planned on seeing my brother. I left the store, grateful for not only my newly secured snacks but also for living in the same place as my brother and for the spontaneous run-in before I left – at a store that neither of us typically goes to.

- Sarah Perkins, Denver, Colorado

(Editor's Note: Sign up for Madeline’s forthcoming newsletter, TL;DR: Tight Links; Dear Reader for recommendations, musings, and maybe the occasional rant.)

Continuing prompt: Grocery (or other) store encounters

When have you bumped into a familiar face or made a new friend (or foe) while foraging for your sustenance at the local grocery store or for goods elsewhere? Tell us about it! 

I'd love to hear from you, and I in fact need your help. To keep this newsletter going and this community growing, I'm reliant on subscribers like you to submit their own short stories about moments of connection they've experienced.

It's simple:

• Think of a moment of connection you've experienced — it doesn't have to be recent, and it doesn't have to be related to the above prompt.

• Jot it down — in your head, on a piece of paper, in your phone, wherever. No need to get fancy or long, and those who consider themselves to be amateur writers (or not writers at all) preferred ;)

• Click the button above or below to email me your story, and leave the rest to me! (Let me know if you'd prefer it to be totally anonymous or only mentioning your city without your name.)

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