Wake-up call

It’s 5:45 AM and here comes my faithful canine wake-up call, 56 pounds of angelic mutt, half-Lab half-golden retriever, or so most people think. I hear the “click-click-click” of paws in need of trimming on the hardwood floor. Her tail peeps over the crest of the bed like a shark’s fin breaking the waves as she negotiates the narrow path between the left side of the bed and the wall. Now her cool, moist nose is in my face.

“Thwock-thwock-thwock,” her tail beats against the wall. I rise slowly and turn to face her, letting my legs hang over the side of the bed. “Hi, Ilsa, how are ya, pal?” I say, half asleep, patting her rump.

“Thwock-thwock-thwock…”

Ilsa performs her ritual morning greeting, shaking her caboose as she dances between my legs. This routine never gets old.

I head for the water closet, entertaining a half-baked thought of how humans might relate to each other if they had tails that betrayed their emotions. (Yes, you really do think the oddest things when you first wake up.) The tiles are freezing under my feet. Better layer up, it’s going to be cold outside.

Soon we’re heading north on Eighth Avenue towards Central Park. The Bible-black dead of night slowly yields to an elderly gray as time rewinds to play another day. Whoever said there are no second chances in life couldn't have got it more wrong. Life is nothing but chances.

Traffic is sporadic along the avenue, mostly hacks, garbage and delivery trucks, the occasional bus and early risers driving to the office. Ilsa pauses to do her thing on 50th Street, and I dig into my pocket for a cleanup bag. Across the street about a dozen bundled-up people exit the subway, also bound for work, no doubt. A quiet dignity defines the morning commute. In addition to a paycheck, work brings value and purpose to our lives. Nobody works harder than Americans, and no Americans work harder than New Yorkers.

On the move again, Ilsa and I pass a Korean deli; outside Mexicans in sweatshirts and aprons trim flowers while a radio plays Latin pop. On Broadway and 57th Street the smell of freshly brewed coffee escapes the Pax Café. The corner newsstand displays the day’s headlines. On the front page of the New York Post appears a photo of a cigarette- smoking American GI with the headline: “SMOKIN’: Marlboro men kick butt in Fallujah.”

Before entering Central Park, Ilsa and I stop by the Columbus Circle Gallery to see what’s on display in the windows. In one window a lithograph of Picasso’s Portrait de Marie-Therese makes every other original and repro on display look second-rate; such is the danger of standing a Picasso—even a repro Picasso—alongside most anything else. In the other window appear framed limited-edition photographs of the iconic personalities of the baby boom generation: Bob Dylan, Marilyn Monroe, the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, JFK, The Beatles, Sinatra. For a moment I wonder what faces will define the generation coming of age today. And then I remember the cigarette-smoking GI on the cover of today’s Post.