Article August 29, 2005 Issue

A STORM OF LOVE IN THE CITY

By Kim Shippey

It was a frigid November afternoon with heavy clouds tossed about by high winds. I was having lunch in the corner window of a bakery, watching an extraordinary variety of ordinary people pass by—music students, pensioners, post office workers, mothers with babies, meter maids, crisply dressed business people, schoolchildren. As they negotiated a wind tunnel created by a passageway between the bakery and a fast-food chicken place, they all clutched something—caps, skirts, parcels, scarves, instrument cases.

There was an uneven rhythm to the flow of people, to the movement of the sun, and to the howling of the wind. People scurried by at different paces. The light from the sky would brighten, then dim. The wind would gust fiercely, then calm for a moment.

Suddenly, there was a clatter and a cry. I looked up to see everyone dashing toward an overturned baby carriage that was being swept by the wind, facedown, across the concrete paving outside the bakery. A distraught mother hurled herself at the pram but failed to reach it till it came to rest in the arms of a startled, uniformed security guard.

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