Column: Expeditions with Max and Myrtle
For the past few years I’ve had the privilege of picking up my grandson, Max, from school.
I say privilege because at a recent funeral for an old newspaper colleague, as I was leaving for the train ride home from Boston, my colleague’s parents, whom I had never met, and I spoke about this matter of picking up a grandson from school. The deceased never had kids, let alone grandkids, and his parents drilled home how fortunate I was to pick up a grandson from school. You are an extremely lucky person, the mother said.
I had never thought of the task in that way.
It started when Max was in public school in the Astoria community of Queens, an easy 40-minute subway trip away. I would watch him run around on the playground with his chums and then we would walk home, getting some gummy bears on the way.
When he was found to have a touch of dyslexia, his parents decided to enroll him in a private school that catered to kids with so-called learning disabilities, although if you ran into him you wouldn’t have a clue.
The school, run by the Quakers, was in Brooklyn, quite a haul from Astoria. In the morning he and his dad would take a car service to the G train, a subway that took them a block away from the front door of the school. Usually his mom would drive over to pick him up in the afternoon. Occasionally there would be complications and I would be called upon, along with some others, to fetch him.
Given my starting point on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, this became an expedition.
He gets out of school at three, but I always bake in extravagant wriggle room because the New York subways these days have become depressingly unreliable. Although it would not be the end of the world if I didn’t make it to the school precisely at 3, I start off my trip around 1, to appease my Germanic need to be ahead of time.
The school pick-up adventure requires five different subway lines, roundtrip, and two subterranean crossings of the East River. I start on the Upper East Side with the 6 train, the busiest line with the smallest cars. I go to the Bleecker Street stop and transfer to the F train, which takes me to Brooklyn and the Bergen Street stop where the school is.
Because I get there so early, I generally cross the street to a classic New York diner to get a BLT.
Then I stop by Dunkin’ Donuts and get a vanilla with sprinkles and a chocolate with sprinkles and a chocolate milk. This is an essential part of the grandpa pick-up experience.
We meet in the school lobby, do our sort of fist bump and make the donut/milk transfer. Then we go to the end of the block to the G train, to its terminus at Court Square in Long Island City. Then we get the 7 train for one stop and get the N (or W) train to get back to Astoria.
There is almost no chatter between us. He has become somewhat taciturn these days, and I respect his right to a respite from engaging with adults after his school day. I ask him what his favorite part of the day was and he says recess. And his least favorite? Social studies. This is the script.
In the school lobby there is an aquarium that houses Myrtle the turtle. She usually is motionless on her island, but sometimes she is motionless in the water. How she can possibly get back on her island is a vast mystery. One of the front desk people has promised to video how she does it but I don’t think that will ever happen.
On the way home on the G train, there is a stop for Myrtle Avenue. If Max is awake I will nudge him to note the Myrtle word and he will smile.
And that smile makes the four-and-a-half-hour expedition worth every minute.
