Christmas in New York - 2035

As I sit here on the Battery Dikes and look out over New York Harbor, I am amazed I am still alive.  At the ripe old age of 85, I am still traveling and speaking and sometimes even playing tourist with my boy, a senior himself. 

My eyesight is not as good, but I can still see the Statue of Liberty rising from the waters of the harbor, her pedestal now converted to a dock for the tour boats that visit the aging monument.  I still remember taking the J train to Coney Island for a dinner at Garguilos on West 15th.  Of course that is all gone now.  What land is left there is mostly estuary and marsh and the wind turbines that power much of Brooklyn slowly spin in choreographed motion.

My boy hugs my shoulder as I reminisce and soon we decide to head uptown for dinner.  The walled lower Manhattan area is busy during the day, but not much good for an evening meal.   “If only the people in these buildings had listened to scientists and not Fox News,” I say as I shrug my shoulders.

The boy clucks and shakes his head.  “Greed always seems to win out.”  He is still a bit of a cynic and frankly so am I.

It’s getting colder and for us desert dwellers from Dallas the chill in the air is unfamiliar.  It reminds me of my youth, when we had all four seasons in Texas and the dusty plains were lush with vegetation and grazing cattle.  Now just a distant memory.

Tomorrow, we will watch the Macy's Parade as they carry the big balloons down the street like huge beach balls past the crowds.  Most of the kids never saw them when they flew overhead filled with the rare gas we wasted so quickly.  

(Sorry to be so morose, but I have come to believe that we have passed the tipping point on climate change, so we had better adapt or we will not survive.   The truth has become not just inconvenient but entirely conceivable.)