I just discovered Slow. A life-long New Yorker, I walk fast, talk fast, and think fast; I love the speed and the vibrancy of my city and my life.
But in the last 10 days or so, I found myself enjoying Slow. First came the chicken soup. This year I started early, picking up the chicken necks and hearts, and even the chicken feet ahead of time. Oh, what a difference that made. You have to cook chicken soup slowly, skimming off the crud and making sure the liquid doesn’t bubble.
And then the turkey taught me a lesson: it came ready for the oven, but instead of trying to time its exit perfectly with our Passover meal, I did something new: I cooked it early, so early that it was out of the oven when the guests arrived. Slowly, it reached room temperature and the perfect degree of doneness.
My park is at its spring peak this season, and I have been walking though it slowly, so that I can look at every tree and bush and flower twice or three times from different perspectives. The lilac is out. Smell it slowly. The crab apple allee merits several slow walks under the blossoms.
As I walked home, the ballpark was crowded. I asked what was happening. It was Tai Chi day in Central Park. I sat down to watch. Most of the people were going a little faster than my teacher has taught me. “Slow down,” I thought.
A stranger asked me if she there was a bus she could take to get back to Midtown. I told her how to do it. Is it better than a taxi?” “Much better,” I told the visitor, “it’s so much slower.”
I can’t understand this change in me. Am I growing old? Or am I just growing up? Slowly.