My father’s left hand wrapped around the neck of the telecaster, his fingers landing on a chord as he gave the instrument a few strums. We were in my living room in Queens, New York, the ambient light from the city skyline illuminating the clouds and spilling dull and blue from my apartment’s rear windows. It was Thanksgiving weekend, my father in town from the west coast.

A thick dust floated in the air as squealing saws echoed off the brick walls. The space was a SoHo storefront midway through renovation and I was there with two co-workers from the theater dismantling a fifteen by fifteen section of rolling storage shelves, a donation to our theater by the store’s landlord.

The leaves on the tall oaks had turned from green to red, and from red to yellow. In parks citywide, gusts of wind blew these leaves from their branches, each one dancing like a golden snowflake as it fell to the grass. In Astoria Park, the one just a block from my apartment, workers in red jumpsuits raked these leaves into piles then scooped them into large black trash bags.