I took the steps one at a time, exiting the subway with an exhilaration of spirit and a sense of freedom and of thankful wellbeing. For the city, the air was fresh and the sounds of traffic modest and rational, and, as I walked, I took in the texture of the brick and glass. Having gone to school in this town, my return is like a reunion. I love looking at the sidewalks, too, and feeling the foot-polished grain of the giant slabs of bluestone under my feet, stone quarried from our neck of the woods and shipped to the city by boat from the foregone docks of Kingston.

Finding a decent coffee shop was easy and I sat near the large window like a Hopper and watched the people on the street walk by the empty outside tables -- the wind was sharp. You could tell the tourists as they pulled their coats tight and looked at the street signs to confirm their location. Next to me, on the shallow wooden window counter, a woman worked her computer. She stalwartly tried hard to fully ignore me and that’s just fine. I’d ignore me too. She pulled her laptop towards herself several times and was afraid I was going to read her e-mails, which, of course, I was.

Behind me, a young family, maybe from Ohio, were eating croissants, waiting, I assumed, to get into the Museum of Modern Art, just like me, and they were excited and interested in it all and the young girl and boy were well behaved, as you would expect children from Ohio to be. The mother had curly blonde hair the likes of which is rarely seen these days, unkept Shirley Temple curls, and the dynamic of the family was so genuine and self-interested, in an encompassing, envelope-of-caring way, that it was a comfort to sit near them, just to be in anonymous proximity – a strange and unusual feeling.

The city looked young, everyone looked young, like the city had become a place for youth, and then it occurred to me that, hey, it’s not the city that has changed so much, it’s me. I’ve changed. I’m old. Ok. Ok. Let’s think about this. This revelation wasn’t so much a shock as it was a gentle tugging of reality. I could see myself now, not as the young student in sneakers, happy to walk through rain, but the bearded old guy with a slight limp from a bum hip. And even though the city looked so young, it was getting older too, just like me, and within two years the percentage of New Yorkers over 60 will be 20 percent. But, what? To me even 60 looks young.

I met my daughter under the museum’s marquee. We exhausted ourselves with the exhibits. We are both very systematic in our approach to viewing and we started on the top floor and wound ourselves down. Parentally, I am happy she is like me in this regard, as she is very serious about the subjects, and I can’t help thinking how lucky I am, not having to struggle with someone to do the things I love to do, the way I like doing them.

She is getting the hang of New York and I can leave the navigation to her, and we angled downtown and decided to see Cate Blanchet in Tár. We jumped on the subway for a few stops and emerged in the Village, and having time before the show and with empty stomachs, I decided to introduce Phoebe to a time-honored tourist trap – McSorley’s Old Ale House. We glided in on the sawdust wooden floors and we were seated with transplanted Jerseyites. The ale was refreshing but Gary Sweeney serves a superior burger.

After the movie, we dissected the plot, dialogue and performances, as we walked the busy sidewalks back to Grand Central, and we agreed the beginning of the movie was interminably slow and bad writing, but that Blanchett was brilliant. The ending, too, was suspect, not in that the character continued to teach in her determined perfectionist fashion, but up the Mekong? Apocalypse Now? Am I going to need to rewatch that old movie to understand the new? Not likely.

I traveled the train back up our own big river and the lights were on and the wind died down.