The day I rode the elevator with Mr. Baldwin.

When the door of the elevator opened, he was standing next to his son. They both looked exhausted (neither held any reverence for the winters). I was holding a copy of blue note jazz LP's *before the fated world of umbrella labels* (Grant Green, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Lou Donaldson...) and two grocery bags of fruit. Without stopping to attend to his son, he glanced past my hand and the LP's and nodded to himself *not intended for me in any way* His son had his lips, pursed and rosy, and he was slightly awkward with eyes that were constantly looking through (not at) everything in their path. I had known how highly endeared Mr. Baldwin was to watching this little boy count floors. I had heard that he was heading home soon *speculation* His little boy, raised with all the unconventional means for the most healthy of childhoods, looked at hope like a prism. Being that it was the first time I had actually seen this boy, he looked much older than I had supposed. Mr. Baldwin had his right hand pressed against the middle of the young boy's back while he stared up at the top of the elevator. He was listening to the sounds of cables covered in plastic rubbing and slapping against metal. There are those indelibly delicious moments when your very aspirations lay in the middle of a young boy's eyes staring through an elevator wall while his father watches on. I would have said something but neither was aware I was in the elevator. I shook my grocery bags a bit as to warn them of an upcoming floor stop but they paid no mind. There are those important days where you're unheard, ignored and unseen. This sets off a chain reaction in all the right directions, for fathers and sons to take note of the importance of such silence. I stepped off, turned back, and saw Mr. Balwin staring intently on a young boy looking up and wondering why the elevator stopped in the first place.