There is a gentle but persistent rain on the morning after Thanksgiving. My neighborhood is enveloped in a gray hush, the stillness broken occasionally by the sound of tires on wet pavement or the engine exhale of a bus making stops on a route somewhere in the distance. Even the birds are subdued this morning, sheltering quietly in the trees that line my street.

From my second floor window, I watch a woman in sweatpants and parka walking her dog on the sidewalk below. Across the street, a man stands under a bodega awning munching on a tin foil-wrapped breakfast sandwich and sipping steaming coffee out of a paper cup.

How easy it would be to lay back in bed right now, I think, to allow myself to be lulled to sleep by the tap tap tap of rain on the fire escape.