"​Full‑Body Honesty at Noon"

Main Street, downtown Village of Tarrytown

Figuring out train times for New York, Yonkers, or Poughkeepsie should be simple. There’s an app for everything now — schedules, alerts, maps. I download them, swear I’ll use them, and then delete them a week later. It’s easier to walk down to Peekskill Station, snap a photo of the timetable, and trust the image in my phone. Morning or afternoon, I know exactly when I need to be there.

On Friday — blistering, unreasonable heat — I found myself in Tarrytown. I’m still not sure what possessed me. Mostly I was there for an appointment with Dr. Joshua K., a baby‑faced man with fast‑blinking blue eyes and a gentle, attentive manner. His office sits a short walk from the station. If you’re not a walker, the cabs line up like obedient soldiers, or you can catch the #13 up White Plains Road to the Columbia Doctors building — a futuristic black‑glass structure that shows you all of yourself whether you’re ready or not.

The sunlight is merciless. The reflection even more so. You try not to look too hard — not out of dislike, just that quick flicker of wondering why you chose that outfit in such unforgiving light against your dark complexion. And then comes the inner terror we all know: Is that really me? Have I gotten that fat? That building doesn’t offer mercy; it offers full‑body honesty at noon. No more excessive pub drinking. No wonder a friend once said to you — rather harshly — When is the baby due? Disgusting, yes, but in that reflection the truth hits exactly where it hurts.

After my appointment — which I always enjoy for reasons I can’t quite name — I wandered toward a trail, an old aqueduct tucked into the middle of the village near Temple Beth Abraham, in a well kept, beautiful, lush neighborhood.  I’ll be honest: I don’t understand these villages and hamlets at all. Growing up, a town was a town and a county was a county. Here, you step out of one place and you’re suddenly in another — White Plains, Sleepy Hollow, the Village of Tarrytown, the Village of Mount Pleasant, Greenburgh. The borders feel imaginary, like someone drew them in pencil and forgot to erase.

Still, Tarrytown is beautiful. I walked uphill through a quiet residential stretch toward White Plains Road, passing Washington Irving School and Christ Church, where an ivy vine once grew at Irving’s own Sunnyside residence. Downtown is lively, stylish, more boutique than Peekskill. From certain spots — perched high on its bluff — you can see the river and the bridge. I still call it the Tappan Zee, though it was renamed for a governor's father. That governor, the son and not the father, got booted a few years back, clearing the path for the current governor, a woman, to rise.

But honestly, the day was too hot for anything ambitious. Even so, I enjoyed the little I managed. Sometimes the middle of an adventure is the best place to start — no plan, no map, just the heat, the hills, and whatever the day decides to give you.

If you want, I can help you craft a closing line that echoes the title — something that ties the “honesty at noon” theme back into the wandering, the heat, and the self‑reckoning.

Village of Tarrytown