“You are so much sunshine every square inch,” reads a sign on a fence lining a sunflower garden icing the lawn in front of a townhouse in my neighborhood. My neighborhood.
“You are so much sunshine every square inch,” is an adaptation of a quote from Walt Whitman, which, when I Google it, actually says: “Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch,” but I like my neighbor’s version better.
Because there is so much sunshine in my neighborhood, “every square inch,” and I am this sunshine and this sunshine is me.
Before I left for New York I wrote about searching for sunshine. “I love sunshine,” I wrote. But I didn’t know I would find so much, so soon.
After I move, it’s all around me.
Starting with the sun, the real one, beaming through the canopy of Eastern Parkway, sizzling over the long meadow at Prospect Park, steaming the sands of Brighton Beach.
Next there are the signs—the Walt Whitman one—and another, near my apartment, with the words “Sunflowers Growing,” above a garden of Caladiums.
There are the actual sunflowers, too, some twice my height, peeking above neighborhood gardens or caged-in backyards, growing from my fire escape.
And there’s sunshine in less expected places.
My local nail salon (Sunny’s), my go-to order from my neighborhood sushi shop (Sunshine Slaw), the best pour from the wine bar down the street (Lady of the Sunshine).
It's in me, too. So much sunshine. Every square inch.
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