Eli saw "high near 60°F" in the forecast and made what I can only describe as an executive decision.
He decided we were going to Washington Park.
Not the vague, "maybe we'll wander over" kind of going to Washington Park. The committed kind. The kind where he looked up whether the Tulip Festival vendors would be set up yet (they won't be, not until May, a fact I mentioned and he received as background noise) and announced that we should "get ahead of it." I asked what that meant. He said we should scope the space. I asked what there was to scope. He said the vibe.
We were going to scope the vibe of an empty park in early April because the weather app said sixty degrees.
I want to be clear that I also looked at the weather app. I saw the same number he saw. I also saw the words "gusts up to 35 mph" and "Red Flag Warning" and "low humidity" and made what I thought was an obvious inference, which is that sixty degrees with thirty-five mile per hour gusts is not a temperature. It is a threat.
Eli does not process wind as meteorologically relevant. Wind, to Eli, is ambiance.
We drove downtown first because he wanted to see "what was happening" — his words, applied to a Tuesday afternoon on a block with two open storefronts and optimistic signage in the windows of spaces that were clearly not open yet. He read a handwritten "Coming Soon" sign out loud like it was good news. He said downtown was "on the come-up." I did not point out that I had read that exact phrase in a Times Union article about downtown Albany's hoped-for 2026 revival, which meant Eli and the local business press were sharing a belief system.
Then we went to the park.
The moment we got out of the car, my water bottle, which I had set on the roof while I zipped my jacket, became briefly airborne. Eli caught it. He seemed to think this was fun. He was wearing a light hoodie because he had read "60°F" and stopped reading.
He was squinting into the wind like a man on a ship. His hood was doing nothing. His hair had made a structural decision to go entirely sideways. He had his hands in his front pocket — singular, kangaroo pocket — and was walking with the posture of someone who was fine, definitely fine, completely unaffected.
"It's so nice out," he said.
A recycling bin across the path tipped over. A dog being walked nearby briefly became a kite. The tulip beds were there, but the tulips were not, which I had predicted, and the soil looked very dry, which was probably relevant to the fire warning, which I had mentioned in the car and which Eli had heard as me being negative.
We sat on a bench for approximately four minutes. I was wearing a real coat. I was still cold. Eli was vibrating slightly, which he was doing with his jaw clenched so I wouldn't notice he was shivering.
"We could go," I said.
"We literally just got here."
"The bench is shaking."
"It's breezy."
"Eli, there's a Red Flag Warning. For fire. Because it's so dry and windy."
He looked at me. He looked at the sky. He looked at the empty tulip beds and the sideways trees and the recycling bin that had not righted itself. He took what I can only describe as a long breath through his nose, the breath of a man recalibrating without admitting he is recalibrating.
"We could get soup," he said.
We got soup. It was great. There's a place on Lark that had the heat on and a window full of condensation and absolutely no wind inside it whatsoever. Eli held his bowl with both hands and slowly returned to a normal color. He said the park had been "worth it for the fresh air." I let him have it.
On the way home he mentioned that the Firebirds home opener is April 11 at MVP Arena and asked if I wanted to go.
I said yes, obviously, but I'm already planning what I'm going to say when he looks at the forecast and announces it'll be warm enough for just a light layer.
Some things you can see coming from a mile away. You go anyway.