Harlem: The Soundtrack of My First Cross-Country…

Before I ever set foot on the desert highways of America, I walked Harlem with a mail cart stacked high with other people’s lives. Letters, packages, reams of paper bundled tight — the weight of grief, joy, bills, love, and deadlines all balanced on squeaky wheels. Six days a week, 8–13 hours a day, that cart became my first training partner. And Harlem itself became my teacher.

Carrying the mail in New York wasn’t just about stamina. It was about rhythm. Step, scan, push, deliver. Dodging potholes and sidewalk cracks, weaving through trash bags, skirting around rats bold enough to stare you down. Always moving, never stopping, because the mail doesn’t wait for blisters to heal or bodies to rest.

But Harlem taught me something bigger: you are never really alone out there. I became part of the neighborhood, and the neighborhood took care of its own — which meant they took care of me. The guys by the stoops made sure no one touched my cart while I sorted mail in lobbies. They didn’t have to. They just did. Because once you’re part of Harlem’s rhythm, you’re in it.

And then there was Mrs. Davis, sitting in her walker in the lobby of her building on Lenox Avenue. She’d greet me like I was her granddaughter, telling me stories of her children and grandchildren while I slid letters into boxes. Somewhere along the way, she decided ginger ale was my responsibility. If she wasn’t in the lobby, I’d slip one into her mailbox. One day, instead of her voice, I found a note saying she had passed. I stood there with the ginger ale in my hand, wrecked. Mrs. Davis had loved me like family, and I’ll carry her memory forever.

The shelter guards were the same. They kept the restroom spotless — a small act, but when you’ve been walking ten hours, it felt like salvation. They checked on me daily, asked about my training, and told me I had this. Their words kept me moving on days I wanted to give in.

And then there was the music. Harlem sings whether you’re listening or not. On my walk home, I’d pass 139th Street and hear a saxophone pouring out of a first-floor window. Some nights it crooned heartbreak, other nights it shouted joy, but always it poured love into the air. That sound lifted me when my body sagged, stitched beauty into the exhaustion.

I delivered mail to the building where Billie Holiday once lived. (Yes — that’s the spelling.) I stepped into hallways where jazz was born, into neighborhoods where hip-hop first raised its voice. These weren’t museum pieces. They were alive, still breathing, still shaping the world. Growing up in Australia, I listened to this music on cassette tapes, oceans away, never imagining I’d one day be walking the very streets that gave it birth. Some days, I had to pinch myself.

And somewhere in the background of all that rhythm, there was someone who knew. Someone who had carried the same kind of cart, walked the same kind of miles, felt the same kind of exhaustion. Someone who understood what my body was going through, and who quietly made sure my heart and my tired bones were cared for, too. That care — unspoken, steady — was another kind of training I didn’t know I needed.

Because what I learned in Harlem is this: mail carriers don’t just carry mail. We carry people’s lives. Their heartbreak, their celebrations, their deadlines, their hope. Some days it feels like just paper and boxes. But when you’re the one hauling it, you know it’s heavier than that. And somewhere in the middle of carrying it all, Harlem carried me too.

That’s why, when I finally reached the Atlantic, I didn’t walk there alone. Harlem was still with me — its music, its people, its rhythm, its weight, its grace.