USA. Battery Park ferry. A man in a Mets shirt told me, without being asked, "My nonna's hat blew off when she saw the statue. She didn't even chase it." I bowed. He was still looking at the statue. He did not see the bow. That is fine. Bows do not require receipts. The gate man at the crown said, "Three hundred and seventy seven steps, sir. You good?" I said I was good. I was not good. But a man in a Mets shirt had handed me the memory of his grandmother's hat, and a man does not refuse a handoff like that. I began to climb. I began to count. Step one. The Step of Departure. Step two. The Step of the First Doubt. Step three. The Step of the Grandmother's Hat. I was naming them. Out loud. Softly, but out loud. A woman in a Phillies cap was on a landing, breathing. "Hon," she said. "You doing okay back there?" I said I was naming the steps. She said, "Sure, hon. Take a beat. There's a railing." I bowed. She had given me the railing. I did not yet understand what a railing was for in this country. In my country, railings are a suggestion. Here, apparently, a railing is a kindness. I noted this down on the inside of my forearm with the cap of a pen. My notebook was in my pocket. My pocket was four hundred steps away. Step fifty seven. The Step of the Railing Kindness. A man passed me coming down. Yankees cap. He looked at me counting under my breath. "You good, dude?" I said I was on the Step of the Promise. He said, "Yeah, that tracks. Hydrate." He kept going. I watched his back. He had not asked which promise. He had not asked whose. He had given me, with one word, the only spiritual instruction I have ever needed from a stranger. Hydrate. I drank from my water bottle like a soldier reporting one breath before the bell. Step one hundred and twelve. The Step of Hydration as Mandate. The stairs got tighter. They became less stairs and more the inside of a screw. My knees, which had served eight hundred years of men in my line, asked me politely to consider going back. I told my knees about Anthony. I told my knees about the hat. My knees did not care. Knees are not sentimental. The Phillies cap woman passed me again, going down this time, slower than me even though she was descending. "Honey," she said. "You're talking to your knees." I said I was negotiating. She said, "Take a break, dude. The lady's been here a while. She'll wait." I thought she was speaking of the Statue of Liberty. She might also have been speaking of her own mother, who had climbed this in 1962. In this country both can be true and nobody clarifies. The lady waits. Which lady is your problem. Step two hundred. The Step of Which Lady Is Your Problem. A park ranger at a small platform said, "Sir, please keep moving, there's folks behind you." I said I was honoring the lineage of the climb. She said, "That's great. Move, please." I moved. I have never been corrected by a higher authority more efficiently. Eight hundred years of court protocol in my country and we have not produced anything as crisp as "That's great. Move, please." The top was small. Smaller than the kitchen at my mother's house. The window in the crown was the size of a serving tray. I looked out. I did not have a Nonna. My grandmother had never left our prefecture. She had died in a room that smelled of cedar and salt fish. She had only ever lost one hat, which was the one I had stepped on at age six in the garden, and for which she had whacked me with a rolled paper. But I had been entrusted. By Anthony. With Nonna. I took off my baseball cap. I held it out into the wind through the small window. I did not drop it. There was a sign that said do not drop things, and even a foreign visitor mid-ceremony respects signage. I put the cap back on. I had performed the symbolic version of the hat. The harbor does not require literalism. The harbor is patient. The Yankees cap man was back at the top, climbing again with somebody slower. "Buddy," he said. "You make it?" I said I had honored a woman named Nonna by symbolically nearly dropping my cap. He said, "Hell yeah. That counts." He nodded once and turned to the slower person behind him. "This guy gets it," he said. Walking back down, I lost count of the steps. This was a failure. A man who names three hundred and seventy seven steps should know which one he is on. I have decided this is acceptable. Tomorrow, on the next set of stairs anywhere in this country, I will start counting again. I will name them again. I will hydrate. I will not chase the hat.