Reunion Three

Good Morning from New York, where it is still threatening to rain, still a little cool, but who cares, it's the city and the pulse is dynamic, and leaping over puddles at street corners is an art you master early on if you live here.

I wake up thinking that you can actually enjoy New York if you moved away from it, so that you've forced a separation between it and you. It's no longer hellish to try to make it to appointments on time, because your appointments are not in this corked up place where "getting there" is definitely not part of the fun. So I'm relaxing my resistance to New York. I want to like it again, in the way that you like much in life when you are way older because you realize perfection is elusive and, as my granddaughter keeps telling me, everyone (and everything) has his or her genius.

Breakfast downstairs again. Am I the only one on the planet that loves eating breakfasts that have some formality to them? You will never catch me munching on a doughnut standing up in the kitchen and grabbing a coffee to go. I need to sit down and take in the world. To set the mood for the day. As they say in yoga-land, to set my intentions.

Today we are to recreate the key moment of our New York adventure of fifty years ago: call it The Ferry Ride. I'll come back to this in a bit. First, I walk over to the subway stop where we meet to ride over to the 9/11 Memorial.

(this sign stands just as you enter Times Square)

The twin towers of the World Trade Center were not completed until 1973 and so in 1972, when my Polish friends visited me in New York, we saw their silhouettes, but we did not visit them. Of course, they were destroyed in 2001. That span of time! So short, really. From 1973 until 2001. I wasn't in New York when they were taken down but of course, everyone of us on this side of the ocean lived and breathed that attack in a profound, life changing way. So we pause here. We must. We walk around both reflective pools. We touch the names unscripted on the stone. So many names...

And now we walk to the the ferry station. A photo was taken fifty years ago of this ferry crossing and of course, recreating that photo is an important element of this journey. There were five of us back in 1972, but only three are taking this ferry ride today. Still, we have someone take that photo, once of youthful zest, now of senior reflection. On the right, you'll see the photo taken then. One of my friends is holding it.

(Let's include the wives: after all, they traveled here for this as well...)

When I was here last time, I visited Ellis Island with Ed. That was moving and I suppose now, following the Trump years it would be really tough to walk through spaces that claimed to give immigrants are fair chance at entry. Back in the early decades of the twentieth century a great chunk of European immigrants traveled through Ellis Island several times. This was certainly true for my parents and grandparents (Like a Swallow describes their attempts to settle in America). Now of course, the place is a museum, nothing more, and we take care of the problems of immigrants by not agreeing on any solution at all. We just fight about it and the masses stay huddled, just not on Ellis Island. Will we someday put up a museum commemorating the next chapter of our country's immigration saga? Maybe at the southern border?

(In the words of Emma Lazarus -- Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... Words chiseled onto a plaque afixed to the pedestal in 1903, after Lazarus had long died. What did they mean? Do we use them to inflate our image of American exceptionalism? Are we still reflecting on such ideals? Were they ever ideals? If you want to set yourself thinking about these issues, you might want to read the Atlantic article about the poem here. It, like all of history, is complicated!)

(brooding sky but at least there's no rain... do you see the Statue of Liberty?))

From the ferry we take that epic walk uptown. You start at the southern tip of Manhattan and you walk as far as your legs can carry you. Wall Street, Chinatown... 

(picking up some fruit on Canal Street)

Little Italy, of course. A perfect place to pause for a late lunch. It isn't outstanding food, but it's good enough...

Cannoli from a bakery that claims to be the "king of cannoli..."

SoHo, the Village, all of it.

We split up at Bleeker Street. I send them to Washington Square Park, while I walk a little further into the heart of the Village. I give them very detailed instruction on the subway connection back to their hotel. I hope they make it without issues.

Epic walk indeed. And we only cheated once and hopped on the subway for two stops in the financial district. I mean, all tall office buildings after a while look the same. We saved ourselves for the better stuff ahead.

So, given that we did the Ferry Ride, what else is left on our New York agenda? Well, there is one museum, but too, there are Polish relatives and friends. When someone comes from Poland all the way to New York, they look up people who were once close to them, even if substantial time has passed since that connection held strong. My friends went to grade school with a guy who moved to New Jersey. Too, there is a cousin and she has a husband and a daughter. Seeing these people, these essentially Polish people is on our schedule for tomorrow. But right now, I can only think about getting some rest. Delicious rest with maybe some of the cookies I picked up at the Italian bakery. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Reunion Two

I wake up to a wet New York. 

Cities have their own weather personalities. Warsaw, for example, feels prickly and broody when winter precipitation comes down on its people. Paris does okay in the rain, so long as you stay away from narrow streets where it's hard to navigate. New York? You're forever avoiding the weather. You cut through Grand Central to stay out of the heat. Or get on a subway to avoid a downpour. It takes incredible skill to walk through a busy street with an umbrella. There's just no room for everyone's rain gear.

My skills will be put to a test today.

I go down for a quick breakfast. Croissant, fruit. Plants. Remember? My hotel has lots and lots of plants.

My friends aren't up as early, so I take a stroll. To Central Park, around Columbus Circle. And I think -- when you live here, you rarely look up at the sky scrapers. You look at what's at eye level. And maybe that's a good thing. Some of the lower buildings are as attractive, or perhaps even more attractive than the tall ones.

And then we set out together. Via Rockefeller Center.

(protection against the rain!)

These guys will be your focal points for my photos today. Obviously you dont know them (unless you read Like a Swallow!), but they'll help you place the human element into the city vignettes.

We have tickets for a skyscraper viewing. I know, it's not the weather for it. But there are no refunds! We'll view clouds or fog or rain pelting against windows. We'll view something!

We walk through Grand Central Terminal: how many times have I caught the crosstown subway here? Or the subway from school when I was very young? Countless times. Really, in the hundreds.

One Vanderbilt Summit is our viewing station and it is right here, towering next to Grand Central. It's a new platform for seeing New York from up high. But that's just a tiny bit of it: what you sign onto is the experience of seeing the city in a crazy new way. Like, with helium balloons floating around you. Or with mirrors reflecting your world from all sides (they warn you: don't wear a skirt for this!). It really is sort of over the top. But in a strange way it works. Because, well, New York is over the top. Exaggeration is so common to it! The tallest this, the most of the other, the weirdest that. So  walking through the three levels of One Vanderbilt, starting at the 91st floor feels almost... normal. 

(in the elevator)

Let me post a few pics -- of the clouds, of the space, of the lifting clouds... You'll see what I mean!

(Getting off: to a dizzying amount of color. Too, there is eerie music throughout....)

(Everything is made of mirrors and glass. You wear shoe covers to keep it clean. The place is so well staffed! They make sure you're keeping things tidy and in order. Like in Disney World!)

(The initial disappointment: everything outside is under a thick cloud cover. With rain drops over the glass.)

(So we concentrate on having fun in other ways: here we are, lying down on the floor. You can look up, you can look down. There are a million reflections and viewings!)

(Standing up again and looking up...)

(Still, you want to see the city! Where is New York??)

(At the next level, you pass through a room with many many helium balloons. You think to yourself -- why? But you know, it works! And you linger longer than you would have thought possible...)

(And here's our good fortune: the clouds are lifting somewhat. Enough to see ... the city!)

(much better! and with the United Nations now in full view...)

(I know that building!)

(Yeah!)

(We are grateful.)

And now it's lunch time. 

(Walking up Lexington, you can see the Chrysler Building now at ground level.)

There's a food court on 51st and Lexington called Urbansapce and I figure they'll find something there they'll like. (All choose salads. Me -- well, I'm ready for another coffee and a scone.)

And now we need a quiet place where we can review what's next and rearrange our mindset. We walk along 57th street...

(looking up again)

... to my hotel. Green plants and quiet spaces. Cups of warm tea. Perfect for an exhale.  

And then they return to their place to rest and I keep the IT person company in my room for nearly two hours as he tries to determine why the access point is not working (meaning I cannot get internet in the room). Fun. I sit in my window seat and study the world below. (I'm on the 6th floor.) Umbrellas. Fire engines. And an urban Amazon delivery. To just one building. Ah, city life.

Toward evening, we have tickets for a performance at Birdland, the jazz club. Well, jazz theater. But with drinks and food. The Anderson brothers are playing Benny Goodman stuff and I'm happy to have a chance to listen to this. I don't go to concerts very often these days and indeed, the last jazz performance I attended was in New York some twenty years ago. I could tell the person I was with didn't like the music, nor the venue, not the whole evening. You never want to be at a jazz club with someone who is completely not with you on the music front. But, this time is different: my friends are enthusiastic. 

And the music is so beautiful, so exquisitely beautiful that it chokes me up with emotion.

We order some foods and drinks and the afternoon rolls into the evening and we don't care about the weather or the rain or the fact that life can get complicated. The hours spent at Birdland are all about the pleasure of listening to fabulous music while sipping cocktails and downing not a small amount of food (crab cakes!) with people who are your lifelong friends.

Broadway evening walk.

And a retreat. To rest up for tomorrow. 

With so much love...

Reunion One

If you have read my book, Like a Swallow, you will perhaps remember that I moved to the United States, permanently as it turned out, in 1972. I was 18 years old and I agreed to be the live-in nanny to a New York family. But, life is always unpredictable and by the summer of that year I will have resigned my position, or at least I moved away from it for a while, because my parents turned up for a temporary work assignment  in New York and I chose to live then with them. 

I was at the time very close to my three Polish friends back in Warsaw and the first thing I did when I moved in with my parents was to ask if I could invite the three Polish guys for a visit to New York. This would be a huge deal for them, as travel to western countries was rare in those years. My mother (the decision maker on such matters) waffled, but finally agreed, on the condition that they would help with unpacking, setting up household, etc. My sister was also visiting (she chose to live in Warsaw during all this) and the second condition was that we would all somehow have to fit into the one bedroom in our two bedroom New York apartment. All five of us. The room was not large, but there was a single bed in it and you could pull out a second single for the night, leaving a small amount of floor space for the rest of the group. We managed.

All this happened exactly fifty years ago. The three guys stayed with us in New York for maybe two weeks. We did some touristy things when they weren't charged with helping unpack, and we did some crazy things that only someone in that age category would call sane. (The three were school friends, all in my class cohort, so, as you'll know from reading Swallow, all two years older than me. I was 19, they were 21.)

Time passed. Our lives took us in all different and fascinating directions. There were marriages, divorces, births, deaths, remarriages. You name it, it happened. And then, this year, one of these guys proposed a New York reunion. A 50th anniversary of that infamous visit. They still all live in Poland, in and around Warsaw, though they are by now well traveled of course. Poles tend to travel far more than us Americans. 

Did I say that life takes us in unpredictable directions? I'll say it again, just for the record. One of these guys and his wife cancelled out at the last minute. Covid, a death in the family, poor health. Sigh... But the other two, along with their wives who have never traveled to the US before, are still on board. Today we are to meet in New York. They are flying in from Warsaw, I'm coming in from Madison.

The plan is to spend a handful of days in the city together. They will then go to California (one of them has a son there), then fly back to Chicago, where I will again meet up for another handful of days together.

It will be crazy fun!

Or will it? Can people our age be that youthfully spirited as we were back then? How do you look at a city, at travel with friends, at life behind you and maybe a little still ahead of you, when you are no longer merely imagining adulthood? 

*     *     *

I get up at the usual time, give the animals the usual care. We eat the usual breakfast. With my New York City guy, who laughs at the thought of spending leisure time in New York City.

(farmette in September)

(surprise!)

I pack my suitcase. I catch the direct flight we have from Madison to New York. It's Labor Day -- I'm not about to mess with connections if I can help it.

The flight leaves on time and some two hours later we are landing on a cloudy afternoon in New York.

I'm staying at 1 Hotel, which I chose because it's close (a 4 min walk) to where my friends are staying and, too, because it has a room made out of the floor of a University of Wisconsin basketball court. I kid you not. The hotel is overall beautiful and with an environmental focus. There are plants everywhere. I mean, everywhere. It would be reasonably priced if you booked really early (which I did not) and if it were not fashion week in the city (which it is). I tell myself that fifty year reunion/anniversary of this sort doesn't happen often and I open myself up to the possibility of enjoying this strangely wonderful little bedroom on 58th street.

*    *     *

New York. I have such intense feelings about the place. Like about Warsaw only different. 

I've lived in Manhattan on and off and I visited it in normal times and in very weird times. Forget about my friends for a minute. How do I deal with all the history I have with this city? I came here to live as a child, then again as a young adult. In those years, though I did some spot travel to other parts of the US, I mainly lived and breathed New York. To me, there was no America beyond New York. I was shocked when I moved to Chicago and met people who thought New Yorkers were weird and uppity and of another world. 

My parents' marriage broke up. In New York. I dragged my Mom out of the city to Madison because she had no where else to go. Eventually I would travel to New York with my daughters. They loved Broadway shows -- we traveled for all the biggies. Then -- and this is the really weird part -- my ex husband lived and worked here in the last year of our married life. I'd come every few weeks to visit him. Well documented visits on Ocean. Bizarre visits really. I walked I think every single street of Manhattan that year. 

A few years later, I was back, with Ed, sleeping on an inflatable mattress that kept leaking air. This was in a Village brownstone walkup. He  attended to family business, I tagged along and listened and learned. 

Do you see what I mean? A crazy history of comings and goings, of breakups and new twists and some funny turns. 

I look out the window and I think -- this city keeps messing with me. I seem not to be able to ever fully get  away from it.

*     *     *

My two friends and their wives arrive in New York about the same time that I do. Let's meet up for a beer! -- they text. Well okay, but what's open and by the way, I need some food! It's evening and I haven't eaten since breakfast on the farmhouse porch.

(heading out: 57th street)

My hotel person gives me a list of places that are open despite the holiday. We end up at a bar across the street from their hotel. The place is called Three Monkeys. The best part about it is that you can sit outside, which is good for me because I still worry about Covid. But "outside" means in a plastic hut that extends out onto the street. If a car doesn't switch lanes in time, it will take down the hut and us, its sole occupants along with it. I'm not worried. Traffic crawls here.

But we're good! It's great to see them and I'm totally happy with my quinoa bowl. Shockingly yummy, for being served here in the middle of 54th street.  

Despite the hour, we take a walk. 

Fifty years ago I took them out on their first night to Times Square. For the shock of it. Today, nothing can shock quite so easily, but still, we are near Times Square and so we go there.

Times Square is crazy. I mean, really insane with all its lights and pixels and people. Is it New York? Well, judging by the crowds here tonight I'd say it certainly does draw people to it. On the one hand you can say that it isn't the real New York. How many people who live here come out to see the street performers and buy the fake designer stuff peddled by the street vendors?

Still, in a sense it is New York as I know it: it's a crazy mix of everything and everyone and you smell sweat and you smell the subway air blowing out at you and you smell pot and people aren't all alike and this is a face of New York that I once really loved -- the fact that people here are all over the place in their life styles and loves and choices. 

My friends are understandably exhausted so they go back to their place and I go back to mine and all would be so well except that the internet is not working in my room so there is that headache to attend to. Ah well. Travel throws stuff at you. 

For now, I breathe in plants and rub some rocks and pebbles that they leave out for you, some with words on them like for instance NOW. I will spend the rest of the evening trying to incorporate that wisdom into my day. Now. Maybe I'll have a glass of wine at the side. So much to think about! So much to love...

Sunday

I am tempted to try out the furnace this morning. It is cold in the farmhouse! Not objectively cold (we're in the low 60sF, which is around 17C), but to a person who just went through a very warm summer, whose blood is used to coping with a strong sun, this feels like the depth of winter! (Fine, I exaggerate. But still...)

Once again, my morning walk is brief.

(Chickens come running: where have you been?? We're hungry! )

(late summer purple)

(one more...)

(and another!)

(Peaches, ripening all at once)

Once again I bake us a breakfast treat. Blueberry muffins this time.

And once again I stay sequestered in the house, finishing projects, and eventually preparing dinner for the young family. Shrimp and scallops over pasta -- one of the three dishes that I tend to rotate here on Sundays to keep everyone happy.

They are all here tonight, along with my daughter's friend from California. 

And here's a consequence of our weird weather: we eat inside. Labor Day weekend and we're eating inside because of the cold! 

Well, no matter. The spirits are high, the kids are bouncy. All is fine with our little world here in the cool depths of south central Wisconsin. 

Tomorrow, I fly out again. To another place that, unexpectedly, is going to get the same cold dip in the temperatures that we are experiencing right now. Ah well. I'll pack extra sweaters.