On the steps of the Museum of the City of New York at 103rd Street.
Lunch in a Queens park that has just reopened. Big trees, new benches, giant frogs spouting water in the playground. I have excellent ice coffee–good enough to to drink black– Julia is eating a bagel with bacon and cream cheese–her idea. This is the way to take in 90 degrees in NYC.
A week in New York. Museuming. A quiet Fourth of July. And then yesterday. Also, a few mistakes, some corrected.
Traveling to and staying in New York is always part coming home, part visiting Cheshire and friends and part playing tourist. Add to that mix, this summer we observed David’s death day here. There is never time to write here. I’d so rather hang with my girls and chat than tap away. Continue reading →
We took off and flew and landed today. Yay!
Oh, there are so few people who might get the joke. Jan, are you there? Makes me think of memory holders. Those who know enough to of your history to reminisce at the drop of a hat. And those who cannot remember for whom we hold memories.
We are back at the airport. Still Milwaukee, checked in and waiting at the gate. A gate slightly to the right of yesterday’s gate but few changes. Our berries survived the night in the hotel frig which was not cold. Those berries plus an expensive banana, juice, scone that Julia insisted on because she likes mine and is disappointed with what we get, and coffee are breakfast. We could have had the hotel buffet but there was a pool at the hotel and Julia had asked to swim last night. I had been too tired last night–the release of travel prep stress exhaustion– and I could not summon energy to search our bags for swim suits.
We slept. But only after supper at the restaurant. There we met a woman who was stuck after the cancelled flight. We rode to the hotel together and chatted then. She had finished dinner by the time we got to our table but she ordered another glass of beer and I asked her to join us. She was headed to a family reunion. The cancelled flight caused her to miss the first event (hopefully, the 6 am flight she caught this morning got her there for this afternoon’s festivities.). She is ex-military, on the cusp of buying her first house outside of of Seattle (inspection while she is away), she has two kids who have moved around a lot while she has been deployed, wounded during her last tour in Afghanistan. During a long recovery and rehab, she studied for her bachelors (she started with an associates degree plus a few credits) and then masters in education. She is a social studies teacher now, not the kind obsessed with maps and dates. She teaches kids where wars come from and how people live through them. “They need to know how it happens so they can stop the next ones.”
She had a seven year old son on the spectrum, she stutters under pressure (which I think is a different kind of stuttering from mine) and her father was a prison chaplain after he retired from the military. We found plenty to talk about and, I’m not saying that I would have given up yesterday’s flight to have dinner with this woman, but I felt I had met a comrade–talking through imperfect speech, another autism mom and someone who has an insiders’ perception of prisons. Lemons to lemonade–such good fortune.
And Julia drew Winter, the dragon for her.
Back in our room, we watched the end of Avatar and I forgot how beautiful the movie is. Julia is ready to see it. Interesting, Julia snuggled with me in my bed for the movie and then moved to her own bed to sleep. This is new. In the past, she has not been interested in snuggling unless she was afraid or she was not interested in her own sleeping space. Yesterday, she wanted both.
This morning we decided to go swimming in the hotel pool instead of breakfast–we would have a couple of hours in the airport to catch breakfast. But we were too early and the pool was not open. We went to the front desk and I asked if we could bend the rules. I told our story of a flight cancelled and Julia piped in that she was “waiting patiently.” The manager was charmed–by her, not me, and we splashed around for 40 minutes before leaving.
Back at the airport now. Still waiting. Everything points to a good travel day and Cheshire is at the other end. So is New York. Such a good start for an adventure.
Preparation now packed, rather loosely of which I am so proud, in two rolling carrying suitcases, two back packs and my over the shoulder bag. None feels too heavy. A nice way to begin a journey. Julia complains about walking in the airport and I take a breath. We’ve hardly begun. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, she will grow into travel walking again. We will do a lot of it this time. No cars except for cabs and probably not many of those. Trains mostly punctuated with a few planes. And walking.
New York, Turin, Genoa, Orta San Giuliano, Milan and London. A week in each. I checked weather on the bus to Milwaukee airport and we are packed appropriately. Except for London where it was 57 degrees and drizzling in the evening. If it is that cold when we get there, we’ll both be bringing home new sweaters or sweatshirts.
I woke up at 4 yesterday, tossed for a few minutes and realized that I was up for the day. Apart from one melt down in late morning, Julia and I were able to work together all day. She had therapy scheduled for three to six, and I had a small shopping list to accomplish–a return to Old Navy, finding gift bags and an additional adapter. Plans changed when therapy was cancelled and we shuffled. We fit in an evening gardening short hour, Julia picked weeds out of the cracks in the driveway and the worst of the side walk and I deadheaded everything I could in the front garden. A few things days too soon but perhaps we will reap a second bloom by the time we get home.
The bus passes the restaurant that M and R took me to for my birthday the year after David died. It is getting close to another anniversary–6 years–and there is no ignoring heart tugs. How many friends have stepped in to make holidays, personal and public, bearable. How many times I have lean on and found support, love and care. Even today, we were driven to the bus and hugged before boarding.
We are at Milwaukee airport hours early. That is what happens when you take a bus. At least in the States. It is fine. We are going away for a relatively long time and I have two goals connected to time. The first is to spend travel days traveling not rushing. I intend to be early, to wait around, to read (I brought three books) and write, and allow Julia plenty of drawing/coloring time. She has a new Harry Potter coloring (thank you, Kelly) and print out pages from a meditation coloring book. She has only one game on her iPad but 3 art apps to explore. We are doing summer home work but it is simple. 6 multiplication (or division) problems and a chapter of “To Kill a Mocking Bird.” She’ll do some writing about the book and journaling. And Instagram to work on social skills. We’ll do this on travel days and exploring days but not everything everyday. I want to see what lightening up on school work gives her.
Julia put her cello away yesterday after practicing. I had her put it into the case and we stored it in a lonely corner of the dining room. She mentioned something about taking it on vacation. A noble idea not to be entertained. We’ll find some music to listen to.
The second time related goal is about not over planning. Although the I still did a lot of work finding lodgings and places of interest and restaurants, I hope to use it all lightly. I want to just walk, allow us the time to see cities for what they are, allow us time to get lost and find our way again. To find gelato where it is least expected. This is a heady goal for me. I travel plan like my mother cleaned–with so much more intensity than is/was required. Sometimes when I clean, especially like I clean before traveling which has a bit of stress attached to it, I recall the stress of cleaning for and with her. She was a master and I her unworthy apprentice. There was still dust on the bureau and a spot of burned vegetable left in the pot when I finished. Not that I like dirty pots but why stress cleaning until even the lovely result became unappealing. I know I’ve been there with travel planning and the intensity came from a feeling of scarcity. I believed that if I did not see every important sight or eat in the most incredible of places, that I’d never get back to that destination and I would have missed something I would never have the chance to experience. Ever. This year we return to Italy. I am hoping to intentionally change.
Like any traveler, I have stories of unplanned magic. When I went to VietNam with a friend who adopted a 6 month old, we stayed in a multi-storied hotel in Saigon with rooms opening out to a center covered garden. One evening as we, perhaps just she, was trying to put her new daughter to sleep, we sat in the hallway, our chins on the cool railings (oh, it was hot, even in air conditioning) watching a wonder of a wedding preformed three stories beneath us. The bridal couple began the evening in traditional Vietnamese garb and then changed three times to appear in Western (bridal white) garb, some very fancy ethnic Vietnamese outfits and finally in black and red Spanish regalia. Two of the appearances began with choreographed dances featuring the couple and some friends. Lots of pictures were taken and new courses of food appear each time they changed. If we had been typical tourists, we would have spent the evening at a restaurant and perhaps a show, never would we have just hung out in the hallway of our hotel. And then, what we would have missed!
I would like to invite, to cultivate the possibility for such wonder.
So, we sit. Another hour before the plane takes off. If it is on time. The airport is cold. I should have put socks in my backpack. Julia finished math and is copying a picture of a sandwich dragon. I am ready to crack open a book.
And so we begin.
Best laid plans . . . Our flight was delayed twice and then cancelled. Weather. Although there doesn’t seem to be any ugly weather predicted in NY or here. But, ok. We’re in a hotel with a pool for the night. I’m exhausted but Julia is thrilled with wifi.
Chasing Joy 