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JOURNAL
April 2005
SEEING NEW YORK THROUGH SALLY’S EYES
We get set in our busy routines. Even our weekends get filled up with social visits with friends, the crowded laudromat, the part-time job, the gym, and can't-miss openings of one sort or another. The visiting Oklahomans can put a monkey wrench into our best-laid plans.
Such was the case a couple of years ago, in April, when my mother's cousin Sally made good on her promise to take the Amtrak train from Maine to New York with her 12-year-old grandson, Steven. Now, Sally and I had been exchanging emails for a year or two at that point, after she'd bought my CD, but we hadn't actually seen each other in years. And now she wanted to come to New York for the first time with her grandson? How did I get myself into this? How could I get myself out of this? There was nothing to do but clear my weekend and put on a cheerful face and make the best of it.
When I greeted Sally and Steven at Penn Station, we exchanged hugs and they were already telling me, through their laughter, of their adventures on the train, Sally almost getting lost during the transfer in Boston. Steven led the way.
I grabbed Sally's wheeled luggage and we made our way up the escalator to the brilliant sunshine on the plaza facing the Eighth Avenue post office. "That's the largest post office in the world," I commented, and as I looked at it I became impressed with it as if for the first time. Then I pointed the other way and said, "There's Macy's, and behind it, the Empire State Building." My, how lucky was I to live here, all of a sudden!
Even the long walk up grimy Eighth Avenue, through the hordes of people, provided excitement for Sally. A quilter herself, she quickly noticed all the fabric shops and said, "I've got to come back here, look at all that fabric!" I don't think I had ever noticed before.
On 42nd Street, we saw the brand new skyscraper with the cartoon-colored windows, the multi-storied movie theater, and flashing, gleaming billboards everywhere. I found myself catching their enthusiasm for this place, my neighborhood.
Over the next few days, we savored the gigantic chocolate-covered strawberries at Godiva in the golden Trump Tower ("Oh my God, I've never had this before!" Sally enthused), we all saw, for the first time, people swinging from a trapeze along the West Side Highway, we ate the biggest pizza slices Sally had ever seen, a horse at Central Park nearly pulled us down the street in the buggy without the driver, we marvelled at the tulips in Bryant Park, we waited in line for scrumptious cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery in the Village, Sally laughed at the billboard for "Urinetown" that she could see from her hotel window, we enjoyed the view of midtown, which looked like a stage set, from the top of my 5-floor building, Sally couldn't believe that our McDonald's served real butter with the hotcakes ("We get margarine in Maine!"), we looked at rows and rows of diamonds in the windows along W. 47th Street, we tried to talk a doorman into letting us up the elevator of a Trump residential building, Sally and Steven stood up and joined in the fun when my gospel choir performed in church, complete with parishioners dancing in the aisle ("That made the whole weekend!"), we got teary-eyed reading the tributes to our brave citizens at Ground Zero, and we walked miles and miles of side streets, in full spring bloom, without ever getting tired.
Best of all, for me, was the leisurely walk over Brooklyn Bridge. It's a sight I don't take in nearly enough and I never tire of it. That Sunday was the most perfect New York Sunday ever. The views were majestic on every side, the breezes cooled us just enough. To add drama, as we reached the Manhattan side, we were greeted with citizens carrying placards, followed by TV crews, who shouted, "You cut back, we fight back!" They were protesting the cutbacks in the fire department. What could more thrill a tourist from Maine?
When Sally and Steven left on Tuesday, we were all sad to have to go back to our daily grind. I don't think they ever realized how much of a vacation they provided for me. I had lived in the city for many years and, after all my own struggles and 9/11, it had ceased to excite me. But that weekend I had the privilege of seeing my city with new eyes, Sally's eyes, and I realized it was still a magnificent, lively place, like no other place in the world.
Spring in New York is without parallel. C'mon, you city dwellers, invite your long-lost relatives in for a weekend and rediscover it. And you out in the hinterlands, keep bugging your relatives who live here until they relent and invite you to the Big Apple. A great time will be had by all.
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KevScoHall@Verizon.net