Posted by Holly at November 28th, 2008

Well, it’s hard to say which is the experience that is more Holly, now….Cornelius or New York. After a fully packed five days in New York a couple of weeks ago, I admit to noticing differences in what my system is able to take in the city, now, in a way I probably never have before. This is puzzling: has the city changed or have I changed? It isn’t the noise, or the crowds even; it’s that it seems to have a transient nature to it in some places. The Upper West Side is still solid and rooted but, elsewhere, people seem to have come from anywhere but New York and they are doubling/tripling/quadrupling up in apartments in order to be able to afford them. This doesn’t lend itself to building a permanent presence.

I did also notice that there doesn’t seem to be an awareness that the rest of the world is falling off of an economic cliff. Zillions of tourists and they were all carrying high-end department store bags.

Perhaps best not to speculate and, instead, to recapitulate the highlights instead. We were there for my nephew’s wedding. My nephew and niece have been as close to me as my own son all of their lives and I would throw myself in front of a train for Michael and Lauren just as I would for Charlie. So, there was great anticipation for this wedding. Anticipation enhanced by more than a year of planning by the wedding couple with periodic updates on their website. Planning culminated with a multi-page instruction list to the wedding party. My favorite item appeared a few pages in: 3:05 PM – Bathroom attendants arrive.

There was a lot of attention to detail!

And it paid off because the wedding weekend was perfect, flawless and will long be remembered. The wedding itself was beautiful. At this point I would enjoy adding photos to this but, unfortunately, in the first of several mishaps, my camera was stolen during the wedding. Oh, and I lost my cellphone in a cab. But I got that back when one of the people we were meeting for lunch that day called me to say she would be late and got the cabdriver instead! He was in the Bronx and arranged to stop off at Lincoln Center, across the street from the restaurant and around the corner from my friend Leo’s antique store, The Emporium on West 64th Street, where I had frantically run in to report the loss by phone (because I didn’t have one) to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Oh, and I couldn’t use Jim’s phone because, the night before we left, I ran his jeans through the laundry and he had forgotten to take his phone out of his pocket so that was gone.

That was the last day of our visit, one of the most hectic, starting out with a visit to the Morgan Library at Madison and 38th Street to see the WONDERFUL exhibition of Babar original works. We walked through the Morgan after smiling our way through the exhibition and stood marveling in J.P. Morgan’s library. It has several levels of books and I asked the guard how JP got up there since there was no ladder visible. He showed us where two glass doors opened to reveal a stairway behind them. We got to talking to him – he’s from Africa – and how he used to live in, I think, Colorado but thought Oregon sounded interesting.

From there we trotted over to see the Lord & Taylor Christmas windows at Fifth and 39th (I know a very funny joke about Lord and Taylor) and then headed west to pick up my four dozen bagels to tide me over for a while in Cornelius where they don’t really understand the concept of a bagel. On the way over to 46th and 12th, we decided to pass by Sardi’s and tip our virtual hats to a place that had so many pleasant memories for us together and separately. Then Jim got the brilliant idea to see if the little theatre on 45th Street was still there where he had done hundreds of Kukla, Fran and Ollie shows. Frankly, I still can’t believe I’m married to a man who personally knew Kukla and Ollie. Not only knew them but had conversations with them. Yow. It’s still there and, maybe the highlight of the trip, Jim took me to see the pipe protruding from the hole they had punched in the wall of the building into the parking lot through which the camera cables were passed to the videotape mobile unit. The parking lot attendant thought we were crazy but in a bemused sort of way.

From there we did go get the bagels and then hopped into a cab up to our lunch date at Josephina’s. That was when I lost my cellphone. And have I mentioned that just about every cab ride is about $15 now?

Before lunch and Babar, previous day’s jaunts took us to the American Museum of Natural History where we saw the exhibition The Horse and could look at the world through horse eyes thanks to some clever interactive exhibits and where I took a great picture of Jim in the elephant’s hall on our way to The Horse but can’t show you because, you know, the camera thing. We also saw an exhibition about climate change. I never actually liked the AMNH myself as a kid and don’t much enjoy it now, even though I liked the horse eye part. I use the Museum as a reference point to explain to people where the balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade are blown up the night before. It used to be a deep, dark secret for only those of us who lived on the Upper West Side. We’d bundle up our kids and our selves and take a thermos of hot chocolate and go out late – 2 or 3 AM and see amazing sights…then it got to be more widely known, people threw parties in their apartments looking over the sight and the local TV stations got a hold of it. Now, millions of people traipse through; you have to leave by midnight and, well, I’d still like to go again. My niece would like me to, also, with her. Just as we say at Passover – maybe next year in Jerusalem – maybe next year near AMNH.

One year, before Charlie was born, his father had his classic 1958 Cadillac parked on 75th Street. In the morning of the day of the blowing up it was missing. When Don called the police, they told him it had to be moved because there would be no parking for the next two days but they liked his car so much they hadn’t towed it to the pound, just moved it to a safe and legal spot! I’d like to see that happen today….

Evenings included some precious reunion time with a couple of Charlie’s old friends – and mine. I wish I could put in a photo. Oh, but wait, go to Charlie’s pictures of New York and reunions –

MOMA and The Whitney rounded out the museum portion of the visit. The Calder was spectacular. Even better was the following conversation overheard in an elevator on the way to the fourth floor exhibition: young-ish person asking woman of a certain age, clearly of the neighborhood, how she enjoyed her visit to the Seychelles: Did you enjoy the Seychelles? Long pause. Well, white sand is white sand. I’ll be quoting that for some time to come.

Staying with friends, as we did, is definitely the way to visit New York. For one thing, it helps you to be able to afford the cab rides. It really only works if the friends are just like the ones we visited. Every now and then you fall into the company of people who are funny, warm, sincere, generous and who love to sit around in the morning over coffee, fruit and cereal and talk about the history of their lives. Plus, these two are literate and urbane. It was hard to tear ourselves away for adventurous days and visiting with other friends I love and adore and only get to see in New York because, to tell the truth, none of them seem capable of venturing farther north than Inwood or farther west than The Intrepid moored in the Hudson River down there at 46th Street near the bagels.

After the bagels, the cellphone incident, the last New York lunch, Jim headed uptown in a cab ($15) to put the final touches on packing. I walked so I could: a) stop at my favorite Cuban/Chinese restaurant, La Caridad, to get squid with rice for the plane trip home; b) at Artie’s to get a pastrami sandwich for Jim; and, c) to get in last minute street shopping. I got up to the apartment on 86th Street with 10 minutes to spare before the car service picked us up to head for JFK.

Uneventful plane ride, just the way you want it. Fast forward to us in the shuttle from the Portland terminal to the parking lot and our car. Jim, I casually mentioned, where are the car keys? He had not thrown them into the suitcase as he usually does when we boarded five days before and, instead, had tossed them on top of his suitcase in New York where they promptly, unnoticed and quite on their own, slid down between two boxes and stayed there. Two and half hours later, AAA having taken apart the car door to find the lock with the code only the code wasn’t on it so the AAA guy had to make about six keys before he got the right combination, and we were pulling into our garage where I, again casually, mentioned that we didn’t have a house key. Irresponsible as we are, however, we had left a door unlocked so, at 3 AM, we were able to go in, pacify the cats and dog who were all pretty miffed that we had gone in the first place, pour a lovely glass of port and drift off to sleep in the noisy silence of the country where car alarms and sirens simply can’t compete with bullfrogs and coyotes.