Friday in New York

View of the museum from our room

Doreen, a friend of my Aunt Vicky & Uncle Antonin's with whom we stayed, is the kind of chatty B&B-keeper we love. She clearly does this because she enjoys the people who stay with her. Each day, breakfast was never shorter than an hour. That's not a bad thing - if interesting conversation with interesting people wasn't something we enjoyed, we'd stay at the Hilton.

One of the highlights of Friday was a stop at Rizzoli's bookstore, which Chris had found online. It's got a great Italian section - including magazines, CDs, and that day's newspapers - because it's also an Italian publishing house. We spent probably an hour and a half there, and plenty of money. We got three new CDs, several magazines and a few books - I got this one for my boss. If you knew him, you'd understand. If you don't, you might now.

We had lunch at another one of Chris' Internet finds - Totonno's, fantastic "autentico" pizza. We browsed the beautiful shelves at Dean & Deluca, secretly wishing it was our neighborhood grocer. Chris bought "Tipo 00" flour, which is what you have to use if you're going to make "autentico Napolitano" pizza. Our last stop was at Filene's Basement for some clothing bargains, where we again spent plenty...


Totonno's lovely pizza...


...how it met its untimely death...


...and how the evidence was cleverly hidden.



Dean & Deluca deli counters

We had dinner that night at Vicky & Antonin's apartment - a small gathering of just a few family members. It was beginning to rain on our way over, and we were getting concerned about the itinerary Antonin had planned for Saturday (lots of which was outdoors). Vicky made what she called a "real American dinner" of meat and potatoes - it was fantastic. We also had New York cheesecake for dessert, which was good because it was the only cheesecake we had the whole trip!


Friday Dinner Group
On sofa: Dad, Dad's granddaughter Nicki, Dad's wife Sue, Cousin Francoise, Aunt Vicky; On floor: me, Cousin Pierre (husband of Francoise), Uncle Antonin, Chris

She's the only practicing Jew in the immediate family, and as it was sundown she lit the Shabat candles. I'm still not religious, and that's not likely to change, but I do love ritual - the smell of the matches lighting the candles, the sound of the Hebrew blessings, the taste of the wine and challah... It's comforting, even to this non-believer. I do think it's funny that Antonin, a former Jesuit priest, married this Jewish woman and now says the Hebrew blessings right along with her as if he'd done it all his life. Maybe there's something to the idea that the ritual is what's important.

We gave her our gift of boxes of local chocolates, and then I read my "ode" which explained the reason for the chocolate. (I'd decided that giving someone a box of chocolates for their 60th birthday was pretty lame, and required an explanation!) The gist of it is that when my bothers and I were little she used to visit from Zurich and bring Swiss chocolates before you could get them everywhere in the U.S., and they seemed so exotic and wonderful... From that point, I knew that I wanted to be the "Exotic Aunt" which she was modeling so well. She's still my role-model in that regard!

We also had a wonderful family discussion over dinner – about what it means to have our history, and how thankful I am that Dad is finally willing to talk about it; how I want this stuff recorded for posterity. I heard for the first time that Cousin Pierre was actually in a camp at some point – I obviously need more clarification on this point, but my immediate reaction is that the scope of my "little family recording project" must, if it is to be accurate, be expanded. I was joking that night that I needed to talk to my mother the master grant writer to see how to go about funding this expedition – me and a video camera videotaping all living relations around the world – but I think I'm seriously going to ask her about it. Great Aunt Fritzi isn't going to live forever, and she actually did come through Ellis Island (albeit accidentally – Vicky said she arrived in her finery with her baby, Joe, to meet her husband Meyer in New York – and because her paperwork didn’t match his – for whatever reason – they sidetracked her and kept her and Joe at Ellis Island for several days. She didn't have baby formula, or diapers, or anything but her high heels. I'm not clear where she was coming from that she was dressed that way, but still… It's something that needs to be recorded).

We also talked about the Holocaust; I told Vicky about how I'd gotten choked up watching that Rick Steves program, and how I'd decided that I "needed" to see places like Auschwitz, and where my father was born, etc. I'm still not interested in turning the entire trip into a depressing exercise in walking-in-my-family's-footsteps – I can't imagine not doing "fun" things as well, just for my own sanity… Not to mention the fact that Chris might not want to join me otherwise…We'll try to figure out the trip so we can connect with Vicky as well. I mean, who better to shepard me through this than a counselor for whom a specialty is working with Holocaust survivors?