Saturday in New York

The weather reports Chris had checked online were dreadful - rain most of the day, wind, and gusts up to 40 miles per hour... Doreen said the local forecast had said it would clear by the afternoon, so we chose to be optimistic. (Of course, everyone at the party brought coats, scarves and umbrellas anyway - we joked that as is generally the case, the fact that we'd brought umbrellas ended up keeping the rain away!)

Chris & I spent the morning before the scheduled rendez-vous at the Museum of Natural History. We didn't see most of it, and spent an inordinate amount of time with the dinosaur fossils. My father told a story Friday night that once when I was little and we were leaving the museum, I turned to wave and said, "G'bye, bones!" And it's still fun for me to see them - especially Triceratops, of course!


Me & my buddy


The exceptionally cool Hayden Sphere at the Museum

On our way to the meeting point, we ended up walking through what we later learned was the "Romania Festival," though there was nothing remotely Romanian about anything we saw. It was the typical street market, only it had a sign that said "Romania Festival" over it. It was fun, at any rate, even though it did nearly make us late for the rendez-vous. We turned a corner to finally see the gang waiting in line for the Ellis Island ferry, holding three signs that read, "Veni," "Vidi," and "Vicky" - Antonin's themes for the three stops he'd planned for the day. ("Veni," from the Latin "to come," was signified in this case by Ellis Island and the countless immigrants who came to America that way.) When Vicky showed up with the folks who were bringing her there, it was great to see her face - she knew only that Antonin had made plans, and she knew who was coming... But she had no idea what was going to happen. I'd been waiting for days to see that look on her face!

While we waited in the line for the boat, went through security (as stringent as the airport), and also during the boat ride, I got to meet and "re-meet" many cousins who said they remembered me from when I was little, people whose names sounded familiar but about whom I know very little – I'm still not even sure how some of us are related (no one could quite figure out the whole "second," "third," "removed" thing, so we all just resigned ourselves to being "cousins" and called it a day). Some people I do recall, and it was fun chatting with them. Others I swear I've never met (though I have, I was just too small to remember) and it was truly a pleasure to meet them and find that we have quite a bit in common!


Lady Liberty & the Birthday Girl

The weather, of course, turned out to be beautiful. The boat ride was fantastic, we got some great views of the Statue of Liberty, and the sun was lighting up all the buildings on the skyline. Just lovely. (We thanked Cousins Pierre & Francoise for France's gift of Lady Liberty!) The visit to Ellis Island itself was underwhelming. The best part - from my standpoint - was watching my father react to Antonin's retelling of the story of how my father and his parents arrived in New York (my dad was 5). Antonin told this story, which I'd heard before but forgotten:

My father and his parents left a Europe which was dark at night from the blackout curtains. They arrived in New York by boat at night, and the city was all lit up. My father, in his first language of French, said to his mother, "Maman, c'est paradis!"

As Antonin said these words, my dad was visibly choked up. Characteristically for him, of course, he immediately lightened the mood with what he called the "rest of the story" - the guy who picked them up at the harbor insisted on giving them a tour of the city in his convertible, with the top down. My father remembers riding through Times Square in an open convertible on January 29, 1941. So, a cold paradise, but a paradise nonetheless...


Ellis Island and the gathered party-goers

The second stop was about "Vidi" (from the Latin, "to see") which alluded to Vicky's history with welfare rights movement in the 1960s and being able to "connect the dots," as Antonin put it, of ideas such as freedom and social rights. From there, we had an hour to make it to the restaurant and final stop in Tribeca. Chris & I walked there slowly, via the construction area around Ground Zero. The final destination was the Gallery Viet Nam (next to the Viet Cafe), where the room was set up for a party. Antonin, a professor at the New School, even had an overhead projector set up. He gave us bits of a lecture, tying the day together and talking about Vicky's life, between dinner courses. He was really the absent-minded professor, putting the overheads on updside-down and backwards. It was pretty cute.

My father gave a very strange toast, some of his "spit-balls of wisdom" about sisters, and then Antonin asked me to deliver my "ode" again. I prefaced my toast with, "I have two things to say... First, I have no overheads; and second - yes, that's my father, but it skips a generation." Lots of laughter. Overall, it was a wonderful (if a bit hectic) day, and Vicky absolutely glowed as cousins and friends alike rose to toast her. She's really loved, and that's fun to see.

Unfortunately, the night ended on a somewhat sour note. Chris hailed a taxi for us and Pierre & Francoise, and the driver turned out to be a real jackass. We can't remember if his number was 3Y69 or 7Y69... But we're going to see if we can register a complaint. Seriously, that's the most rude a cab driver has been to us - ever, in any city. Our only consolation was that it would make a funny story... Later.