Manhattan for an Hour

A cell phone pic of 8th Ave at 21st Street-- processed in black and white, as is obligatory for a certain kind of photo of Manhattan.

Whorls and ramifications abound. The remaining couple of days in Allentown were pleasant and I got to spend time with my brother and relay to him, unabashedly, the painful, flat out chaotic and frank details of my life. He and I rarely communicate, so it is sometimes the case that elaborate stories have to be told. I always find out something new.

One of my family rules is that we rarely if ever disclose anything. The exception is sometimes (not always) when a serious illness or accident occurs. But even then, the family code is to be tight lipped and stoic. I have long violated this unwritten maxim with flagrant abandon. The conversations on this trip were no exception-- especially with my siblings. With my parents, the living amends I make in exchange for robbing their peace of mind for decades is to never have any problems. I'm always absolutely great and never a source of worry for them, and that is how I try to make up for having been a problem for many years. 

But I found out about a host of health issues and other life realities on this trip, as I often do when I visit. I know some families hardly ever talk about anything else, but not mine. And, since I am the 55 year old baby of the clan, it is inevitable that the whole family is aging, with various degrees of attendant misery. 

Holding compassion for all of that but practicing not getting hooked by it continued. I woke on a rainy Friday morning with the plan of driving to the Secaucus rail station and taking the PATH train into Penn Station, meeting a friend I have known for 44 years at a noodle place on 8th Ave so hip it doesn't even have a sign. I drove slowly through torrential East Coast rain (all that lush and green has to come from somewhere) and when I got to the rail station, it was raining too hard to even get from the park and ride to the platform. So I decided to just drive in. I hit Manhattan in the 30s, easily got to the restaurant and parked right in front of it. My friend and I had a great lunch and it was wonderful catching up with him. I almost went to visit with a Facebook friend, an alumna of my undergrad, but it was nearly 2 and my luck had been so good and she had a migraine. I jumped in my rental car and made it off Manhattan in about 40 minutes. Those of you who know the ways of that logistically snarled island know how magical this series of events was.

Between Manhattan and an overnight visit near Cherry Hill with my niece, my former sister in law, my oldest brother and another niece, two nephews and my grandniece and grandnephew (phew), I stopped off in Piscataway and Dunellen, NJ, where I had spent the first 5 years of my life. I went up to Washington Rock State Park and hung out a little bit. In the car next to mine, a young couple, probably 17 or so, was ardently making out and they seemed entirely unconcerned about being plainly visible to any and all other people in the parking lot. It was very sweet and innocent but extravagantly impassioned. 

I walked in the great green New Jersey woods a little and realized the trajectory of opening, the weird arc of letting go and ending up somewhere unexpected even within my detailed personal history, was still curving out like a surreal sunlit path.