There was a moment during the time before the trip to
New York when all was spinning wildly at work, and it seemed that if I didn’t have a vacation soon I might collapse from exhaustion or at least have a mild nervous breakdown. It was the moment when it occurred to me that on top of all of this consonant dissonance we had decided to spend our summer vacation with my family.
Now hang on, my family isn’t all that bad. It’s just that when things are spinning as wildly as they had been the best therapy for me is quite time with Ki Ki and only Ki Ki, far away from everyone. Places like the Eastern Shore, or a ranch in
Santa Fe, or a cave somewhere outside of Bedrock come to mind. But with my family? My large loud Italian family complete with 10 year old triplets and 2 year old twins?
I feared the worst.
We left for
New York on Saturday morning, July 8th at about 5:30 in the morning, aware that the Virginia State Police had ordered a crack down on speeders. One thing that’s nice about
Virginia is that they announce the locations of the speed traps on the news. The day before, a large smelly looking trooper had appeared on the local news broadcast and said that the State Police would be doing a saturation on I-95, and basically that was your warning and don’t bother telling your out of state friends because they had a quota to meet and if they didn’t meet it then the next time we’d be on our own. OK, I made that last part up.
In the 90 miles between
Richmond and
Maryland we counted 11 troopers.
Ki Ki drove until we hit Mikes Famous at the foot of the
Delaware Memorial Bridge. If you’ve never been there, you should visit. Mike’s Famous is a combination Harley Davidson dealership, gift shop, and restaurant. The place harkens back to the days of the old roadside attraction, complete with its own radio station and a collection of bikes that is quite astonishing. We arrived a little before 9:00 so all the happy bikers were just rolling out of beer, err, bed and opening the place up. We each gobbled down a delicious biker breakfast sandwich of eggs, sausage, cheese, more sausage, and a defibrillator on a hard roll with fried potatoes and coffee and headed back on the road. This time I was driving.
On the other end of the
Delaware Memorial Bridge lies the New Jersey Turnpike. The New Jersey Turnpike is the most uninteresting stretch of road ever constructed on earth. It’s straight, dull, and stretches 16 exits over its 110 miles. There’s nothing exciting to see or do on the New Jersey Turnpike, so when you think about it, it’s the perfect metaphor for its home state. However what it did accomplish was it transitioned me from gentleman from
Virginia driver to lunatic from
New York driver. At exit 8, I tuned in the local
New York “news traffic and weather on the 8’s” station, and could feel the adrenaline starting to flow. By the time we hit the
George Washington Bridge, I had remembered how to cuss. By the time we left da Bronx, I had remembered how to cuss in Spanish.
We began the drive north towards
Dutchess County where my cousin Frank and his wife Lisa and their twins Samantha and Michael live, and passed the places I lived when I first moved out of my parent’s house. It brought back a flood of memories as I accelerated our car a bit faster, the way I used to when I drove those same roads in my 20’s. The towns flew by, and they were closer to each other than I remembered: Tarrytown, Elmsford,
White Plains, all separated by a few miles and a few minutes. We drove further north towards Shrub Oak, the first place in New York Ki Ki and I spent any time together, and were surprised by how much construction was going on in the old neighborhood. It was wonderful and exhilarating and I enjoyed every moment of that ride with my wife by my side.
Finally, we had put the miles behind us and had arrived at my cousin’s place. It was as I remembered it, so new and perfect with a view that was breathtaking. I love that place. I wondered what my little cousins would look like, for the last time I saw them was at their Christening. How big would they be? Would they talk? They’d be shy of course, Ki Ki and I are strangers, but we’d win them over.
And then we saw them.
Nothing had prepared me for that moment. They were beautiful children, both Samantha and Michael, and they seemed so grown up. And there was my cousin Frank, and he was all grown up too. He was a Dad now, and he carried himself like a Dad. There was fatherly and scholarly air to him, and it was amazing to see. My cousin’s wife Lisa was there too, and she was Mom now. She’s a fun loving, beautiful, designer wearing
Long Island girl, and now she was with her children, showering them with love and affection. And setting limits, and always teaching.
And at that moment, Ki Ki and I both knew that if God forbid anything ever happened to us, we would want Frank and Lisa to raise our child too.
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