Exhausted and absurd in the city
My daughter and I returned from our trip a couple of days ago, and I’m still a little out of it from all of the running around catching planes, trains, and automobiles in sweaty New York weather. We had a crazy trip, from almost the first moment we touched down. Upon reaching Manhattan, I opened my car door, right into an SUV that was trying to squeak by in the narrow street. I don’t even know what’s going to become of that incident. I’m not a seasoned cab passenger; since living in Los Angeles, I have probably been in a cab less than 10 times, and only on trips to LAX airport. After the cab driver, SUV driver, the NYPD, and I all hashed it out, I gave out my info (ID, insurance card) and am waiting to see what will happen. I was pretty shaken up about it all, and after trying to cool off for an hour in the incredible heat, I finally calmed down.
All along, I assumed that for our five-day trip, I would just keep my daughter on West Coast time. There was only one night planned where she would be in child care, the last night (at my college reunion). I pretended that I was just spontaneous. (I am.) But actually, other than tickets to a musical, I had no set plans because I longed to go with the flow for a change. Our regular life in LA is so regimented that I avoid having a strict agenda on vacation. I hadn’t re-familiarized myself with the subway or checked out any restaurants, let alone made any reservations. So that first night, we took a subway to Times Square. My daughter had heard that there was a giant M & M’s store, and her plan was to go there and/or Dylan’s Candy Bar. So we went, and as grossed out as I was by a store full of M & M’s and related merchandise, it was almost worth it to see her literally as happy as a kid in a (gigantic corporate) candy store. I let her fill a bag of candy from the floor-to-ceiling vats. (She’s been doling it out, sparingly, to deserving family members since we returned home.)
I realize that Times Square is not quite the filthy hole it was when I first visited New York. On that visit, in the mid-1980s, I tried to dine in a coffee shop where my cake had a good-sized cockroach on it when it came out of the kitchen. The waitress had shrugged, took away the cake, and asked if I’d like something else instead. I can’t shake the squeamishness of actually eating in Times Square. I called a restaurant in Union Square and made a reservation. So we headed over to 5th Avenue, where I thought hailing a cab on a Wednesday night at 8:30 would be easy.
Every person in Manhattan appeared to be rushing downtown in a cab. We walked and hailed, hailed and walked, but there was no cab that stopped for us. Finally I broke down and let one of the bike-cab/pedi-cab drivers take us to dinner. Simple enough, I thought. During our harrowing ride down 5th Avenue, where our journey felt like a contact sport that lacked helmets and seat belts, I couldn’t decide if I was a fun mother or the worst mother ever. Sixty-eight dollars and 15 minutes later, my daughter and I arrived, windblown, scared yet exhilarated, and covered with taxi exhaust. We had a nice dinner, but it was the first of many nights where I put my daughter to bed after midnight.
The rest of our trip was relatively without incident until the last day. We went to a musical revival that we both loved — “Anything Goes.” We had Chinese food at midnight in a restaurant where we were the only diners — except for Alec Baldwin and a few of his friends. We spent one beautiful air-conditioned day in the Natural History Museum seeing an exhibit of exotic living frogs as well as the still-life scenes of stuffed animals and fossils that the museum is known for. My daughter, at eight years old, is finally old enough and interested enough to last a couple of hours in a museum. We went to a couple of restaurants that were child-friendly enough for her and a pleasant, chicken-nugget-free experience for me (Alice’s Tea Cup and Barney Greengrass, both on the Upper West Side).
And my college reunion? I think I’ll wait until another post to write about that.
On our last day, a friend from college offered to take us back to the airport. We were flying out of JFK back to Los Angeles. I was exhausted and hung over from too many days of dehydration and cocktails with old friends. Somehow I believed that I’d told my friend where we were going, maybe through telepathy. We were too busy catching up on 20 years of life to be bothered with confirming which airport to go to. And when we were nearly at the airport, I realized that he had take me to Newark. (He had offered because he lives near Newark Airport.) We both felt like asses, but somehow it seemed a fitting bookend to a trip that had begun with a car accident. My daughter and I took a very expensive cab to JFK airport, cutting through Manhattan on the day of the Pride Parade. Sticking to the cab’s vinyl seats in the hot weather and slow-moving traffic through Little Italy and Chinatown, we bid the city goodbye.
Next time I’m going to resist the urge to pretend to be young enough not to plan anything. Nevertheless, I’ve been imagining a trip with my daughter for almost as long as I can remember. And some idiotic tourist mistakes? Now that we’re through it, maybe the adventure was almost worth the hassle.
