NYC Remembers

It's a pretty somber day here in New York. And it doesn't help that we woke up to overcast skies and periodic rain showers.

I was at school in Idaho in 2001, the first time September 11th fell on a Tuesday. I never thought that the second time it fell on a Tuesday, I'd be living in New York. I suppose you could say, like the news anchors broadcasting the 9/11 ceremony in Lower Manhattan this morning said, we've kind of come full circle.

It's been interesting to see how New Yorkers react to the anniversary. Some of them are superstitious and will, among other things, refuse to ride the subways today. At first that struck me as funny, but the more I thought about it, and the more I discussed it with others, I realized that nearly every citizen of this huge city was personally affected by the terrorist attacks in one way or another, so I suppose you can't really blame them for their superstitious tendencies. To me, today nearly all New Yorkers seem especially reflective and united, as if they have decided to make a renewed and concerted effort to step outside of themselves and their own busy worlds for the day in order to reach out to those friends, neighbors, and strangers around them. And that is a beautiful thing to see.

I, along with one of the speakers at the ceremony this morning whose speech I caught a moment of as I got Garrett and myself ready for the day (because it was seriously broadcast on every channel!), think that John Donne summed up well the general opinion held by New Yorkers in the years since 2001:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind; and therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

But I can't let the memory of a sad event take over my whole day, so once I finished getting Garrett and myself ready, my Aunt Colleen, who was in the city down from her home in Massachusetts, came to see us in Brooklyn. We had a lovely time visiting while we waited for the rain to let up enough for us to take a walk to the bay. We made it to the bay, but not before it started to pour, so we hid under the bridge for a while waiting for it to let up. The sky was too threatening to enjoy walking along the bay, so we headed back to the neighborhood for lunch at a nice, little Italian place Blake and I tried once called Peppinos. (Their menu is a lot like Grimaldi's, that tourist trap under the Brooklyn Bridge, only I think the food here tastes better.) While we ate the rain got decidedly worse, and it didn't let up quite like we hoped it would by the time Garrett started getting antsy and needing to go home. So we got a little wet.

But here's something truly spectacular. On our way back to the apartment, we stopped in the grocery store for a quick errand, and I learned that this place will deliver your groceries -- for FREE! So, basically, I could go in, pick up the food I need, pay for it, and ask for it to be delivered, and really all it would cost me is a couple bucks in tips for the delivery guy. So this, along with the option of a full pick-up-and-deliver laundry service (which, of course, I'd totally pay for, so I think I'll save this option for when it truly becomes necessary), solves the mental dilemma that's crossed my mind a time or two as to how in the world anyone in this city with more than one child, their stroller, and a week's worth of groceries/laundry/whathaveyou gets up and down the stairs in their pre-war walk-up apartment. I mean, you pay for these services one way or another, but in the end, it just might be worth it.

Anyway, so it's been a good day, even with the rain and the somber mood New Yorkers have been in. It's fun having visitors stop by. So, who's next to come see us? :)