Anything but Bleak!

 

 
 

 

 



 

 

 

 

     The last time I saw beautiful Olive, she was just three days old!  Now she is a fun, talkative, dynamic, dancing three year old. Her mother Nicole is one of my best friends, someone I truly admire and adore. During our trip back to New York, where my oldest son was born and spent the first two years of his life, we met up for brunch and playground fun on Bleecker Street with Nicole and Olive. Good times on a day that was anything but bleak!

 

Resilience

 

 

          My husband and I lived on W. 85th Street when the World Trade Center towers collapsed and witnessed the horror from our office windows with our wailing colleagues. I learned that my brother, a firefighter just seven blocks from the WTC (the same brother whose daughter was married on Saturday), was alive before all communication ceased and I huddled around a car parked on Fifth Avenue with the radio blaring news of the Pentagon attack and possible impending attacks on the White House.

        We mistakenly took the Belt Parkway and BQE Sunday, past Coney Island's Wonder Wheel, the Statue of Liberty, and sailboats with spinnakers billowing, and emerged into Manhattan from the Battery Tunnel to the stunning sight of the new Freedom Tower, which looked almost like a memory, a piece of the sky that stood out as special.

        I often think about my own resilience through difficult times and building the resilience of my children. No place is more resilient than New York, and I consider it one of the better qualities of humanity, along with our ability to love. 

Congratulations, Tara and Tim!

     The bride, Tara, is my much-loved niece and goddaughter, and I remember holding her in the church when she was baptized, just a tiny baby. I suppose we use the cliché that time flies because it does. Tara and Tim were married on Saturday, and we were so happy to share the gorgeous day with them, my brother Ron, my sister-in-law Jean, and my other nieces and nephews (one is turning 40 in February and another just had his third child and is a New York City firefighter like my brother).
     And as if to drive the point home about time's sonic speed, the nine children in the photo below are my stepbrother's grandchildren and Tara's nieces and nephews. Grandchildren! Nothing shows the passage of time more than the bean-stalk-like growth of children. What a great day to be together as a family! 

Little Cat Feet

Happy 8th Birthday

The Good Life

Here Comes the Sun