Door to door, it was 32 hours from our house in Shanghai to Turk and Barbara’s place in Delaware: drive to Pudong, 12-hour flight to LA, 4 hours in LAX, red-eye to DC, rent a battleship (plenty of luggage and car seats), stop at Nordstrom’s (Hey, there was a sale! And we knew the boys would fall asleep as soon as we got in the car. Of course, we were wrong). Then the drive to Delaware, or as I call it, Delawhere? The boys love airplanes with a burning white-hot intensity, and they did a fantastic job on the trip, but maybe, say, 24 hours would be enough.
In fairness to Delawhere?, it wasn’t really the point. The point was to be with family, and on the beach, and in this regard Lewes Delaware and environs served brilliantly. Turk and Barbara have a beautiful new place, designed and handsomely appointed by Peter Guida, big enough to absorb scads of cousins -- and they were gracious hosts. The beaches at Cape Henlopen and Rehoboth have fewer rocks and more tickly crabs than New Jersey -- I even wrote some advertising copy for Delaware, on spec, which they can use if they like -- “Delaware! It’s not as bad as New Jersey.” (Come on New Jersey, you know we love you . . . how could we not? There is no other state I’d rather drive through.) Kai and Keegan just live to play in the sand, and they adore their cousins, so the combination is unbeatable. We tried to get some organized photos at Cape Henlopen, some family shots, group shots, etc. Here’s a bootleg behind-the-music video of the shoot.) I’m not sure if the stronger Christmas card candidates for Grammy and Poppy come from the whole-family-massed-on-the- shore series above, or the pile-on-Poppy’s Jeep collection. Tough call; feel free to cast your vote. (Yes, you can drive on the beach in Delaware, as long as you pretend you’re shore fishing.) My favorite shots are probably just the boys running around, climbing on castles, splashing, hunting for crabs, dolphin-spotting, and generally goofing off at the beach.
One crazy day, we decided to take the ferry from Lewes to Cape May to see Betsy, Joe and JP. The four of us, plus Liz, Lindsey, and Natalie, drove on early in the morning, and off in the afternoon, poorer in rest but richer in experience -- 8 hours door-to-door for 32 minutes on the beach. We brought a little gift, a race car ramp in a gift bag, for JP, who is a year or so older than Kai. Betsy nudged him to thank us when we gave it to him, and JP said, “Thank you, but I already have it, and you should have wrapped it.” (Sorry Betsy, I know you were mortified, but believe me, we understand! We’ll try to do better next time, JP.) Well, at least we got to say hello . . . next year, we’ll stay overnight. Brace yourself, Aunt Margot.
Another highlight was driving to Philadelphia on the night of July 28th to see the Reigning World Champion San Francisco Giants take on the Philadelphia Phillies, who are also a professional baseball team, although I am not sure what a Philly is. Turk and I had gotten great seats months ahead, and we got to watch Big-Time TimmyJim Lincecum beat the Phils 4-1. Boyd and Meghan and their four wonderful kids, Mack, Bridget, Jeb and Hill, big Phillies fan all, were on the deck above us, and we visited back and forth. I wore my Giants cap, taking my life into my hands among the fan-base that famously threw snowballs at Santa Claus one Christmas during an Eagles game (Turk is proud to say he was actually there). In the top of the second, Pablo Sandoval belted an opposite-field homer inside the left-field pole, and I stood and cheered in naive excitement. Two or three thousand people turned to glower at me, and I quietly sat down and re-corked my champagne. But they did let me live. Thank you, Philadelphia! These people take their sports seriously. On the way home, Hill, who is five, said earnestly, “I bet the Philly Phanatic is crying right now.” Sorry, Hill. But ever since that night, the Phillies are crushing all comers, and the Giants are struggling. The roller coaster of the baseball season still has a ways to go, and these two teams may meet again. If they do, I’ll be watching from the safety of Shanghai.
After a week or so of this summer idyll, Allison and I did something we haven’t done for well over three years -- we went away together, without the boys, leaving them with Grammy and Poppy, Aunt Liz and Uncle Peter, Lindsey and Natalie, while we went gallivanting around New York City (well, we did park in New Jersey). New York City, if you haven’t heard of it, is the best city in the world, and the worst city in the world, in the same place, at the same time, and the trick is to stay on its good side, which has nothing to do with east and west. We pretty much managed to pull off the trick, which involved wandering through SoHo and the Village, running in the park, hitting some museums and Broadway shows, and visiting with New York friends like Patrick, Rob, and Martha, Joe and Loretta (forgot to take pics, dammit!). Starved for English-language culture in Shanghai, we splurged on shows. Here are the capsule reviews:
The Winter’s Tale (by the Royal Shakespeare Company, popping over from London), at the Park Ave. Armory, b/c Lincoln Center is being vacuumed): Smokin’. Dynamite. See anything they do. Goofy at times, big and bold, worth it. (Spoiler alert -- I get it now! Paulina had Hermione stashed in the back room for 16 years! The statue bit was just a gag!) Or as Patrick said, “late-career romance crap.” Loved this.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying: Very strong revival, although I suspect Daniel Radcliffe’s film career may have influenced his hiring. (He can act, he can dance, he can’t really sing. But hey, the crowd adored him.) John Larroquette was hysterical. Big bonus: old friend and B.U. classmate Ellen Harvey was in the show, and she is terrific in it. If you know Ellen, or even if you don’t, check her out on ellenharvey.net. We had a little visit with her afterwards -- great to see Ellen strutting her stuff on Broadway!
Billy Elliot: A wonderful movie, an OK musical. It has some strong moments (i.e. “Individuality”), but the show of the year in 2009 looks a bit tired in 2011.
Amateur Night at the Apollo: Yes, as seen on TV. This show is silly, sweet, and so much fun -- by all means, go see it! Every Wednesday night. Harlem looks better than I’ve ever seen it, too. Thanks to Bill?
Harlem Gospel Choir, the Gospel Brunch at B.B. King’s club on Times Square: These guys are high energy, tight, and sounded great. The sausage and grits were plentiful. A highlight: Allison and Patrick pushed me up on the stage to LIE and pretend it was my birthday, so I (along with 8 other “birthday boys and girls” and a tableful of tourists from Osaka), could rock out to “Celebrate” by Kool and the Gang. Both acutely embarrassing and extremely fun. Burn the negatives, people.
New York being New York, the hits just kept on comin’. We went the Met, and MOMA too. We rode the Staten Island Ferry across the harbor with Raja, who came down from Boston for a day, especially to see Allison. We strolled through Central Park and dined at the Boat House, where Carrie and Mr. Big fell in. (The Bolivar pics are especially for you, Marija!) We ate bagels, pizza, street dogs at The Umbrella Room, and some more upscale cuisine, too -- though I think our favorite meal was grilled steak on Martha and Rob’s patio overlooking the city, with the whole family. Why I love Martha: we’d brought a box of pastries form Little Italy, and Martha said, “I hate Italian pastries! I’ll get more wine.” This of course obligated me to eat more pastries. You get no BS with Martha. Thank your lucky stars, Mr. Keefe.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Delaware, the boys were busy with Grammy in the kitchen, Farmer Poppy in the garden, and Aunt Liz, Uncle Peter, Lindsey and Natalie on the beach. We were able to enjoy NYC only because they were in good hands -- we still missed the boys tremendously, and we called and skyped with them often, but we knew they would be OK, and we owe a great debt to our family for making our New York adventure possible.
After a few more days on the beach, we left our shampoo in the shower, our shoes under the bed, said so long to Delaware, and headed off to Chicago. New York to me is a glamorous star; Chicago is an old friend I’m happy to see. Allison also lived there for more than a decade, so it’s an important family-and-friends stop for us. We stayed next to the John Hancock building, and I love seeing the boys look up at it in wonder. It was a treat seeing BJ, our dear friend (and the woman who married us!) at the Children’s Museum on Navy Pier -- Keegan gets her name confused with DJ Lance of Yo Gabba Gabba fame and calls her BJ Lance, but he loves them both. Along with my brother Jonathan, my sister Lisa, brother-in-law Charlie, and their kids Noah and Sam, we took the boys to the Field Museum. It’s Chicago’s dinosaur heaven, but we also appreciated their special exhibitions on whales and horses. (By the way, Allison and the boys are inside the heart of a whale in a few of the pictures -- we’ve had some other, more troubling theories put forth as to what body part that might be.) An epic walk from the Field to Buckingham Fountain, the Millennium Park Bean, the Daley Center, and the underside of Marilyn Monroe, turned most of us into the zombies you see lying on the ground at the concert in Grant Park later. The next morning, our appetite for classical music revived, we were treated to a sidewalk show by my nephew Noah, the noted violinist. We cruised the Chicago River with the Kai and Keegan, whose passions in life include boats and free cookies, so they loved it; Allison and I appreciated the spectacular architecture -- OK, and the free cookies. We wanted to take them on the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, but Kai and Keegan at this point in their lives are, um, risk-averse (which is an awesome trait, to a parent), so we rode the merry-go-round instead, and that was enough to thrill and exhaust them. Allison and I traded off going out in the evenings a couple of times, so she was able to get in some girlfriend bonding-time (at least that’s what she says she did, and she does have these photos). We also got to see our friends Nora and Matthew and their kids Sophie, Eli, and Theo, while we ran around the Lincoln Park Zoo (we need to take more pics of grown-ups now and then, but I do love the hatching-from-eggs series). And we stopped off at the Rainforest Cafe for a final US supper with my dear friend (since third grade!) Lisa, complete with animatronic alligators and a giftshop bigger than most entire restaurants. I love this country!
As Allison so aptly said, the trip was great, but it wasn’t restful. We need a vacation to recover, especially form the jet-lag. Here we are on the way home, trying to lull the boys into a trance with some videos of Dinosaur Train. It didn’t work. This time it was Chicago-Shanghai nonstop, only 24 hours door-to-door, but somehow it felt longer. The boys didn’t want to sleep for the first 15 hours or so; it made me miss red-eyes. But now we’ve been back in China for almost a week, we’re settling into a good rhythm, and the boys are each starting a little dollop of preschool, something I’ll blog about next time (this blog is already as long as the trip! If anyone actually makes it through all the links, you’ll trigger a golden-ticket coded message and win a prize Willie Wonka would be proud of). Thanks to everyone we saw on our visit to the US, and to those we didn’t get to meet up with, I’m terribly sorry, and I hope we can do better next time, because we will be back. That’s a fine country you have there.
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