This summer was already shaping up to be different than the rest, and now it was about to get really interesting. With Colin in Omaha and Ian in Chicago, I would be journeying to the east coast on my own. Well, almost on my own. When I arrived in New York, I would be picking up my cousin Asa and his family. After all of these years of Colin and Ian's (and Matt's) wonderful co-pilot skills, I was ready. Or so I thought. “This would be great,” I assured myself. I had three books on tape to keep me company: Water for Elephants, Three Cups of Tea and a Mary Higgins Clarke Mystery. "What more could I need?" Perhaps, "Dunkin' Donuts," you say. Well, as always, my first stop along my journey was Kildeer, IL. Niece Kendall, nephew Tyler, sister-in-law Tracey and brother-in-law Brad helped me to fuel up on my Dunkin' Donuts, and with a chance to see Tyler hit 'em out of the ball park during his Little League game, along with a beautiful night of sleep, I set out for New Jersey the next morning- Wednesday, June 8.
My Mission (fade in Mission Impossible theme song) that I had already chosen to accept was to pick up my Australia cousins in Harlem at the amazingly wonderful, Aloft Hotel (http://www.starwoodhotels.com/alofthotels/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=3353). But how?
The beauty of the proposed plan for Thursday, June 9th was that I would arrive in New Jersey, set up accommodations for the cousins, jump on the SeaStreak Ferry (www.seastreak.com) to Manhattan, hire a cab to Harlem, meet them at their hotel, take a car with all of us to the Ferry and end up back in New Jersey. Piece of cake, right? Wrong. Learning experience? You betcha!
The easy part was taking the Ferry from New Jersey to Manhattan. It was a beautiful ride. I would go so far as to say that there was not a cloud in the sky... yet! When we arrived in New York, all of the those hearty Yankee fans blew off the boat and into the awaiting cabs. By the time I made my way to the last, solitary, remaining cab, I flew (albeit clumsily) to the open passenger side window of the last yellow cab, hunched down and with my best Dickensian accent straight from Oliver Twist, begged, "Please, kind sir, could you drive me to the Aloft Hotel in Harlem?"
"No, I can't go all the way up there," he replied with a thick accent of his own.
"Please, sir, I'm ... from Nebraska!" Due to powers (Go, Big Red!) even he couldn't explain later, he seemed to surrender immediately, and he resigned himself to help me out- body and soul.
"Get in," he barked, and before I had closed the door, he was off. I did not take his picture for the blog because I knew he was mad that he had taken pity on me. If I had taken a picture, he might have looked like this (see above). This was no "Cash Cab" party van that I found myself in, but 30 minutes later, he pulled up in front of the Aloft Hotel. I paid the bill, and after thanking him profusely and asking him if he wanted to be friends on Facebook, I walked inside dejected.
I didn't see any of the cousins, but it was only 5:30 PM, and I told them that there was little chance of me being there much before 5:45 PM. I paced around the lobby after verifying that the car would be ready at 6:00 PM to take us all back to the Ferry. 5:45 PM and 5:50 PM came and went. " They are not coming," I lamented. "I think that I had a dream like this once. Okay... maybe twice, but I don't think either time I was stood up in Harlem." I'm just saying.
And then, just when I was almost without hope, just when the 4 in 5:54 flipped over in the clock to become 5:55 PM, I saw them. In a mad rush of bodies and strollers and backpacks and babies and shopping bags, I saw them. They were rushing in the front door and the revolving door at the same time, and, in my eagerness to get to them, I may have actually passed them a couple of times in the next section of the revolving door before I could make it stop at them. But it was them. After 45 and 3/4 years of waiting... no... longing... no.... yearning to meet my cousin Asa, he and his beautiful family were standing in front of me. Suddenly all the anxiety I felt just disappeared. In a torrent of excitement and an almost Red-Bull like induced adrenalin rush, we grabbed their luggage, shared stories about our days and tumbled into the awaiting car. And then as author Jean Shepard so eloquently has Ralphie Parker say in The Christmas Story , "...life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us." In our exuberance, we had hardly noticed the dark cloud that had descended upon Harlem that afternoon until it broke all over us. No sooner were we in the car, when buckets of rain began to pummel the us from every direction.
Despite the weather conditions, our driver, can I call him ...Ted (?) focused his attention on what was now, rush hour traffic. Not only was it bumper to bumper rush-hour, but apparently the Black-Eyed Peas had decided to give a free concert in Central Park to benefit the Robin Hood Foundation (http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/Black-Eyed-Peas-Free-Concert-Central-Park-20110609-APX) and then to cancel it, to the dismay of thousands of fans who had been waiting for hours, just as we were trying to make our way to the Ferry. Add in a little monsoon-like rain, wind and yes, hail I thought I had left behind in Nebraska and the excitement was just beginning. Driving through New York City is always an adventure, but on this fateful night, it was surreal. It was like the weather was mimicking my emotions, but here we were huddled within the shelter of the car headed for ...a boat. A boat? Seriously? (Cue in music from Gilligan's Island..."The weather started getting rough, The tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost. The Minnow would be lost"). As Ted zigzagged in and out of lines of traffic and beeping horns, the children clung to each other in fear. I think I may have even heard Pascal whisper, "Why is cousin Pam trying to kill us, Mommy? Do we have to go with her?" I could have misheard that last part. He might have said, "Do we have to row with her?" Everyone who knows me knows that I have a hard time hearing.... anywho!
We arrived at the ferry port, but there was no ferry. I looked pleadingly at Ted, but he wouldn't return my gaze. Clairvoyantly, we knew what each other was thinking, and neither one of us was going to be happy. He was going to drop us off even though the ferry wasn't there and, based on the weather, it might never be coming. They say that in a crisis situation, people can bond in powerful way. I have heard people say something like that anyway. So we pulled up; for a minute, I thought, "Hey, maybe he'll just wait here with us for a couple of minutes until the Ferry arrives." Then the minute was up; Ted bounded out of the car and began pulling the Letourneau family's luggage from the back of the car and setting them under the overhang from the highway which ran above our heads. The only problem was... you know how on those highways that look like they are suspended in air and how they have those drains that prevent the water from getting backed up. Ya, well that there drain was right above our heads. So when Ted squealed away, we thought it was still a downpour, but once we moved away from the drain above our heads, it actually stopped raining for a little while.
It stopped long enough for the ferry to come and for us all to get on board. We plopped down in the closest booth seats and took a long hard look at each other before breaking out into laughter. Whew! We were breathlessly drenched, yet invigorated as we spent the next hour in the safety and comfort of the SeaStreak Ferry's bosom getting to know each other. It seemed like we had endured the rages of hell, forged a steely bond that would only get stronger over the next twelve days we would be spending together, when (and this last part could have been a dream after watching Field of Dreams) we arrived on that distant shore. I seem to remember little Sweeney turning to look at me with his serious face and saying, "Cousin Pam, is this Heaven?" to which I responded, "No, Sweeney, it's New Jersey."
And so it began...
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