June 1st: New York and hello Family

The trip across to New York was a bit hellish. Started with a fascist airport security moron and continued through stuffed seating arrangements ("Sorry, we didn't realise you'd want to sit together"), bad food, and they smashed my laptop screen ("Normal security check, sir, not our responsibility").

We landed on a hot afternoon sidewalk outside the subway station at Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, with the homeboyz checkin' us out with our stack of backpacks and stuffed bears and bleary eyes trying not to look like we just arrived from Mars but actually no clue how to catch a New York cab or why we happened to be standing on that street at that moment...totally dislocating. I wanted to hum a few bars from the Star Spangled Banner but instead managed to flag down a lovely young Sikh cabbie.

Joyfully, connected with Prem, Rita's sister, and had cold beers and a relax on the roof of their Fort Greene ante-gentrification apartment to watch sunset which by coincidence was the annual ~ManhattanHenge. Not sure what was supposed to line up with what but we were totally grateful to collapse into a homestay for the evening.

Then into the City to rendezvous with my Dad and sister Rachel who had come up for her cancer treatment blood work. She was dealing with it all like a total hero…check out her recovery blog. So this was the first meeting between Caro/Varsha and Rachel, and the first time to see my Dad since V was born. All went very graciously, but obviously many tensions as Rachel remains on the edge of a really heavy cancer trip and my Dad was looking exhausted.

Somehow we survived the inch through all that crosstown traffic, drive down the Jersey turnpike, around DC, down the eastern shore to the Chesapeake Bridge Tunnel, and then arrived at the family manse in Portsmouth in the wee hours. And realised that somehow Caro's wallet with her driver's license, VISA card, and ATM card had been lost. Along with Varsha's new blackbear backpack. Is this a theme or what?