Basically, Yes
- Me: Basically, what happened was... "Basically" — ha, listen to me. I sound like Pop Pop.
- Mom: You know you say that all the time, right?
At home. November 2011, Manhattan.
This year for Thanksgiving, it was just us kids. My sister and my brother-in-law flew in from Florida, and we were on our own, sans parents for the first time in, well, ever. But before turkey and stuffing and football, we visited Arthur.
“So, what have you been up to,” I asked, like I do.
“Not a damn thing.”
It’s an Arthur line I know and love, but it was new to my sister and her husband, and we all cracked up, Arthur included.
Is anything bettah?
p.s. See that picture on his table? It’s us, around this time last year!
Happy Friday!
I’ve been a little quiet on the Flat Pop Pop front, in part, I think, because it’s summer. Evenings in front of the computer? No way. They should be spent on back porches or patios or in gardens, with friends. My grandparents taught me that.
Another reason for the recess: I’ve been hard at work on the fourth edition of the Flat Pop Pop Project, Flat Pop Pop Istanbul. If I get my act together, I’ll send it to the printer this weekend! To celebrate, here’s a picture of us — travel-size Bernie and me — from the Hagia Sophia, a basilica turned mosque turned museum.
Okay, now go! Back to porches and patios and gardens and summer.
Flags of our mothers. Pennsylvania, July 2009.
Two years ago today, we had a family reunion on Bernie’s back porch. The whole gang was there, even my Dibi was home, and the sun was shining that way you always hope it will — bright and warm but not hot.
A couple weeks before the reunion, my mom and I set out to recreate what’s become an iconic family photo: one of my aunt and Dibi in the 70s, wearing floor-length American flag dresses on the sidewalk outside our store. We bought white t-shirt dresses, had them airbrushed at a seaside shop in Georgia (don’t ask), and transported them to Pennsylvania for the festivities. Was it work? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely.
Happy Independence Day, friends. May you spend it with people you love, and make memories you’ll cherish long after the sun sets.
This Summer
A walk with a view. Prague, August 2010.
Last year around this time, I started dreaming about a trip abroad. I knew I had the month of August off work and no real commitments in New York. What could be better than traveling?
So I did it. Budapest, Ljubljana, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, and some small towns in between. I started out with my mom, but then I did the last few stops alone. It was quieter than I imagined, being by myself, navigating neighborhoods and buses and broken-English on my own. I say quiet because it wasn’t lonely. I wasn’t sad. I was just very aware of being my own company. I stopped to admire cobblestone streets and lamp posts and window boxes because I wanted to. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all my decisions. On a whim, I bought a pair of heels in Vienna, near my hostel, and as I walked along the Vltava in Prague one night, I remember hearing my steps — the unrushed click, click — that were me, there. The word liberating seems so unfortunately Eat-Pray-Love, but it was. And that was exactly what I needed last summer.
This year, I will stay with Pop Pop. Yep, I’ve decided to spend the month of August with him in Pennsylvania. I could travel again and I considered it, but new cities, tours, heels-hitting-the-pavement moments, they’ll be around next year and the years after. Will Pop Pop? Will he still be at home? Will he still be able to hold my hand across the table and tell me about the dinner parties my Dibi hosted there, in that same room?
I have no way of knowing, which is exactly why I know it is where I need to be.
