THE SECOND HALF

10-day trip

A highlight was meeting and holding my great grandson, the happiest

8-month-old I’ve ever known.  Paxton is all heart and humor. Calm like his Mom and Dad. I call him Pax Man, reminiscent of Pac-Man if you remember those urchins. Hard to believe that arcade game came out in 1980!

We visited the JFK Library and Museum, a stroll through the history of his time growing up and becoming a political icon.   The location in the I.M. Pei building on Columbia Point in South Boston is a gem. We all remember where we were when JFK was assassinated.  I was driving home from a banjo lesson in New Jersey (never acquired that skill) and had a one-year old daughter and her mother waiting for me. Five years later it was RFK and MLK also taken out by an assassin. Museums tend to stir memories.

Saturday night we hosted a dinner at Henrietta’s Table in Cambridge for four adult grandchildren and two of their significant others. The other two “plus ones” were out of town. A good reunion, sharing stories, catching up with the latest happenings.

The trip via car from Boston (Cambridge) to NYC early Sunday morning was a 4-hour ride and  took us through the forests and across the rivers in Connecticut.  I wondered what the earliest settlers thought when encountering these lush forests, at least in this summer season, maybe not so much in the winter.

When I saw a building from 1636, I sensed standing in a place where this country had its beginnings. The historical records tell the tales of hardships encountered and overcome. 140 years later, a Revolution set the stage for Independence from England and that experiment in Democracy continues today.

Three nights and two full days in NYC and lots of walking.  We stayed at a daughter’s apartment on lower 5^th Avenue, Greenwich Village, and visited another granddaughter on the lower West Side overlooking the Hudson River.  Uptown to visit a friend on Tuesday afternoon before flying home yesterday, the reverse trip, second half, of “The First Half.”  Only noticeable difference was an A321 from LGA to ATL.

Hoped to see the Harlem Renaissance show at The Metropolitan Museum and missed it in favor of visiting The Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side where so many poor immigrants eked out a living in tight quarters. These were walk up, very small apartments, without any amenities, including water and electricity. Families with children, Irish

Germans, Italians, and others lived in spaces as small as 450 square feet.  These are the immigrant families that helped build the USA.

The kaleidoscope of people of all ages and conditions in a busy city is a parade of humanity at its best and in some cases suffering and struggling to survive.  There was a little guy, maybe 7 years old by himself who signaled he had to pee and ran off in the other direction. There were helmeted construction workers who seem to be rebuilding the city everywhere. It’s the panoply of people, traffic, stores and shops that make up The Big Apple. Universities and schools, galleries, restaurants, churches, and the 911 Memorial – all part of the city that never sleeps.

That may be a good thing because the mounds of trash that accumulate every day have to be trucked off at some convenient time.

Finally, this. Today is Summer Solstice and here, back home in Mexico, no sun, only clouds and rain, a welcome change in the season following six hot weeks.

I am one of those who follow the sun along the horizon in its northward and southward trek, most often by watching the sun rise or the sun set and this way I have a good idea of where we are in the year, on the planet.  I see this solar path that is a result of both rotation and revolution and I sense a deeper connection to the earth and the sun.  I love the four seasons and I celebrate each one on the four dates of the two solstices and two equinoxes.

The lessons for me in all of this can be summed up as follows:  It is a good thing to stand still before changing directions and to know on which axis I’m traveling and why.  Secondly, how I let external conditions affect my internal frame of reference informs me about how my response will impact those around me.   Finally, while I am “in motion” during each of the seasons, the directions, activities and conditions under which I operate fluctuate appropriately, especially when I am in sync with the sun, the moon and the stars.   And maybe, because my birth date is a mere four days after solstice, I am even more affected than I know at the conscious level.

Summer is now official and being grateful for time to celebrate another season.