when you least expect it

We were in New York City last week. Eliza and I couldn't wait to see Carrie in her new world. Carrie had finished her last major commitment at Columbia and was ready for some fun. She knows the city now, taking us on the subway from Greenwich Village to Times Square and up to Lincoln Center.

I have been to New York fairly often over the years. I spent the younger part of my childhood in New Jersey and we often went into the city. A Brayton School field trip in sixth grade was to the Museum of Natural History. I visited the Cloisters with my Sunday School class. From my father's office on the 56th floor at Rockefeller Center, I looked down at the skaters below with the golden statue of Prometheus floating above them. We went to Broadway shows. The Sound of Music starring Mary Martin was a high point of my young life. I listened to the record over and over on the stereo system that my mother had set up in our living room.

Our family has continued the tradition by going to NYC for theater and museum visits. Les Miserables, Crazy for You, Phantom of the Opera, Rent. Last week the girls and I saw Arthur Miller's "All My Sons." I have taken courses at Bank Street College and made special trips there to buy books for the Atrium School Library.

But on this trip with my daughters, we went to two places that made me think of my parents. At Rockefeller Center among the reveling crowds who smiled for iphone photos, turning away from the glittering Christmas tree, I glanced up at the Art Deco building where Dad had worked for over twenty years and felt a connection to him in a way that words can't really capture.

Later that night at Lincoln Center, Carrie, Eliza and I settled into our seats in Avery Fisher Hall looking forward to hearing Handel's Messiah performed by the New York Philharmonic. As I looked down at the stage watching the musicians assemble and the conductor take his place, it all came back to me. It was here that mom had brought me to attend the now historic Young People's Concerts conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Sitting next to her in my scratchy dress and party shoes, we would listen as he demonstrated how the music tells a story. Singling out each instrument he'd let us hear it's special sound and illustrate it's importance as part of the whole. I especially liked the hot fudge sundaes that we ate after the performance at Schraffts.

Because so many of my blog readers are relatives, I indulge myself in these memories so that you may have a glimpse into the elders you may never have known. I am grateful for my parents. They believed firmly in the importance of education and culture and books and art. In their own ways they left indelible marks in the world, but most of all, on me. This is immortality.