After seeing my mum off at Newark last night and then arriving home two hours later—four trains later—to a midnight cheese-on-toast (if I were a different restaurant I would say: aged parmigiano stravecchio and sweet cream butter on lightly toasted walnut bread), I thought I was going to wake up at seven this morning and go to the gym and get back into some semblance of my daily routine—a daily routine so far in my past I need to gently pick it up and dust it off. So, ha-ha, rolling over in bed at ten to greet the sunny blue.



I’ll say it, parents in town makes me a show-off, makes me want to say, See where I live, see how I live, see that I made it okay. We have been all over: golden fish and spring flowers in bloom at the New York Botanical Garden; aviator sunglasses and cobblestones in the Meatpacking District; rosy teacups and apricot jam cake at Tea and Sympathy; a shady spot and anise-seared tuna, and a pug with a chair of his own, outside at the Maritime’s La Bottega.



There were the ladies, the ladies, and the orchestra at Lincoln Center. Eleven on a Friday morning at Lincoln Center, who knew, the old ladies in pearls and veiny hands, in suits and sensible shoes. Hélène Grimaud on Rachmaninov is small, and clever like a Chinese gymnast.

(The Hélène Grimaud story is: Mowmy, because sometimes she does the thing where maybe all French people know all French people, asked Maud if she knew the French pianist Hélène Grimaud. And Maud said, “Is that the woman who raises wolves?” and I said, “Ha ha ha,” and Maud said, “No, really.” It turns out there is a French woman pianist whose husband is, I dunno, a zoologist or something, a wolfologist, and together they raise wolves. So I said, “Ha ha, and when the wolf goes out and hangs out with other wolves, he is sitting at the table with a white tablecloth and silverware, and the other wolves say, ‘What? Were you raised by pianists?’” and Maud said, “You are the only one laughing,” but the thing is, Jazon was laughing, too.)

But anyway.

We were uptown at Abyssinian Baptist for an impassioned pastor and a surprise gospel choir visiting from Mississippi, saffron robes and hundred-person harmony. We were downtown at the Landmark Sunshine for a mad hot movie and a three-dollar-fifty-cent bottle of water (even the counter girl was embarrassed and apologetic).



We were upstate, even, visiting family friends in Germantown, where there was papaya at breakfast and watching sails on the Hudson River. George showed me how to broil steelhead trout, five minutes on each side, and the skin crispy crunch crunch. Southward, back toward the city, a roadside farm stop yielded an apple cider donut for now and a whole smoked trout for later.

When it was time to go to the Met for the second time in three days, I hooked my mother up with the little pink badge and then went and sat in the sun outside Le Pain Quot’ for a cold lemonade, a coconut macaroon, and a long-distance chit-chat with Lurlene. Lurlene is going to Moldova this summer to hang out with the orphans. Maybe there will be a piano in the orphanage, an old one, a clunky out-of-tune one, and Lurlene will shine it up and teach those scruffy little orphans how to sing in tune. The children’s choir will take Eastern Europe, and then the world, by storm. I thought Ashley Judd might play Lurlene in the movie, but Lurlene is holding out for Kate Winslet. I figure, if Kate Winslet can do the accent, then okay.



It’s altogether a little bit funny and a little bit completely appropriate to be doing the New York City Greatest Hits less than a month before I check out. I’m not trying to be maudlin about it, but holy moley, New York rocks my socks, it is cool like the gleam of a silver scale of a smiling fish, shabam!, pow!, blop!, wizz!