April 5th: Sending Love to NY & NJ

I just finished watching the daily White House press briefing and there wasn’t anything new to report. Everyone agrees the next week or two are going to be terrible in the amount of Coronavirus deaths.

Today I simply want to send all my love to New York and New Jersey. I lived in Brooklyn from 2001-2002 and was there when 9/11 happened. I’ve seen the extraordinary spirit of NYC. How people banded together, looked out for one another, how they searched for their missing loved ones. It was inspiring and heartbreaking on a daily basis. I remember how afraid we all were. I was afraid to ride the subway, afraid of getting trapped underground.

I haven’t lived there since 2002, but go back often. My last trip was in 2018 with my nieces and nephew. We rode the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty, dined in Little Italy, trudged the frozen tundra of Central Park to visit the Central Park zoo where a goat fell in love with me. We persevered in the midst of bad weather and hunkered down in the Natural History Museum for the better part of a day. My then 11 year-old nephew walked the streets of Manhattan as if he’d lived there his whole life and declared the subway his favorite because “it’s loud and it’s fast!” Fair enough.

My friend Tine and her family live in Jersey City, NJ and I always stay with them. We met as neighbors in Brooklyn when her dachshund Maxine and my lab Hunter strained to sniff each other. From there a lifelong friendship was born.

I have many happy memories of us tooling around Jersey City or Hoboken…. from pushing her little boy in his stroller, to running behind him on the way to Capoeira class.

I stopped through to see them on my way back from Italy and one afternoon found ourselves by a group of people trying to figure out how to deal with a large beehive in a nearby tree. Since Tine’s husband is a beekeeper, he came over quickly and their little boy got to watch excitedly as his Dad was hoisted up by the fire department and removed the bee hive like a really cool Marvel beekeeper.

By all accounts it’s going to be a terrible couple of weeks, especially for New York and New Jersey. These states have been through a lot already and they’ll get through this. Selfishly I just want my friends to be ok. I want Tine and her family to stay healthy and safe. I want my NY friend Rachel to have a safe delivery next month without fear of simply being in the hospital. I also want all the medical workers to have enough PPE, for patients not to die alone, for residents not to be terrified. But I can’t help but worry about my friends the most.

Stay safe, my friends. I love you.

Left to Right: Strawberry Fields in Central Park, my nieces & nephew on the ferry, Little Italy, and me and my favorite goat at the Central Park Zoo.