Driving into Queens this afternoon. The older one is returning home from a visit
with her boyfriend in Toronto. We have
another week with her before she returns to college in Portland. We left early. “Yes dear.
We can leave now if you insist.”
Shortly after we left, we got a message that her flight was
delayed. This was not the first such
message.
We were
early to picking the little one of from school and we ended up chatting with
the Admissions Director, a lovely fellow, about hosting some of the Chinese
students over at our place for New Year’s Eve dumplings. Before long we were chatting with the school
cook about his plans for the holiday as well.
And with that we were off on our way, the little one insisting she wanted
to visit Dunkin’ Doughnuts. I have only
the worst memories of the place from the days when I thought it was grand and I
groaned a bit but what do I care? Soon
we were pulling out of the Wappingers Falls Dunkin’s with some caramel
frappa-something for her and French Crawler the Mrs. and a passable double
espresso sloshing around inside me.
We took 84
down and the traffic was merciful. Her
plane would be delayed again. It wasn’t
the kind of day you wanted to make good time on. The Whitestone Bridge hadn’t much traffic to
speak of just before five and it wasn’t no time before we were snaking around
the terrible labyrinth that is LaGuardia Airport, under construction. We went down to see if there was somewhere
to sit and eat. There wasn’t. All we could find was a vending machine.
Departures was no different.
Back at the
car we considered our options. Our older
one was still on the runway in Toronto.
“Have they closed the plane door yet?”
Always a good sign. “No.” A regrettable reply. In the car we had heat. I had a good book I was making my way
through. We could play whatever music we
liked. Ahh, but the Mrs. wanted to know
if there weren’t things to see and do here in Elmhurst Queens. I envisioned unwinding and then rewinding the
crazy path we took to get into this garage and getting routed up and on to the
BQE and off to points unknown. “No
honey. Let’s just stay here. This was debated. I pointed out that there appeared to be a
Marriott hotel within walking distance.
“How about that?” “In this
cold?” By now our daughter had, at least
stopped answering wechat messages and was presumably up and on her way and
inertia won out. We settled into our
seats.
But dinner
was going to happen. It was 8:15 when we
finally had the older one and her luggage up in the car. Where to?
We’d planned to drive up into the Bronx and try one of the storied
Italian restaurants there in “the real” Little Italy. I had no idea what the neighborhood would be
like, but we found the place easily enough and I dropped off the girls at the
door and found street parking that only left me a little bit worried. I’ve no idea why but it was all reminding me
of an evening drive through Sao Paulo about nine month’s back where a cabby was
taking a short cut and I was considering the other side of the city which had
otherwise all been rather fancy.
The
clientele was just what you hoped it would be up at Little Italy in the Bronx.
A nice gent from one of the tables and come to greet my gals before I
arrived and told them they were in a very special place, where the food would
be like Italian food in the old world.
And by now, we’d traveled a lot and fretted a lot and I relaxed and had
some wonderful risotto and memorable veal scaloppini. Desert?
Yes. And all we talked about was
our trips to Italy and how much fun we’d had when we were there.
Thursday,
01/16/20
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