Mid-Autumn Moon Nor'easter

Before, after, and the in between elements.

We had a September nor'easter, so lots of rain. The forecasters wrung their hands about another Sandy because of the high tides. Parts of the city did flood; global warming makes this a regular occurrence now, and we'll have to rethink policies and zoning. But for the most part, it was just windy and wet. 

Right before the rains arrived late Friday night, though, the sky was extraordinary. Lots of New Yorkers seemed to take note.

Friday was also the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, and at the Mothership, we had a moon cake. Then, outside, the clouds rolled in and we couldn't even find the moon. It just rained, and the clouds sat over us and poured - all weekend, through to this afternoon.

But then as I made my way home from the office in the early evening, the skies started to clear. The setting sun shined on the Upper Westside, and at the bandshell a band played and people gathered to listen...

... Little trace of the big moon (the photos were just shy of full, within days of the harvest moon) that tugged at the ocean. Little trace of the gusty winds that, days before the nor'easter had even formally arrived, blew over a sizeable planter with a small apple tree (acting like a sail, catching the wind). 

Almost like the nor'easter was but a paranoid forecast.

This Upper Eastside Life (aka WWG-G-MaD)

What would Great-Grandma do, or think, of my recent ventures out and about the neighborhood?

On this Where We Were Wednesday (yes, just made that up so I could publish a catch up post), we have the photos from our companion Instagram posts "Blume, Blooms, and Botaniste" and "WWG-G-MaD" to provide a lookback at a fun evening Tuesday last week and a weekend in "the life" (this past weekend, to be exact).

Cụ Bà loved oranges. Ông Nội loved watermelon. Papa Rooster loves cookies and snacks.

Let's go in reverse chronological order and start with this past weekend, with a vase full of flowers from the Mother Garden for my great grandmother's giổ (death anniversary). She died over 75 years ago, in a very different time and world. What would she make of...

...Her great granddaughters graduating from Ivy League colleges? Her daughter-in-law's younger sisters (all but the baby, who was a mere 4 years senior to Papa Rooster) stopped their education at 8th grade, which was quite common in the first half of the 20th century in Vietnam, and their father was highly educated for the time.

The ivy in this planter off Park Avenue or thereabouts, as I walked home before driving out to the Mothership, is exactly like the kind I used to draw back in high school; it was a motif I was pulled toward, even before heading to college, and that college led to jobs, and law school, and a life I was able to build mostly myself.

Earlier that day, on Madison Avenue, it was the Saturday of gallery walks, of abstract art...

Plume Chaser happens to love doughnuts. This work had a price tag of $45,000. I texted him the photo and teased it was just a bit above my budget; he said he would have chastised me if I ever spent so much on such a thing.

... I must have been hungry.

In addition to snacks, Papa Rooster very much likes lobster. This isn't the depiction of one, but the piece was uncannily like a cooked crab, with the same coloration as our meals whenever Papa Rooster gets to call the shots.

And I respond to vivid colors.

This one reminded me of Sissy, who has gone full into her jigsaw puzzle hobby in recent years since the ease of getting new ones from Buy Nothing.

The gallery visits were broken up by bits of nature.

Mama Hen would have appreciated this sweet topiaried shrub in a planter on Madison Avenue.

And some of the art subjects themselves were natural. 

Asked Plume Chaser if he would have preferred this instead; he finds blue jays annoying, with which any gardener would agree.

Including by a Viet artist. How far - literally, figuratively - we've come from where, and when, GGMa died.

Back in the Jardin this same past weekend, a flower with a name that reminds me of travel by sea came into bloom - armeria maritima...

Though far we've come, still, we are not completely severed from the motherland - the rains left lush chickweed, and dandelion greens, also tía tô (perilla - so begins the battle for control of the planters) and kinh giới (Vietnamese balm - less ubiquitous than the tía tô), which I had dressed and tossed with chili lime cashews for lunch. And that was all I had for that meal; perhaps why I was drawn to food art at the gallery walk.

And from Madison Avenue gallery walks to talks at a Fifth Avenue synagogue... Could Cụ (Great Grandmother) ever have imagined her great granddaughters there! But how could we pass up...

JUDY BLUME!! Sissy and I were in the same (very large) room with THE Judy Blume! Who didn't read a Judy Blume book in their youth? Well, any Gen X'er, anyway. Got us tickets to see her right in our neighborhood (the chi-chi-er part, the southwesternmost edges of our neighborhood, far from where we plebes dwell in Yorkville). And Judy Blume (as she tells it, all the kids have always called her by both names) was delightful, and energetic, and still so sharp for age 87! (Far sharper than Papa Rooster, who is her age.)

And afterward we walked to find dinner, past St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church on Lexington Avenue, with its most lovely rose garden out front. Just like a children's photographic picture book version of "Sleeping Beauty" we had growing up, of dolls as the princess and prince and witch, posed in settings with lots of vivid roses in the background castle garden.

We ended the night with a wonderful vegan meal at Le Botaniste - clean, delicious, ethical, reasonably priced - a nice bow-tied ending to an outing in the nabe.

I chose a half portion of African stew and zucchini soup, with a vegan brownie.

Sissy had a pasta with vegan Bolognese, the same zucchini soup, and a chia pudding with berry topping.

Atop the Boardwalk

Returning to the Jones Beach boardwalk.

It's not quite the season yet, so there was only a smattering of folks by the time we arrived at our usual beach for the first time this year to walk with Papa Rooster's brothers, who are in town visiting him.

The uncles arrived yesterday, and there was a mad scramble to whip the Mothership into some semblance of host-worthy state (ship shape was a forgone aspiration). At my BigFin employer, the five-day return to office policy has become effective, but with exceptions previously granted for work from home up to one day also left unchanged. So I logged in from the Mothership for business hours, but was able to help the sibs with the last push for a good six hours after that. We wrapped up just in time for their slightly flight delayed late evening arrival.

Back at Jones Beach, there is much construction underway to restore the Art Deco structures and add facilities, closing off certain portions of the boardwalk since last year.

We walked as the sun began to set and the moon began to rise, witnessing both at the same time. Those astronomical bodies seemed to mirror the arc of Papa Rooster and Mama Hen, with the closing of the days they could drive there together on a whim independently, and the rise of reliance on their baby chicks for transportation and mechanical aids for mobility, as they both pushed walkers over those planks for the first time - Papa on account of the stroke, Mama finally being forced to acknowledge that her knee has rendered her less able to walk than she generally cares to admit. 

Experiencing the boardwalk we've enjoyed for decades in that way was as stark a change as the construction-altered path we traversed.

Both uncles, though, seemed happily surprised that Papa is in a much better state than they had thought. So there is that.

Noel Novelties

Celebrating the holidays, with some adjustments for beloveds working through the aftermath of a stroke.

The skinny new Christmas tree fit just within the height of the living room atop the end table, with its floppy tinsel star topper skimming the ceiling.

After Papa Rooster's stroke, we had to make some adjustments to the usual Christmas rituals at the Mothership, but, happily, we were able to keep a lot of the elements of "our" Christmas. And, we even tried out some holiday traditions that were entirely novel to us.

Before it got its glow up.

We debuted a new skinny tree that had already been in the wings to replace the artificial tree that served the last few decades; it was a Sissy Buy Nothing score after last year's Christmas season. Skinny is simply more in scale with New York City living; even though the Mothership is a standalone house (rare-ish for the city), and in quasi-suburban, relatively spacious eastern Queens, it's modestly sized compared to mainstream American homes that host the vast majority of the tall and stout Christmas trees on the market. The skinny tree is just less intrusive of the living room footprint. And the old tree was starting to shed as many needles as a live one, so the skinny tree had been primed to succeed it anyway. That its stage was the top of an end table on level with the sofa, though, was a post-stroke decision to leave more floor space for Papa Rooster to navigate with his walker or cane.

How grateful we are that Papa Rooster is progressing, and that we were all in a state of mind for holiday celebrations, period. In some ways, we needed the holiday decor and normalcy to boost his spirits, to shift the focus away from the things he can't do like he used to - yet. 

The main gifts for him and Mama Hen (as in recent years past, wrapped in the holiday fabrics returning for repeat duty under the tree) were tech gadgets that will make it easier to detect falls and summon help; tips picked up from other sandwich generation friends with more experience keeping tabs on their own aging parents. A self-driving vehicle wasn't in the budget this year, but now that the idea is lodged in my noggin, it's on the back burner list for whenever one of our vehicles bites the dust.

The stockings were hung by the stereo with care - having migrated from the less accessible stair railing - but still staged near the backdrop of the classic televised Yule Log of old...

... opposite the skinny tree that still held my most favorite soldier clothespin ornament by Lil' Bro, and a childhood-painted Snoopy one, amongst all the other usual tree baubles, ...

...erected near the window adorned with the decades old Rudolph and Santa, lit through the evening late into Christmas Eve...

... after our Reveillon meal (we usually have Vietnamese)...

This year, in adding to the Yule Log, we had Carole and Paula from The Magic Garden Christmas, harkening back to the original days of the newly trendy again Gen X-cess decor with its fully saturated colors and trees and interiors. I mean, our family never wavered from that look; stick with something and it's bound to be fashionable again at some point.

Completely new for our house was the ginger toast house trend - less sugar than gingerbread cookies (sugar is a no-no for the stroke-inclined); I just need to figure out the icing consistency and get a proper tip....

... And then there were the sweet roll faux sufganiyot - this one worked quite well, and will definitely make a future holiday appearance. Yummy, scummy! 

So not eliminating sugar altogether, just aiming for less.

Going for all the fun, more sensibly and in line with what our challenges are today.