Many people wax poetic about the joys of Christmas Time in New York City.
As fluffy snow wafted down on Bryant Park's huge Christmas tree, smiling skaters glided around the outdoor rink. Huts selling hot drinks, snacks and gift items put smiles on more faces. It was a perfect movie setting, although a lot colder than sitting in a comfy theater seat.
To get from Dallas BBQ in Time Square to fulfill Gina's promise to little Emma to visit this site, we had braved a brisk wind that blew icy snow in our faces, upsetting Emma and not well-accepted by her Nanna either.
Walking through the bright city lights in the snow also epitomizes the Hollywood-ification of the Manhattan Christmas experience, but it's hard to look around when you're trying to avoid getting pelted in the face in a blustery wind. Nonetheless, I managed to look around as we walked without running into too many bustling New Yorkers and tourists out on the busy city sidewalks for the same experience.
Bryant Park proved to be worth the trek. Surprisingly surpassing
Rockefeller Center, which we visited last December, Bryant Park really is that picture perfect
city holiday setting, especially with the light snow God sprinkled on us for our stay. When Emma's a bit older, we'll definitely want to take her ice skating there.
I have fond memories of taking Emma's mother to ice skating lessons in Costa Mesa every Wednesday afternoon when she was in grammar school. Gina loved the lessons and the outfits with little skirts that she could twirl, but I think mostly she liked playing "Down by the Banks" with her friend Kelly in the rink before class. Years later, when I took Gina's little sister to tennis lessons, Amy would become so distracted with her conversations with her friend Alexis that she could barely be interrupted to actually hit the tennis ball, but sports isn't anything if it doesn't include camaraderie.
Competition, of course, is fun too, but for my girls, it was not found so much in sports as in other games, like Bridge. On a different evening of our trip, Gina took me to her Bridge lesson on the 14th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. It included a buffet dinner before class.
We learned how to score duplicate Bridge, and then we played a few games. Because there were only 10 students, 8 of whom had set up at other tables, Gina and I found ourselves playing the teacher, who bid both hands as our competition. If he won the bid, he would play it as the bidder, and if Gina won the bid (I never won a bid, generally having, as my mother used to say, "itty bitty cards," or at least the second best hand between us), I would play as the teacher's partner, doing my best to help him set Gina. In a couple of games when Gina and I were playing defense, we baffled the instructor as to why we played exactly as we had, which had caused him to lose extra tricks. I think it upset him a bit, and we ended up scoring more net points by the end of the session. As I used to tell Jay's tee ball team, "It's not whether you win or lose, but winning is easy. All you have to do is score more than the other team." And even if no one else kept score, I always have.
Most of our family visit was just talking, enjoying meals together and entertaining Emma.
We built a gingerbread village from a kit, each of us trying our hand at constructing a building or two, with Emma doing most of the decorating.
We also went to a small park near Gina's apartment where we built a snow man, or really more of a snow bust of Napoleon, from big clumps of snow that had been cleared off the sidewalks by some city worker.
We were actually supposed to have played in the snow the day before at world-famous Central Park, but it was just too cold, so we had instead headed into the Natural History Museum. It is a gigantic place with lots of great exhibits, so the two hours we devoted to visiting wasn't nearly enough, but we couldn't dally.
We had a very special dinner date a couple of subway train rides away at Dallas BBQ in Times Square. We were meeting long lost family members we'd become acquainted with as a result of this blog.
In 2007, I had posted articles about trying to search Julie's grandfather's roots on Crete, and a previously unknown cousin named
Harold found my blog while doing a web search for Madaro, the home town of Julie's Grandpa Nick. Nick had come to America with two cousins, one of whom was Harold's grandfather. Both of those grandfathers went to work in coal mines in different states. The third young man decided he'd rather return to sun-drenched Crete.
Decades later, Harold's family line had remained in touch with the family in Crete, including Nikos, a grandson of the third young man who had returned home. Julie and I had planned to return to Madaro, because she had not been successful in hooking up with family on the prior visit, and Harold introduced her to Nikos online. Nikos works in the tourist industry in Crete, so he speaks fluent English, but unfortunately he was not available to show us around when we visited due to health. He put us in contact with his brother Vasilis, who incredibly met us in his own car with an extra cab and driver to show us around
Madaro and
Chania in 2011, making the trip a fanastic experience.
Vasilis told us during our visit to Crete that he had spent much of his career in the Greek Navy stationed in Athens, and he no longer had any use for big cities. In fact, he said he would never again leave his homeland of Crete, but this year his brother Nikos came to the U.S. to spend a month visiting Harold's family and Harold's brother George's family on the east coast.
We made it a point to get together with all of them, meeting them for dinner at Dallas BBQ.
Harold and George brought their wives and children, so with Gina, Emma and Amy joining us, we had 16 people for the gathering. They were all very nice, although because their kids were at the far end of the table, I really only got to know the adults to any extent. They were all warm, nice people, and it felt like we'd known them for years.
I found it amusing that Niko didn't like the blandness of his hamburger, which was not up to Crete's standards apparently. Harold and George had taken Niko to Outback Steakhouse on a different evening, and he couldn't understand why Outback couldn't cook his steak in oregano (Niko's interesting Greek pronunciation of oregano left me at first wondering what he was talking about, but eventually it registered because Julie's Greek Uncle George had given us fresh oregano when we'd last seen him in
Northern California) instead of the bland Outback standard rub. That is exactly the opposite of his cousin, my wife Julie, who feels Greek food is too spicy and garlicky. I would surmise it points to a family trait of liking to stay with what tastes familiar.
We enjoyed a wonderful visit with all our family, from those members we've known from birth to those with whom we've recently become acquainted. I originally called this a reunion, but Julie reminded me it really isn't a reunion if you've never met in person previously. Whatever you call it, it was a festive occasion and part of a great Christmas Time experience in New York.
Julie’s father, John, went to Crete several decades ago and somehow located the extended family of his father, Nikolaos Migiakis.
School schedules with different holiday breaks limited the opportunities to summer, despite knowing summers would be hot in Greece.
We hoped their father’s siblings might join, but Aunt Myrtle feared seasickness, and Uncle George wasn’t up for the long voyage this time.
While my mother and my sister’s family really have no direct link to Greece, I had hoped they would come along for what I felt confident would be a very special adventure, but none signed on, despite the fact that our oldest daughter and her new husband, who now live in New York, had decided to join us on vacation this year.
When the time came to head to the village near Chania where life started for Nick, four of us opted to stay in Heraklion rather than search the countryside for distant relatives who were not expecting us and don't speak the same language.
