See Your Folks

Have you heard of seeyourfolks.com? You go to the site, enter a few snippets of information about your parents ages and how often you see them, and it lets you know how many more times you'll see them before they die. Wahhh!  I still don't know the answer since I never pressed enter because I really can't handle seeing the result. But based on Tate seeing us with a frequency of "every day" (presumably forever, but that jibes well with my plan to move into his dorm room), he will see Brad and me over 12,000 more times. Not bad, considering we are older parents.


Anyway, the site did get me thinking about how I really don't see my parents enough. They are both in their 70s now, and we make it home a few times a year and they make it here a couple times (if that), but that's about it. So when my Mom mentioned that she had never really seen New York City except for a quick trip through as a teenager and that she'd really like to go for her 70th birthday I decided it was a great opportunity to spend more time together.

I was determined to keep my unknown seeyourfolks.com number in mind and not revert back to my surly teenaged ways as I often do when I spend a lot of time with my parents, but there may have been an eye-roll or two on this trip. Since my Mom is awesome she continued to love me anyway.

This was the first time I did the full-on tourist thing in NYC, and I have to say it was a great time.

 #1 on my Mom's NYC bucket list: the observation deck at Rockefeller Plaza.

  



  Another highlight: a pedicab tour through Central Park.

This is a picture my Mom made me take with our lovely waitress (because she was nice and "looks like she enjoys her job") right after she had to apologetically decline my credit card for no apparent reason while we were having dinner with a cousin my Mom hadn't seen in over 50 years. Awkward. After Citibank assured me all was fine, the card stopped working again when we were attempting to use it at a credit-only subway entrance. I was very surprised that New Yorkers forming a line behind us (at rush hour) weren't more angry. I think that New Yorkers may have gotten a bum rap.

 

 I don't have many words for our visit to the 9-11 Memorial. I expected it to be too sad. Or too commercialized (the gift shop kind of did kind of throw me a bit), or too something. But we went at dusk and found it to be a very calm, serene, and respectful tribute.

So if the seeyourfolks.com site didn't remind me of how fleeting our time with loved ones can be the 9-11 Memorial definitely did. I'm really glad my Mom and I had the chance to take this trip together and make some memories, and all that corny stuff.