Big Apple Adventure

Two more days remain before my departure for the Big Apple. I will be visiting four states that I have never been to before - NY, NJ, Connecticut and Rhode Island - and possibly five if we venture into Massachusetts. I look forward to seeing the NY Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island where so many of our ancestors entered this awesome land of freedom, the Manhattan skyline, the busy downtown streets, the art museums, and so on. But more than that, to meet my brothers, Mark and Matthew, for the first time, and spend a week with them. I will also meet my nephew, Mark Jr., a talented student of the arts at Brown University, who is graduating this month and moving on to graduate studies in film at the University of Southern California. And then there is Laura, the mother of my brothers, who I first met when I lived with my father in Caracas in the 60s. She would pick me up from school while my father worked and I would stay with her until he picked me up. I didn't know then that my father's "friend" was pregnant with my brother Mark when I returned to the U.S. Quite a few years have passed, so we have a lot of catching up to do.