Our last full day in New York City. We had originally thought we would go and stand in line to see what last-minute Broadway show tickets we could get. Our level of tiredness, and feeling that our time was getting precious, led us to instead buy tickets online. After spending time going through at least 10 different show options, we finally made a choice. We got tickets for Neil Diamond: A Beautiful Noise. Knowing that we were not going to need to stand in line for several hours to get tickets gave us a little more flexibility with the earlier part of the day.
We made our plans and then headed into the city. We got to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in time to look at the reflecting pools with all of the names of the victims who had died in 9/11 2001. Just the outside was stunning. For people who had been to NYC pre the attacks, the missing Twin Towers is still strange. At noon, we had tickets to go inside. We spent the next two hours trying to soak in the enormity of the attack that it happened at this very site in the city that we had been enjoying the past several days.
It is hard to describe all of the feelings and the things that we saw in the museum. They did an amazing job at preserving some of the artifacts and twisted pieces of metal and vehicles that had exploded or burned. There were artifacts, there were videos, there were photos. We were touched most by a wall of missing person posters, and the audio naming, by their relatives, of those who perished. There was a constant stream of names being read, and then identified as “my father”, or “my brother-in-law”, or “my cousin”. Very sobering.
Inside the exhibit, there was a lot of experience of the chaos of that day, as well as following the process as people struggled to make sense that buildings had planes hit them, and then crashed, crumbled and fell killing thousands. It was very chaotic and upsetting. You could only absorb so much of this horror. It seemed that this was probably similarly to that day around this area. We wandered around, trying to take it in. The experience was sad and moving. We kept thinking about how Mr. Rogers would always counsel people that in a bad situation to always look for the helpers. There were helpers everywhere.
It was clear one could spend hours or days trying to soak in everything that they have done in the museum. It was also possible to have a guided tour which we didn’t have time to do, but would recommend. But, after a couple of hours, our time was done, and we needed to leave the memorial. We were saturated with thoughts and images. T
hroughout the rest of the day, images would flood back. It was very humbling to come and bear witness to a senseless death as well as the courage of those who worked to help.
We caught a quick lunch at an authentic Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. New York has so many great areas of different cultural groups. And so much good food.
Then, we went for our next tour at The Tenement Museum nearby. This was a fascinating museum that was dedicated to preserving and telling stories of people who lived in the tenements or apartments in New York during the past nearly two hundred years.
We went on an hour-long tour, led by an enthusiastic young tour guide. In this tour, we focused on two different families who had lived in, this building 100 years apart. One German immigrant family lived there in the 1850s or just before Civil War. We heard quite a bit about their story, including how the husband had disappeared and abandoned the family, and the wife had to support her children by being a garment worker working out of her home. 100 years later, in the same building there was another immigrant family from Hong Kong, where the wife ended up working also in the garment industry, this time in a factory set up in this building. In both cases, we got to go to reconstructed apartments, put together how they would’ve been set up in the time that the families lived there. The tour was very interesting and quite interactive. We really enjoyed these stories coming to life.
Following this, we tried to take the subway, but the trains were broken down and delayed, so we again took a Lyft and got up to the theater district in time for our show.
Dick, Betty and Gere had all seen Broadway shows in the past, but this was a first for Patti. It was exciting just walking down the street seeing people begin to gather at all of the theaters. We had tickets for seats upstairs, but pretty much all seats in the house were good for the Neil Diamond play. In the program there had been a warning to not sing along, that it would disturb the actors. However, there were a number of songs that the house lights came up and people were obviously invited to sing along. We all knew we would enjoy hearing the Neil Diamond music which we were familiar with. We were not prepared with how moved we would be about the story of Neil Diamond‘s life told in the format of him being in therapy sessions with his therapist. We were all moved to tears as we got a chance to hear some of the pain from loneliness in his life, and the struggles that he went through. The show ended with the audience all singing along to “Sweet Caroline”, and it was, as the song goes …”so good so good so good.”
We walked back to the train, and got back to the apartment having had a very full and wonderful experience in New York.
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