Happiness is New York City

A really amazing mural in Little Italy, my favorite piece in the city

Give me such shows — give me the streets of Manhattan! ~ Walt Whitman

Coming home to New York, since the birth of my nephew Yogi, also means a trip to NYC,Little Italy specifically where my little one year-old nephew resides.  He’s a magnificently huge child, neither of his parents are large but Yogi is the biggest 1 year-old kid I know.  He’s also horribly terrified of his Uncle Mike, he cries when we chat on Skype and he howls when I invade his apartment.  It almost makes me long for when he was 3 months old and went right into my arms.

Now I know his reticence is temporary and by time he’s 2 we’ll be fast friends.  In the meantime I visit and try to as gingerly as possible invade his space.  On my third visit we reached a bit of detente and he even let me pull him around in his inflatable ducky, victory!  Well a victory of a sorts, still great to see him, my brother and sister-in-law, really love spending time with them.

Of course they live in Little Italy so a plate of gnocci was in order as well as a fabulous cannoli.  I even negotiated myself into a lovely $4 hat featured in the picture below.  It was really cold in Manhattan on Saturday and I had forgotten my hat.  Putting the new one on I realized I looked like some Norwegian fisherman who had invaded the city.

One of the highlights of this trip was getting to see my friend Erik, someone I hadn’t seen since he left California in the early 90’s.  We were first year law students together, he continued on and I walked away after that first year, but we remained friends and it was wonderful to see him, we’ve only recently reconnected via Facebook and his greeting was quintessentially him, “So what have you been doing for the last 20 years and why are you so damn happy!”  I couldn’t have hoped for a better opening, the truth is he is pretty happy these days as well, something neither of us could have claimed all of those years ago.Both of us have dealt with some personal demons and are on paths to doing what really makes us happy in life.  It was a wonderful conversation and I’m thankful we were able to connect.

Erik and I on a chilly day in NYC

I do love visiting NYC, I love a city where people walk, where there is massive diversity and you can hear 3 languages or more on the same block.  I really love how available good pizza is and all of the different food options that are literally everywhere.  So it was a great weekend of friends, food and family, I hope you had an equally happy weekend my friends ~ Rev Kane