I have continually promised you that I would share with you the stories from New York. I think we would be here for months if I actually detailed everything for you. So much happened in such a small amount of time. I wrote down as much as I could remember to retain the details as vividly as possible.

Day one of our vacation was hectic. For starters, our flight was canceled.

Mom and I were juggling coffee, pastries, chips and sandwiches as Dad left to find food of his own and Mom’s phone rang. It was my grandpa’s 3rd call of the morning. I have no idea what he or Mom said to each other as I was a bit preoccupied with the American Airlines lady saying that our flight had been canceled. I started gathering our stuff and relaying the cancellation to Mom, preparing for a bout of pandemonium which took over all of her logic in about 0.01 seconds.

My mom is short – four feet, eleven inches, to be exact – and she struggles to multi task. I had her get her bag, her coffee, her lunch and her Danish while I put on Dad’s backpack. Now – I want you to really picture this: me, wearing a backpack, carrying coffee in my right hand and both my pastry and lunch in my left hand, both arms looped through the handles of one bright green and one hot pink rolling suitcase, waddling towards gate C17 from C37 hollering after my mother to slow down who is all but running through the terminal while trying to phone my father (who, of course, didn’t have his cell phone turned on) causing her to cuss like a sailor. Thankfully, we ran into him, shuffled the bags and caught the tram to the new gate. We boarded the plane immediately and for the first time in 20 minutes, we were able to breathe.

After getting to our hotel and setting our things down, we headed straight for ground zero, but because it was already 5 pm, finding a cab was impossible, leaving us to take the subway. Now, I like the subway. Sure, it’s a little warm, and yeah, you wouldn’t want to touch anything that you didn’t have to, but it’s a neat experience. It’s something we can’t do at home – you know?

So we got to ground zero, but it’s blocked off; you can’t really see anything. And across the street, they have an exhibit, sort of like a museum, so we went in. It was gut-wrenching. I don’t feel tied to the September 11th attacks. I remember what I was doing when they happened. I remember watching it on TV. But it wasn’t personal for me – you know? Well today, there were rescue tapes and all sorts of other things that tugged so hard at my heart; it made me ache for all of those families. There were walls of “missing person” posters. It was so sad.

We walked from there over to St. Paul’s which was a rescue center at the time. There were pews scraped and scuffed from firemen who laid down to nap. Firemen were always on call, so they left their gear on at all times. Their gear marred the pews.

After dinner, we ended up wandering all through the village which I really enjoyed. We walked over to Magnolia Bakery (which is apparently famous) and picked up cupcakes which were to die for!