A socially distant adventure

Our youngest lives with us. His older brother moved out into his own digs a couple of months into the pandemic. I don't know about you, but if I were 24 and only hand my parents as company, I don't think it would be a great thing for my mental health. 

Our son has gotten together virtually with friends. he has also on occasion gotten together distantly with a dear friend who lives in our building. It has been hard on our son whose-pandemic job was highly social.

Yesterday he set up what he jokingly called a playdate, a visit with some dear friends in Brooklyn. It was to be a masked visit. And like playdates of yore, he was brought to his friends and picked up by his parents. Like all city kids, my son has been getting himself to wherever he needed to go on the subway since he was thirteen or so. But driving with your parents is safer than possibly picking up COVID on the subway.

Our son's friends live in a particularly beautiful section of Brooklyn. I'm not sure, but it might be Crown Heights.

There was just a stunning array of gorgeous brownstones.

 So many of the details were beautifully preserved. Many of the buildings were from the same era so the intended rhythm of the streetscape remained. Similarly scaled buildings with lots of charming variations that kept your eyes happy and occupied.

Our son's friends lived in a 1930's art deco building. This is the door into the building.

After we dropped our son off...we walked around a little bit. 

This row of storybook houses was a charming surprise.

I have never seen as many single-family freestanding homes from the late 19th century as I did on these blocks.

We saw this synagogue, Gates of Justice on the corner of Brower Park.

 

It was too hot and muggy for us to keep walking. so we got back into the airconditioned car. I had assumed that we might explore this neighborhood and its beautiful houses aa bit more. My husband began driving as if there was a gravitational pull.

There was. He needed to go visit his childhood neighborhood of East New York. It was a working-class neighborhood when he was born in the 1950s. My mother has spent the first fourteen years of her life there just a few blocks from where my husband grew up.

My husband didn't know the exact streets to take but his internal compass just steered the car in the right direction.

 As we drove I was able to capture some nice fire-escape shadows.

That internal compass

worked. We passed Thomas Jefferson highschool. My mother-in-law attended and later taught there. My aunts also attended Thomas Jefferson. Each time I have visited the neighborhood either with my mother or with my husband it is always necessary to pass the school to assure yourself that you have made the pilgrimage.

We reached our goal. The house my mother-in-law selected for her family just after WWII. My in-laws spent the war in Biloxi Mississippi teaching the electrical and hydraulic systems of B-24 bombers to future mechanics in the Army Air Corps.  Aunt Yetta and Toba, my mother-in-law's mother, joined them. My husband's older brother was born in Biloxi. As the war wound down my mother-in-law went back to New York to start teaching in the New York public schools. She bought this home for the family so they could all move back to New York.

After this bit of our pilgrimage was over we went back to the car. We passed JHS 149. Several family members had attended.  When my mother was a student Danny Kaye would visit yearly and warn students to not be a terrible student like he was.

When my kids were little and went on playdates, I would be left with bits of what I called Stupid Time. It wasn't enough time to go home and get something taken care of there. It also wasn't enough time to get something done in the outside world. To fill Stupid Time you had to find an activity that was probably not necessary but used up time.

We used our Stupid Time at one of the few antique furniture stores on Atlantic Avenue; We were the only customers so our health was not in danger. We had purchased several pieces along Atlantic Avenue thirty years ago.

Thirty years ago the stores were filled with late Victorian and art -deco pieces. Now all the furniture is mid-century modern.

I love this rocking chair. 

This chair looks like it could wriggle away if you weren't careful.

The store did have lots of older stained glass.

I really adore this glass screen showing life at the edge of a pond.

 

If only we had a garden for these benches.

We were at this point hot.it was about a billion degrees out and the air was heavy with humidity.

We admired this old synagogue which has found a new life as an event space.

 

I had reached the point where my head was boiling from the heat. I needed to be cool and to drink.

We wandered into 

where we had had a lovely meal thirty years ago when we had purchased furniture down the street.  

I looked int the fridge to choose a drink. I really didn't want a soda. A woman working in the restaurant said, "You need loomi tea.". I had never heard of it. She gave me a sample to try. I did need loomi tea. It is a Middle Eastern tea made out of boiled dried lemons and sweetened. 

We sat in the back garden of the restaurant. We were brought a big glass of loomi tea and a smaller metal cup with ice water.

 I held the cup of ice water against my neck and drank the tea. Loomi tea is sweet and sour and bitter and incredibly refreshing. It has a bit of the taste of powdered iced tea- except that it is delicious( as opposed to powdered iced tea which is gross) and is the perfect restorative thing to drink on a hot day.

I have already ordered a bag of dried limes so I can make my own loomi tea. Wandering into Bedouin Tent really did feel like wandering into an oasis in the desert.

After our tea,

 

 

 

we picked up our son from his play-date and we drove home.

Crossing and seeing the bridges in lower Manhattan always feels like such an event.

The play-date was a success for all of us.