Confession #4: Bright Blue Skies

One of the great things about living in NYC is that although it is totally freezing in the winter, the skies are almost always bright and blue.  It is so remarkably different from the Cleveland skies I lived under while growing up that after living here for ten years it still amazes me.  The Hudson just doesn’t cause River Effect like Lake Effect in the Midwest.  It also seems to me that the coldest day of the year is always MLK Day.   On one particular MLK Day W.B.A. (Way Before Arden) in 2000, we brilliantly decided to go visit the Statue of Liberty. This excursion brought an entirely new meaning of the word cold into being.  It was so cold that they two of us and all the totally insane tourists stopped dead in our tracks and screamed when the wind blew. (Okay, Kyle was the only person not screaming.)  The walk from the ferry to the Statue was the coldest of my life.  It was completely wild being up in the crown of Lady Liberty.  It was blowing around, actually swaying from side-to-side, so much that I thought I might vomit.  The only reason I didn’t was for the sake of the young Dutch girl right in front of me.  I just did not want to suffer death by being hurled into a frigid river while trapped in an enormous green symbol of our independence.

I always think of September 11^th on days like today.  Anyone who was in NYC that day can tell you that the sky was as blue and clear as it could ever be.  In fact, it was perhaps the most beautiful sky I have ever or will ever see.  Looking at the below photo of me from that January day in 2000 makes my heart so heavy.  How will I ever be able to explain such atrocities to my daughter?