Bye Bye, B61!

It’s been a pretty fun spring and summer in that every one of my family members has been out to see my new digs and visit. When I first moved to NYC and got my own place it seemed as if friends and family came out of the woodwork to visit -- which was great --but then the influx of visitors died down for a few years.  This past week, Rusel and I were honored to have my brother, Christopher, and his son, Duke, visit us from Hawaii.

They took to the city like fish to water and I even commented to Duke, when he pushed through a crowd of people while we were racing to catch a train, that he was one step away from being a “true” New Yorker. Although Hawaii and New York are about as far apart as you can get, both physically and in almost every other sense, the kid is fearless and fit right in.

I hadn’t seen Duke in about a year and a half and he’s grown quite a bit – he’s all of four years old now (five in September). His full name is Steven Duke Thomas, after my Dad, and he is on his way to be just as big of a Yankees fan as my Dad was. He knows all of the player’s names and they went to three games in the four days that they were here. We caught a game with them on Sunday against the Kansas City Royals and the Yankees won – whoo hoo!

Duke plays a mean game of the card game War, uses the word "actually" quite liberally (sometimes fitting it into a sentence three or four times), has a knack for celebrating joyously when he wins at any of the several games that he loves to play and negotiating for a "tie" when he doesn't. He's super sweet and sensitive and smart and was so much fun to be around. 

It was fun to see my city through a kid’s eyes and it was also fun to see how people react to kids here in the city. Normally here, everyone has their guard up as a defense mechanism, but kids seem to break through the barrier. Or maybe it’s just that Duke is so damn cute. People gave their seats up for him on the subway, he was able to “trade in” his half-eaten frozen lemonade for a new one at the game just by asking, and in general people just seemed to look out for him. It was really nice.

The funniest moments were definitely spent trying to catch the bus near our house. We live in a nice part of Brooklyn with the only major downfall being that to get to either main subway line from our apartment you need to catch the B61 bus (the bane of my existence), or bike or walk to the subway. Because the bus is annoying and never on time, I usually just ride my bike to the subway, where it is only one stop in on either the L train or the 7 train into Manhattan. It is just far enough away that you can’t really walk it very quickly (about 20 minutes by foot). With Duke and Christopher here, we relied on the bus because they obviously didn’t have bikes. One day, we waited for about 25 minutes for the damn bus, which wasn’t running on schedule as usual. Ultimately, we had to take a cab to the subway because Christopher and Duke were going to be late for their first Yankees game.

The next day, we were walking down the street as we saw the bus go by at the end of the street. “Bye, bye, B61!” Christopher said right before I shouted to everyone, “RUN!” Little Duke, Christopher, Rusel and I booked it three blocks to catch the bus, which was stalled at a red light (thankfully). Duke ran so fast “his eyeballs almost popped out” and was able to hold onto his beloved Yankees ball that they had bought at the game the night before. We all high-fived each other as we got on the bus and jumped on the subway and went into the city to the American Museum of Natural History. It was so much fun.

The city turned scorching overnight on Saturday and it has been really really hot here ever since. They both handled the heat just fine and Rusel and I – and everyone else in the city – is now trying to move as little as possible to stay cool. It’s definitely “disgusting” hot at the moment.

It was hard to say goodbye to them when they left early this morning. Duke is flying to Nebraska to spend the next couple of weeks with various friends and family and Christopher is staying a day or two before he heads back to Hawaii. Like I said, it was great to see both of them and I’m so glad that they made the trek.