We started down in Red Hook. I took her out to the Lehigh Valley museum pier to see the harbor. It was freezing, windy, but just warm enough so that the ground had large puddles of slushy water to wade through. My mom is up for anything but I hadn't really checked her footware before slogging through the gardens and skittering down the icy pier. She loved the little holiday decorations on the front gates of the museum.
We then proceeded inside Fairway to get our feast. Fairway is opening a store in NJ near my family and there is apparently quite the buzz. We walked around the store, my mom's mouth agape as she stared at the combination of speciality items and bulk toilet paper. I, being a beast when I'm hungry, practically dragged her to the back to grab our lobster rolls.
I introduced my mom to my favorite Sunday afternoon treat: lobster rolls at Fairway looking at the weather come across the harbor. We grabbed on to go for my husband and watched some radical clouds pass overhead. She assured me that the afternoon was shaping up to be sunny and as we sat, a sharp lines of dark clouds ended and a bright sunny day opened up. As my mom ate I ran back and forth to take some pictures. I also filled her in on the history of the trolley cars and of the area in general.
When we finished we bundled back up and went outside to take pictures again. The weather was incredible and we were warmed up a bit when the sun came out.
We stopped to take pictures of this old car. She told me some funny stories about a friend of hers who had a very similar car. Apparently though, it had big holes in the floor and as you drove along, you could see the road rolling below you.
My mom is the executive director of our town's Chamber of Commerce and very aware of issues facing small local businesses and land use in general. She was tickled pink at the development of Fairway, the live/work apartment, and the use of water taxis to supplement the public transportation system. I warned her about how out of place Ikea looked in the industrial landscape.
Quite frankly, Ikea looks pretty out of place where ever you plop one. I grew up in the land of the malls and you can count six major ones between the George Washington Bridge and the house I grew up in. They put in a new Ikea a year or two ago and it doesn't fit in nestled among the malls of Paramus, so I'm not quite sure why they thought one would fit in with the industrial landscape of Red Hook.
Oddly enough, Ikea did kind of blend with the ominous dark grey sky.
Okay, this is where I need to apologize to my mom but I think she knows that I just can't help myself. As drove from Fairway to Ikea a gate was open that usually isn't. I slammed on the brakes (I looked in the rearview of course), back up, and hopped out of the car. Luckily, my mom was shouting, "look in there" and "get that picture", she was just as excited as I was.
The reason I need to apologize is that when I take pictures, I head into my own world. I wander, I make sudden stops, and I generally act in a non-directional manner. My husband bears the brunt of this behavior but my mom got it yesterday. She wasn't just patient with me, she actually enabled this behavior by shouting out ideas for shots and pointing out things that I hadn't noticed all from the comfort of the car.
Given that she's didn't use her mom voice and was encouraging of this strange photo tick of mine, I hopped out and got a few more shots.
The Port Authority Grain Silos in the Winter.
The abandoned lot behind Ikea. If I remember correctly she insisted that I go through the fence to take this. When I turned around she was taking pictures of me taking pictures. I admitted that this was the first time I had tresspassed in front of her.
For my final trick, I opened up the sunroof, popped out and took some pictures of the seagulls with Bay Ridge in the back while she giggled and squeeled with delight.
Merry Christmas Mama Joan, thanks for all of the adventures!
1 comment:
There's a lot of sky down there, isn't there? Nice photos -- and great catch of the four birds and five watertowers.
I still haven't tried the Fairway lobster rolls, though.
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