Aunt Bea Comes To Visit - Arrival, Day I

Sep 28, 2008

After years of visiting the Schaffers in Deerfield Beach, Florida, my Aunt Bea finally has come to visit us in New York. And we are thrilled. Her darling Walter, her partner for nearly 71 years had passed away in May, just three days short of that anniversary. Stacey and I visited in June to offer our condolences but also to help boost her morale. We suggested at the time, never believing she would actually take us up on it, that she should come to New York for a while, leaving the Florida house and all its memories behind. We returned to New York and after a few more entreaties to come visit, she decided she would. And so now she's here!

Bea is my mom's sister and the last of her nuclear Kaplan family. She's a very young 93. My friend Wendy, our waitress at Sammy's Noodle Shop in Greenwich Village, which we lunched at after Bea's arrival at Penn Station on Saturday, remarked that she looked younger than her own mother who is 72.

Bea's son and daughter-in-law, Ken and Yong Hee, put Bea on an Amtrak train Saturday morning bound for New York. We met her and had lunch and then, on the way back to Brooklyn, stopped at Henry Street for a quick look at Bea's childhood home on the Lower East Side. She and her family arrived there when Bea was only two and departed when she was five so her memory of that place was fuzzy. My mother had remembered it with much more detail being four-and-a-half years Bea's elder. They lived in a townhouse that also housed a doctor's office. Next door was Lillian Wald's house, the founder of the Henry Street Settlement. Wald was one of those great early 20th century social reformers. Her organization offered succor and advice to struggling immigrants who, crowded into the Lower East Side's awful tenements, were the poorest of New York's poor. Down the block was a firehouse. The Kaplan girls and their friends on the block, my mother told me, each had a fireman who was their special "boyfriend."

At Sammy's Noole Shop in the Village, Stacey and Bea get ready to order lunch. (more photos - see link at end)

Arriving home we showed Bea around our brownstone, parked her in her own guest room, sat around and chatted for hours and then had dinner at Amorina, our little pizzeria around the corner on Vanderbilt Avenue. It was alive and crowded with the young families of our new neighborhood. Albano, the owner and our friend, stopped by the table and we chatted, picking apart last night's presidential debate and expressing distress over the McCain/Pailin ticket.

At home again we watched some old Sid Caesar Show of Shows on a DVD until Bea's eyes closed from tiredness. It had been a long day but a sweet one. We were very happy to have my aunt here in Brooklyn.

For a gallery of today's photos, just CLICK HERE.

For a slideshow of today's photos, just CLICK HERE.

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