Drive to and visit Wurtsboro and Grandma Betty

Today was a long and in many ways a difficult day. Up early to a beautiful sunrise on a quiet Sunrise Highway before rush hour (never see it like that). A quiet desolate highway, maybe indicative of how the day was about to play out. We walked to get the car rental which was to start here and would be dropped off at the end of the week in Cleveland.

We picked up Lee in Westchester where he was staying with Mollie's grandmother for the night. We enjoyed our short visit with Arlene, a wonderful and spirited person ... who loves Lee, so how could we not love her.

Next, we continued our adventure with the destination being Grandma Betty's house in Syracuse. On the way, we stopped in Wurtsboro, the site of the famous J.B. Bungalow colony where we enjoyed our summers while living in Brooklyn. Great memories of the early 60's. We did not get to go onto the property (now Royal Brook 201) like we had last time since the security is so high around these Jewish establishments in particular if you are not expected. The property is owned by an Orthodox Jewish Community (Grosswardein - a Chassidic rabbinical dynasty originally from Oradea, Romania). We passed the famous Custard's Last Stand across the street where I often had ice cream and the house where I got my bi-weekly allergy shots, and we drove up the cute old town of Wurtsboro (red, white and blue line down main street) and many of the same stores including Lisa Weiss' favorite pistachio ice cream shop .... now 60+ years later. Wurtsboro used to seem like 2+ hours from NY and now its an hour. Some things change.

We got to Grandma Betty's house at 3pm and had a "mixed" visit there. We enjoyed seeing her and catching up and talking about Melanie but at 98, she seemed very forgetful and clearly not in any condition to go out to dinner (which was the original plans I made with her and confirmed just yesterday). With that being said, we had a lovely visit and along with Lee, got to see her after 7 or so years. We got to see, read and take photos of some Melanie memorabilia. I miss her so much. Note: Lee (Michael) is named after her. Melanie was the most uplifting, energetic, fun and caring person I had met in many years and we became very good friends in 1990. Sadly, she got sick shortly later, and died in 1993.

Betty didn't want to go to dinner today so we just left after a very warm but emotional good-bye ... not knowing if and when we would see her again. We brought her a succulent that we hope will live a long life as we pray for her too.

We found our hotel, the three of us settled in and then went out for dinner before coming back early to get some sleep, since Lee had a 7am train back to the Big City as we continued our journey to Jamestown, NY.Read more