New York day 3

October 15

This is our last full day in the USA. Hard to believe that tomorrow we fly again after being such terrestrial creatures (albeit wheeled ones) for so many days and months now. It's been so long since we've been in an airport; such a distant memory.

It is Saturday and we have always made it a point to get to a synagogue whenever possible for Shabbat morning services. The fact that we chose not to go today testifies to the tension I was under by now to get the packing resolved before the Baldwin, NY Post Office closed today at 2:30 PM. I had to resolve the packing issue by that deadline or it became someone else's burden – and I didn't want to place that burden on anyone else. When I awoke this morning, I still didn't know if the remaining items Razelle and I had decided would be accompanying us back home would cause us to exceed the weight limit. I dug a bathroom scale out of its storage space in Monte and Mindy's home and weighed myself, then stood on the scale again holding each of the items of luggage in turn and calculated their weights. Some were grossly over the limit, some were happily well under the limit. The problem was that we had three semi-hard boxy back-pack-type bags, and one completely soft duffle-like bag. Fragile items had to go into the bottoms of the boxy back-packs. Larger flat pieces that wouldn't fit into the deformable duffle-bag also had to go into the back-packs. These items tended to be heavier, leaving me the light soft items to fill the duffle, but not sharing the weight distribution evenly among them because of this.

Ilyssa watched me stepping on and off the bathroom scale several times and announced she had a better device – a hand-held spring-loaded scale that hooked into the bag's handle; as the bag is pulled up off the floor, its weight can be read. Doing the math after using this device, I saw that the combined gross weight of all four bags came to just a bit less than the airline's limit. It would require creative thinking and artful packing (and packing is a fine art, believe me) to balance it all out. I applied this fine art as I transferred items from bag to bag to bag to bag until the weight was evenly distributed, eventually, to my ultimate satisfaction – and relief.

Then Razelle brought me some more items that hadn't been accounted for earlier and the process began again. We had some maneuverability with the carry on bags: these had weight limits we didn't see ourselves even reaching, and size limits we already knew we wouldn't exceed. Every item Razelle brought me just bumped something out of the bags and into the carry on – until that ceased to be practical. Still, I was convinced before noon that we were "good to go" to the airport tomorrow without needing to pack any cardboard boxes and mailing them or paying extra at the plane for them.

Now that that was off my mind, I had time to interact with Monte. He had purchased an articulating ladder and he needed help mounting it on the inside of his garage wall. It took the two of us to do this efficiently and I was happy to be part of this project. Afterward, when we went out to the back yard, we discovered that the Sukkah Monte had erected had been damaged by yesterday's storm. Its metal structure had suffered damage and would need to be repaired; so, together, we collapsed it entirely and stored it away.

Razelle had souvenirs of Israel she had promised to send to Joan in Connecticut – laminated placemats depicting the Mona Lisa of Galilee (a mosaic-tiled floor in the ruins of ancient Tzipori). Monte gave me the keys to his car and I drove to the Baldwin Post Office to mail the package to Joan from there. Whoa! After driving that van, driving a car again felt strange! I brought the car straight back to Monte after completing my mission and he left in it to keep an appointment.

After yesterday's experience at the restaurant in Manhattan, there was no way I was going take a chance on having that happen again. Already, while we were staying with Mark and Evelyn in New Jersey, my cousins Sherry (Mark's sister) and David had reserved time with us this evening. This was to be another family gathering involving Mark and Evelyn coming up from New Jersey, Monte and Mindy and Razelle and me. Razelle and Mindy and Sherry brainstormed earlier over the phone about just which restaurant we would meet at. It had all been settled by yesterday, but today, when I objected (quaked and panicked at the very thought of it!) the plans were changed. The restaurant was replaced with a pizza party.

We rode with Monte and Mindy to Sherry and David's home in Westbury, Long Island, NY. Mark and Evelyn had arrived ahead of us. It was a wonderful reunion. I haven't seen Sherry and David in about a dozen years and that was at a bar- or bat-mitzvah where we hardly had time to really talk. This was a very pleasant reunion of first cousins around a kitchen bar and dining-room table over pizza and pretzels and nuts and fruit and soft drinks. It was quiet and conducive to conversation. I learned that David had had a long career as a dentist, so naturally my saga of the tooth that had plagued me during the trip was a topic of discussion between us. Monte and Mark talked about paranormal phenomena, and Sherry related to Razelle what I had been like as a small child. Mark and Evelyn have traveled extensively all over the country and the world, so Evelyn and I had many travel experiences to compare.

I remarked after we took photos of several family groupings that this was the perfect moment to call cousin Belle Fields in Columbia, SC. Bell is 98 years old and we had stayed overnight in her home on our way north from Florida. Belle has been the family chronologer and repository of family memories and publisher of the Serbin Splatter newsletter for as long as I have cognizance of such things. Belle spoke to each of us in that room in turn. This important moment seemed to me to be the culmination of all the travels Razelle and I had done throughout America. During the time we had available, we had packed in as many visits with as many of Razelle's and my relatives as we could. And Belle was our witness to this. She promised to write something about this in the next edition of the Serbin Splatter. Now I look forward to seeing how she parses it.

We all parted shortly after that. Mark and Evelyn had a distance to drive to get back home to New Jersey. We didn't have far to drive, but it seemed to be a good moment to leave also. Back at Monte and Mindy's I looked at the bags assembled as they were in the "staging area" near the door to the garage. I hoped I hadn't overlooked something. It was a little hard to digest the fact that, except for the flights into and out of London, we were, in essence, truly on the threshold of successfully circumnavigating the globe. I took that thought to bed with me in anticipation of tomorrow.