Then Hope and I went on her fabulous birthday trip to NYC. What a delight Hope is! Here's what we did: on Friday morning we took the train to Manhattan. We got our nails done. We ate sushi (Hope's favorite food). We spent three hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, admiring, discussing, and sketching what we saw. We walked to the Central Park Zoo and visited the sea lions, the seals, the penguins and puffins, and the polar bears.

Then we took the bus across town to our old neighborhood, where we walked around the campus of Patrick's beloved alma mater, then visited our lovely friends on West End Avenue. We had a terrific time catching up, playing, and eating. We slept over, lulled to sleep on an air mattress by the sounds of a clanking radiator and the night buses outside. Saturday morning, we went to Absolute Bagels for a little bit of heaven. After a brief pilgrimage to a Central Park playground, we hit the American Museum of Natural History; we spent most of our time there in the Hall of Oceanic Creatures.

Next was the Urban Inspirations Quilt Show at FIT, hosted by the Empire Quilters' Guild. We met my bionic quilting friend Deb there, and she gave us the grand tour. That's Deb with Hope in front of the Grand Prize-winning quilt. I've never seen quilts as exquisite as these all were. Hope bought some fabric and has already come up with designs for at least two projects. Last, we headed over to Grand Central Station's famous Oyster Bar for lunch. Hope tried a raw oyster from my platter, pronounced it good, then ate three more before consuming her entree of coconut shrimp. We ran to catch the train home and made it just in time.

I know this will be a wonderful memory for me, and I'm pretty sure Hope shares the sentiment. She was saying nearly every five minutes either "Thank you for bringing me here," or "I love New York!" It seems that nearly six years in the country have not taken one of our little native Manhattanites away from her roots, away from the city that is so dear to me. I'm glad.