Mom & Magda

My mom came to visit this weekend, and she brought along my 9 year old sister. Well, 9 and a half, because fractions are important when you're 9 (and a half). We played the tourist game and went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, of which only the latter I would return to. The statue was pretty impressive, I must say, but after an hour of craning my neck to see her big old book and pretty gold torch, I was done. Basically after you've done the audio tour, paid a quarter to look into those telescope things to see Manhattan up close, and taken all the pictures you can imitating Ol' Lady Liberty herself, there's not much to do but stand in line for hours waiting for overpriced, greasy food and then sit down at an outdoor food court where overly tame pigeons and seagulls grapple for the fries in your hand. Bleh.

Ellis Island was pretty damn depressing, I must say, but I'd go back. Around every corner you'd read quotes and hear the voices of the immigrants reminding you that, "We had nothing, I had nothing, there was nothing, I left everything behind." So I could understand how my sister wanted to play her Nintendo DS (for those non-tweens out there, this is the modern day equivalent to a Gameboy) instead of reading about the torturous medical examinations and the screaming babies and the inability to understand anyone around you. But the building is beautiful and the photographs and recordings and artifacts are pretty cool. There's a wall outside with the names of people who came over, and although we knew that no one in our family had paid any funding for our name to be put on, we did in fact find our family name (maybe they're long lost cousins). Then my mother realized that her grandfather had already been in the U.S. for a few years without having gone through Ellis Island, and probably could afford to buy his wife and her sister first class tickets, so basically no one in my family went through Ellis Island anyway. Still, we found "The Geisinger Family" and pretended that we had a historical connection. And I realized I really like the name Geisinger and maybe I'll use it for something down the line, like when I'm not rich and famous but I just need to give some creepy guy a fake name or sign up for something online that I don't want to get spammed with in the future.

We also went to Coney Island on Saturday, which I've done a bunch of times by now, but my sister wanted to ride the Cyclone and my mom wanted to sit on the beach. I got a lovely little tan, and I escaped without going on the dreaded roller coaster. I basically started hyperventilating as we approached it, and it's a damn good thing I didn't go because my mom said it was horrible and bumpy and painful and awful. The next day, she talked to her mother (my grandmother) about the trip, who said that HER mother (my great-grandmother, the Geisinger who probably did not come through Ellis Island) had ridden the thing in the '30s and hated it. So I didn't feel bad about not going on, since my great-grandmother had been conned into riding it when it was new and had a horrible, traumatic experience. Maybe her spirit was conjured up during our Ellis trip and she decided to look out for me for a day and say, "Hell no, don't go." Thanks, Magda. You're a champ.