As much as I love New York, which I really do, one of the bad side effects of living here is that I only get to see my family once a year, when I go to Brazil for the holidays. Unlike most people my age (and probably because I live thousands of miles apart from them), I really like my family, and relish spending time with them. On rare occasions, it is them who come visit me—two of my sisters came in 2016, and my parents came for my MFA graduation in 2017 and then again the year after. They were gonna visit in May of 2020, but you know how that story ends; one of the worst parts of the pandemic was being cut off from them for almost two years due to a toxic combination of travel restrictions and my visa expiration date.
So I was quite surprised and excited when my parents announced, kinda out of the blue, that they were going to come see me in the summer, in spite of me having been to Brazil twice this year already. I was also a little stressed, because they were planning to stay longer than before (two weeks instead of the usual one) and I worried about keeping them entertained the whole time. But then my mom said: “please don’t plan anything, we don’t wanna be running around” and I took it to heart, killing time before their arrival by getting COVID and workshopping a play at the same time. I barely remembered they were coming, to be honest, until they were here. By then I was COVID-free, the workshop was over, and I had a week off of work, so I had time to really experience their visit, which I am reviewing here because honestly there’s nothing else I’m interested in talking about at the moment.
Like a next-gen phone or a movie sequel, this visit had the challenge of being judged against its predecessors—which, as I remember them, went quite well. The first one was a little manic, as NYU events dominated part of it—though I flat out refused to spend a scalding-hot day at Yankee Stadium, so we skipped that one (Dr. Taylor Swift was not the speaker that year). The second one I can’t quite remember, though I believe it’s the one when we went to the 9/11 memorial and then discovered a somewhat hidden Shake Shack nearby that, unlike most Shake Shacks, was not insanely crowded. (Surprise—I love Shake Shack! So does my dad, after that discovery.) It was also a little manic, though, because one of my sisters was having one of her babies and needed my mom to buy a bunch of stuff for it. We even took a bus to New Jersey so my mom could go to Walmart (this had nothing to do with the baby, though, my mom just wanted to go to Walmart). Wild times.
The third visit was different from the start: on previous trips, my parents have stayed in Midtown, whereas now they chose the Financial District. Their room was very nice, with a gorgeous view of the World Trade Center, but as days passed it slowly started to look like a refugee camp—towels hanging on the television, knots of charging cords cluttering the desk/dining table, garbage bags outside the door. I realize that makes my parents sound like slobs, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The real issue is that a) my mom is an undiagnosed hoarder and my dad enables her and b) as they get older, the amount of things they need just to function increases.
Case in point: my dad bought disposable cutlery at Target so they wouldn’t use the hotel’s silverware, because he didn’t want to do dishes every day. My mom, of course, not only washed the disposable cutlery anyway instead of throwing it out, she started getting MORE CUTLERY from the buffet at the nearby Whole Foods. There was so much cutlery in their room’s kitchen cabinet. This did not prevent my mom from asking the staff for kitchen knives so we could cut stuff (the disposable knives are too dull). At one point the hotel even sent them a butcher knife, which I wanted to give back and my mom wanted to keep just in case (not clear what the case would be—self-defense?)
We had daily fights about how overstuffed the minifridge and pantry were, with them saying that things were about to run out and me saying they couldn’t possibly need so many coffee pods (my mom argued that I could use them when they were gone in spite of me not having a Keurig—“just cut them open”). They ended up leaving with me:
Half a bottle of orange juice
A mostly full jar of jam
Half a box of granola
A mostly full bottle of caramel sauce
A mostly full tub of butter
A six-pack of Coke
A box of stale pastries
Half a gallon of milk
I refused to take the cutlery, to their chagrin.
This visit firmly established itself right off the bat as The Chill Visit™. There were no graduations or shopping lists to keep us on schedule. There was no schedule! Had my aunt (the one who lives in the U.S.) joined us like she did the last two times, she might’ve wanted to tourist up the trip with stuff like tickets to Phantom—but she didn’t come, and the three of us were too lazy and unmotivated to procure anything like that. Most days, I just spent the morning at home doing whatever needed to be done here, and then took the train to their hotel to spend the rest of the day with them.
We usually walked around the city, either aimlessly or going to Duane Reade—my mom is obsessed with mid-sized retail drugstores. They exist in Brazil too, so it’s not the novelty of it… I can’t explain it. But we visited several Duane Reades, Walgreens, and CVSs, sometimes more than once (“maybe they’ve restocked”). On those walks, I did discover parts of New York I had never been to, such as Battery Park City, which is gorgeous. I love the fact that I’ve lived here for seven years and there’s still so much to see. I also discovered they sell a lot more stuff at Duane Reade than you would think—even bananas! Who buys a banana at Duane Reade?? (My mom, of course).
Back to the hotel, we’d usually split into two camps. My dad and I would make sandwiches and watch a 90s movie (The Fifth Element, The Sixth Day—cardinal numbers were all the rage back then) that I would shit on and my dad would defend—the notable exception being The Devil Wears Prada, which I provided running commentary on both as a connoisseur and as someone who was in the middle of reading the latest Anna Wintour bio and could therefore provide insight into which parts were true to Wintour’s life. My mom, for her part, would eat an apple while cozying up under a towel (for some reason she did not request a blanket alongside the butcher knife) and watch episodes of the Chicago TV universe (Med, Fire, PD, etcetera).
That makes it sound like the two camps didn’t interact, which was not the case; my mom suffers from a rare syndrome that renders her unable to use her phone when I’m around, constantly asking me, for example, to Google stuff I am sure she can Google herself. In this instance, she refused to learn how to use the Hulu app or cast it to the the hotel’s TV. My dad and I would not only have to set it up for her, we had to stand by her side through the beginning of the episode so she could say whether she had watched it or not, as she also refused to learn how to skip to the next one. I tried to empower her by telling her “you’ve come a long way, baby,” but she said that the long way had tired her, and her empowerment now came from making us do stuff for her.
Overall, my review of my parent’s third visit is: it was wonderful. Who knew doing almost nothing was the best way to spend time together? Lesson to everyone working on third movies: the characters are already established enough that you don’t need to worry too much about plot—just let them do their thing.
If you need a score, I’d give it an 8/10. I’m docking two points because:
In spite of me saying repeatedly that I wanted to take them to Rockaway beach (my fave), my dad very quickly weaseled out of it, and then my mom followed suit a few days later. I still haven’t been to Rockaway this summer, and if it ends without me having gone at least once, I’ll consider it ruined.
Of all the shit they dumped on me before leaving, the one thing I had actually asked for (medium-sized trash bags) they forgot.
Actually, let me correct and say 9/10, because my parents met Chester, which for a while looked like it wasn’t going to happen (Brooklyn is a bridge too far for them—literally) but ended up having to in order for them to come to my house to dump all the aforementioned shit (including my vacuum cleaner, which my mom borrowed so she could vacuum the hotel room carpet every day as opposed to the every couple of days that the hotel staff would do it).
My parents low-key disapprove of my relationship with Chester because I am an unmarried cat parent, but they still fell prey to his charms. It didn’t surprise me; while I am sure every pet owner thinks this, I feel fairly confident Chester is the best cat in the world and quite possibly the best pet anyone has ever had. That doesn’t mean he’s not a pain in my balls a lot of the time, but he is just unbelievably cute, and can melt even the most judgemental parent’s heart. My dad joshed around with him, and my mom, while refusing to let him rub himself all over her (must be nice), was charmed and even said goodbye to him before leaving. That this was also when we said our farewells made it bittersweet.
It always makes me sad when they leave. It’s the unsolvable problem of my life: the family I love lives very far away from the city I love. It makes it hard to remember these visits with joy, because now I’m just bummed they’re gone. It’s always different from when I go back, because in Brazil they’re usually shut-ins, but being in New York forces them out (even if it is to walk to a Duane Reade). I feel like I get a different side of them here, and for that I’m extra grateful.
Stay tuned for a review of the fourth visit next year (fingers crossed)! Will I one day go back to recommending things that you can actually experience? Who knows!