Saturday in New York

New York City. Saturday morning. Back "home".

Thirty years ago, I lived here.

Standing between the tail fins of the Continental jets is the Empire State Building, bright against this morning's clear sky. A Hamas-launched rocket aimed for six blocks directly behind it, from this angle, would have landed in the neighborhood of my old apartment on E. 40th St. An Israeli-fired rocket could likely pinpoint which corner of a room in the place it would land. Fortunately, no conflict in Manhattan going on today.

Thirty years ago to this month, I was here, boarding a plane to fly to Rome. The plan was to spend a week or so there, then head off to Tel Aviv, and then Cairo. A two-week mid-winter adventure that was never completed.

I wanted to see Italy and I wanted to see the Middle East, and figured I could do it in a handful of free days I had. In those days as a "stopping-out" young college student, I had a job with the airlines and hopped on planes like many people hop on buses. It was easy, accessible, and great entertainment, fueled with boundless youthful energy.

Rome was wonderful and historic. I spent one of the last nights sitting at a cafe on the Via Veneto with a few other college students from Australia, and we talked about our lives and travels and all the great ideas that people that age have in abundance.

Later that night getting back in my hotel on the Via Tritone, youthful energy departed as the spectre of death took its place. Later, I'd admit that was a gross-exaggeration, but at the time, I was doubting I would make it through the night. Food poisoning, flu, leftover remnant of the plague -- I never knew exactly what I was visited with. But if you have ever been away from home and your own familiar, comfortable bed when you are taken ill, you perhaps can identify with how symptoms can be greatly magnified, the misery deeply increased. The next day, Yvonne Korn, one of the college friends from Melbourne stopped by since we had made plans the night before to visit the Vatican Museums. It obviously wasn't going to happen, but before she left she sympathetically brought back a lemon ice gelato that provided a few minutes of reprieve before the plague resumed its grip. That evening, I dropped my plans for the Middle East and got myself on the next TWA flight home the following morning. Two days later in New York, I was on the road to recovery. But I had missed out on seeing Jerusalem, the sea of Galilee, and any pyramids.

As the years passed, I wondered if I would ever get the chance to go back.

Thirty years later, sitting in New York waiting for a 4:00 flight, and I have the answer.