Kaonashi Ga Suki

The next day was very low key. We were to visit my boyfriend’s grandma, who lives in a senior home in some New Jersey suburb. But before seeing her, my bf’s parents knew of my desire to see the Statue of Liberty and decided we take a quick little detour.

Only it wasn’t as quick as we thought.

Since we didn’t have much time, and since we were headed for NJ, my bf’s dad figured we can see the Statue from the New Jersey side. So off we went on the Turnpike. Now, I have no idea what a turnpike is exactly, but it seemed expensive. Being a California resident, I can’t understand why some highways require paying a toll. What’s the point? It didn’t make sense to me.

It took a while to leave Manhattan, but eventually we made it and got on the Turnpike. We drove for what seemed like a long time. Too long. We realized we had overshot the Statue. We turned around and tried again. This time we got it right and found our way to Liberty Park.

Seeing the Statue of Liberty was pretty cool, even though I technically only got to see its back and some of its side. It really is a deep pistachio green color, like I’ve seen on TV. But like I said, we didn’t have a lot of time and it was nice of my bf’s parents to take this little detour for me. Next time though, I’d like to see it from the front as well.

We then headed to the grandma’s place. The woman is like, 90 years old or something and unfortunately is both kind of deaf and blind, not to mention senile. She must have asked about 10 times over the span of 3 hours what day it was. I felt really sorry for her. The last time I saw her was in 1998, during my bf’s graduation from UCLA. She and her husband were really nice and kept trying to feed me cheese at the cocktail reception thing. The husband had passed away recently and now she was alone in this place. Fortunately her two sons (my bf’s dad and his uncle) visit her a lot, and the other son and his wife lives only a mile away.

I also felt kind of sorry for my bf’s mom, who had to repeat everything that she said to her. She also had to repeat anything anyone else had said in the room because the grandma would be like, “WHO IS THAT? WHAT’S HE SAYING?” She also had a digital watch that chirped the time every ten minutes. Not only was it strange that she would need to know the time every ten minutes, but it was set at an unorthodox time. “The time is 4:36 PM” it would say.

We hung out with her for a few hours, looked through old pictures and talked to her. I didn’t really say anything so since I think she forgot I was in the room. After all, she couldn’t see me.

We all then met up with my bf’s uncle and aunt for dinner- Italian food. Food was pretty good.

Finally we headed back to Manhattan. My bf suggested that I experience being at the top of the Chrysler Building, so we figured we could try seeing it. Can you believe that the Chrysler Building is open till 11 pm? The souvenir shops are closed, but they let people at the top till 11. The cashier warned us that it was quite cloudy, so there was zero visibility. Still, we decided to risk it. We paid our 16$ and went up the really fast elevators, allll the way to the 82nd floor.

Now, the thing is that I’m afraid of heights so admittedly I was kind of reluctant to do this, but at the same time I thought it’d be stupid not to if I had the chance. We got to the top, and man was it cold. And kinda creepy but cool at the same time. The very top of the Chrysler Building has this cool antenna thing which was lit with a blue green light. I started thinking of Ghostbusters for some reason. I then looked down…and saw clouds. “Holy shit, I’m so high up that I see clouds below me!” I thought.

Sure enough, I couldn’t really make out anything below, since there was a cloud cover. I looked ahead of me and couldn’t see anything either, just darkness. However, after several minutes, the cloud cover started to move, and lo and behold- I saw the streets. I saw teeny yellow taxis speeding down the street. I saw billboards and tops of buildings. I even saw some sort of harbor, and I think New Jersey is across from it. I also saw that several floors below us the Chrysler Building casted a greenish glow. It added to the creepy but cool feeling.

We stayed there for about a half hour, and actually were able to take some decent photos. After we’d had our fill, we took the elevators back down and went back to the hotel.