Columbus Day Weekend

Tomorrow night Joshua and I and my parents will fly to New York to spend the three-day holiday weekend with my older brother and his family. My brother from Denver will join us in New York.

We are all very excited, because none of us has seen my older brother and his family since the first week of July.

Most of the weekend will be spent visiting and playing with my nephew, who will be two years old very soon. It is hard for me to believe that he is almost two years old. To me, it seems like he was born only a few months ago.

On Saturday night, Josh and my mother and I plan to attend a performance of “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “I Pagliacci” at New York City Opera. Neither my father nor my sister-in-law is interested in attending this double dose of melodrama, but I enjoy a little Verismo now and again, and so does my mother. We have very little opportunity to hear Cilea or Giordano or Leoncavallo or Mascagni or Ponchielli in Minneapolis. Josh will enjoy the hokum, too, I believe.

My brothers and Josh and I are thinking of visiting the Statue Of Liberty and Ellis Island on Sunday morning. As unlikely as it seems, none of us has ever been out to either Liberty Island or Ellis Island. This should be the perfect time of year for us at long last to make the trip. The summer crowds will have departed and the weather should be beautiful. If we go ahead with our plans, we will take the first ferry of the morning so that we can visit both attractions at leisure and still be able to get back to my brother’s place in time for a late lunch.

This weekend, we will also figure out our Thanksgiving and Christmas plans.

It will be lots of fun.