Yesterday we started our day at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Although the mechanics of waiting in line and going through security were frustrating and long, taking the ferry across the harbor gave us a chance to shed the frustration and turn our attention to the beauty and optimism of this incredible monument to central ideals of America.

It was a beautiful, sunny, cold morning with porcelain blue skies. Last week the kids had read a few books about the Statue of Liberty with my dad, so they were the recent experts and pointed out various details to us. They seemed particularly interested her broken chains and the way she is striding forward. We were all interested in the incredible feat of design and engineering that went into crafting her and supporting her.

We climbed up to the top of the pedestal for views of Manhattan and a close up view of the interior structure. We also really enjoyed the museum within the pedestal.

Then we took the ferry over to Ellis Island where we grabbed a quick snack and took a targeted cruise through the exhibit halls. The architecture of those buildings is astounding – luminescent and solemn simultaneously. It’s easy to imagine the excitement and worry of all the tumult of people who passed through those halls. We looked at the manifest of one of the shops and suddenly, just the moment of seeing all those names and hometowns and intentions numerated over pages and pages of careful handwriting helped to understand the enormity of humanity represented there.

I have my own family who passed through those doors at some point or another. On another day I might want to spend a little more time looking for traces of them. But for us yesterday, we had all reached the end of our ‘museum’ capacity, so we took the ferry back to Battery Park and let the kids run around a playground for a while.

Since we were so close, we decided to go to the National September 11th Memorial. It’s the first time any of us have been back to New York City since it’s been open. The kids and I have read about it for their schoolwork, but I really wanted to experience it in person.

We were tired and slightly bedraggled by the time we got there, but the plaza was such an emotional landscape. The kids stood at the edge of the reflecting pools and tried to process everything they represented. Tim and I got lost in our own memories of that day and the way the whole world seemed to reshape itself afterwards. We found the Survivor Tree and contemplated the tenacity that it would take to survive the destruction of the day. I learned that they collect seeds from the Survivor Tree every spring. They share them with communities that have experienced their own traumas as a symbol of the growth and tenacity and hope that could help the community navigate out of dark times.

We passed through the Occulus Transportation Hub, which was designed by a favorite architect of ours, Saniago Calatrava. The building is transcendent, luminous. I read an interview with Clatrava where he said he was inspired by the great civic architecture of the city: Grand Central Station, the Brooklyn Bridge, Penn Station and the New York Public Library. The occulus that the building is named for not only provides the daily ethereal lighting, but it also provides a ‘Way of Light’ every year on September 11th at 10:28 AM. The illuminated path is meant to symbolize the end of the tragedy and the beginning of reconstruction.

By this time, the kids had had enough gawking and gaping so we made our way to the relocated FAO Schwartz. It seemed diminished to me, but a couple stuffies later, the kids seemed it the ‘best day ever’, so I’ll consider it a success. After that a quick, delicious dim sum dinner, stroll back through Times Square at night and it was time to pour ourselves into bed and get ready for the next day…