Reminiscing at Trump's

I left Clift’s apartment at 7:15 this morning, just like yesterday. There’s big-time construction going on outside his windows with men yelling incessantly at each other. Just glad I have great motivation for wanting to get up and going early since there’s so much territory to cover.

With my 7-day unlimited fare MTA pass, I decided to hop on the 6 train to the Upper East Side and then walk down to 57 and 5th before having my coffee inside one of my favorite Starbucks on the second floor of the Trump Plaza. The balcony seats overlook the bustling lobby as well as 5th Avenue and the famous Crown Building across the street with its ornate gold façade.

Crossing Park Avenue, I looked south at the MetLife Building, as I always used to do, and thought of Oscar Woodall. Being in NYC forever reminds me of him, not just because he was such a successful insurance man here, but because he’s the one who, through frequent and sometimes lengthy phone conversations, kept me going at a time (after I quit my job) when I didn’t have ANY connection with any other Grace believer and didn’t have access to any current studies, radio shows, etc. No one had ever clued me in about PalTalk!

So many visits to this particular Starbucks were spent sitting by myself reading books about the Bible, always listening to Alexander Scourby on the walks over and back. Today so far I’ve listened to I and II Kings on my same old Walkman I had when I lived here.

After I finish up here, I will walk to my park bench at the duck pond of the front yard of Central Park across the street from The Plaza and next to where the horses are lined up for carriage rides.

I call it my bench because it has a plaque with an engraved caricature of a blonde woman and says “For Lisa.” The woman actually kind of looks like me! I happened upon this bench one afternoon shortly after my dad died (Oct. 2001) and I was so filled with grief that I had called in sick from work to just wander around the city.

Yesterday, visiting my old address at 48th and 10th, I was filled with sentimentality, as well as grief. I passed the neighborhood fire station where my sister struck up a conversation with the firemen and got them to let my niece sit in the front of a truck with a fireman’s hat on as my sister took pictures.

Next door to my apartment is the old Salvation Army rehab center where my sister actually dropped in once on a very rainy evening, thinking they’d be willing to put her and her daughter up for the night after the two of us had a big blow-out argument.

On the same stretch of sidewalk only a block up from the fire station is where I, in January of 2002, slid on black ice as I was jogging after a snowstorm and majorly broke my wrist, requiring surgery and forcing me to cancel a much-anticipated business trip to London.

It was during my whole week home from work after the surgery, where I had to really baby my wrist and was in a lot of pain, that I first read Keith Blades’ “Satan and His Plan of Evil.” I remember how I was forever changed by that—it was like the skies opened!

So, so, so many memories here in this city, both good and bad. So many people I miss from here, especially the friends (and family) who have since died. It can be so lonely, especially when you don’t have a home to go home to and you know you’re just a weekend visitor with a lot of history in a place that, as you walk all the familiar streets by yourself, is only for you and the Lord to remember and process.

Last night, after treating my friend Clift to Japanese food in East Village, which was flooded with young people like I’ve never witnessed before, we decided to call a mutual friend who now lives in Minneapolis.

She asked me if I was still “re-writing the Bible.” I told her I was still working on my book. Hearing this in the background, Clift started laughing, and yelled for Joanie to hear over her end of the phone, “Lisa, FINISH that G-D book on the Bible already, would you!”