2002-01-05 - 8:40 p.m.

She came in early this morning, and I was a bit hungover and rushing so I'd be ready. We went to the Vill@ge Den for breakfast, then to Ground Zero. I've been before, and still the standing around like it's a tourist site doesn't sit right with me. My Mom really wanted to get on the viewing platform (wait: 4 fricking hours) but we settled for walking around the perimeter, stopping at the memorial still intact at St. P@ul's. Then we went to September 11 Photo Project at a gallery on Wooster Street.

It's an ever-evolving exhibitiion of people's personal photographs and notes, and it's unbelievably overwhelming. One photo shows a National Guardsman standing on the street in fatigues. A little behind him, but visible in the photo, is an ad for some HBO movie with only the tag line showing: Ordinary men, asked to do extraordinary things. There was so many like that, where the subject of the photo was juxtaposed with something that at the time seemed random, but is now bleakly ironic. One showed a woman, as the towers were coming down, her face contorted into a mask of fear and sorrow, tears streaming down her face, her mouth frozen open in a soundless scream. And on a flyer taped to the lightpost she was standing next to, were the boldface words 'Accept extermination'. Freaky.

Then we went to one of the final showings of the F@ntasticks at the Sullivan Street The@tre. It's closing after 41 years, and the tickets were a Christmas gift for my Mom. I had no clue what it was about going in, and no expectations at all, so I thought it was ok. Then dinner at Lup@, a little shopping at Balducci's, and she headed back to NJ.

I have mentioned my Mom's June Cleaverness before. And, as it is my role, I try to help her expand her horizons. Not against her will, mind you. She loves the life I'm living, although I know there is a lot about it she doesn't understand. But since I've been living here, my sheltered Mom has sat around the piano singing show tunes with a roomful of 50 something gay men, had dinner across the dining room from a pair of transvestites, been offered illicit drugs in the park, and witnessed the crackwhore action at his peak. And bless her heart, she's a sport about it all. She's openminded, just sheltered. But tonight, at Lup@, we sat next to a couple of lesbians, around her age. And we all started talking, about our food and the show we'd seen, just casual small talk, and then we returned to our meals. And after we had coffee and were walking down the street, she said, "Those women at the restaurant." And I said, yeah? And she said, "They were a couple, weren't they?" And I laughed and said, "Yes. How did you know?" She replied, " I don't know. They just seemed like a couple." And I stopped and said, YAY, Mom! This is a woman that once stood over a passed out junkie lying on the grass and yelled at me, " We should call someone! What if he's DEAD?" at the top of her lungs in Washington Square. She's come a long way, baby.

And now I'm going to have a cup of coffee and a shower, and get my ass back out. Back tomorrow.

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