My daughter Karen Friend has worked in Marketing for Macy’s in Atlanta for many years. She participated in local community service events, but this is the first time she participated in the annual Thanksgiving parade in NYC. Macy’s selected her, based on her audition tape, as one of three employees from Atlanta to ride on the Singing Christmas Tree float. Her office gave her a confetti send-off congratulations party.
I met her in NYC on Monday. On Tuesday I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art while she had singing practice. A noted composer created the anthem the group practiced at home, but this was the first time the singers met each other. They practiced morning, afternoon and evening for three days before the performance. Husband Bruce, son Anthony, nephew Daniel and daughters Ashley and Rose joined us on Wednesday. We explored Times Square and saw a Broadway performance of Dear Evan Hansen during Karen’s afternoon break from practice. We celebrated the three family birthdays of the week with a fantastic Italian dinner.
On Thursday, the two young men set off for their observation post midway along the parade route. The weather forecast predicted the lowest temperatures in many years. Bruce, Ashley, Rose and I set off about 6 AM. We walked to the favored seating wait lines several blocks between our hotel and the store. We inched closer block by block and were quite frozen when we reached the Macy’s store entrance. It opened only for special family ticket-holders as guides pointed the way to hot chocolate and coffee served in a lower level while we waited for security to open the stands.
With our reserve area family tickets, we sat on bleachers in front of the Macy’s store about 20 yards from the main entrance. The giant turkey balloon indicated the parade performance spot by the door. We still had about an hour to wait before the parade arrived and we were frozen. Macy’s doesn’t miss many sales opportunities. I soon sent the girls to purchase lap blankets on sale just inside the store door. I don’t think we could have survived without them even though we dressed for cold weather.
The parade contained everything a parade should have. Floats carried performing musicians, bands marched, stilt walkers strutted, Rockettes kicked, flags twirled, and giant balloon figures hovered over all. It provided enough fun to keep us excited even as we froze our butts to the aluminum stadium seats. Finally the Christmas tree appeared and stopped to sing. Luckily by then, some folks with small children deserted the stands so we moved closer to the performance to hear the singing. Karen is in the bottom row of the tree on the right in the blurry still picture captured from the video. For us, Santa was an anti-climax to the big Singing Christmas Tree.
We met Karen back at the hotel and commiserated with Anthony and Daniel who did not have a building behind them to cut the wind. It took me most of the afternoon to thaw out. Later, we ate a family style restaurant dinner of turkey and fixings—A family first to eat restaurant smoked turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.
Friday the family explored NYC midtown, visiting the NYC Library on the way. We met my sister Karen and her husband Tony for a delicious lunch in Bryant Park. They left in time to return to New Haven CT that night. We traveled back to Georgia over the weekend. Altogether I’d say we had a unique, exciting Thanksgiving celebration.
