My grandma was in town this week on one of her occasional visits to see my 2-year-old cousin in White Plains. She and my uncle took the train down to Bushwick this Friday to see the house and have dinner at — where else do people take their family? — Northeast Kingdom. Moron that I am, I forgot she is recovering from screwing up her knee when she was in Italy a few months ago, and arranged to meet them at the Morgan stop and just walk them back to the house. Took longer than I realized: “You forget, your grandmother is old now,” she admonished. “Bullshit,” I responded with indignation.

Of course we live upstairs — my uncle frowned as she made her way up them. It really only took about 30 seconds, but she was definitely “differently abled.” They poked around the apartment for a minute — “you got a loooot o’ work to do here,” says Grammy — and we plopped down on the couch while Luis called Bushwick Car Service to take us to the restaurant. They always say 5 minutes, but within 60 seconds, the car was honking and Grammy hobbled her way back down the stairs.

Like everyone who goes in, they loved NEK. My uncle, involved in various aspects of the restaurant business his whole life, was impressed. He asked whether we feel protected here; the answer was of course “no,” but neither do we feel threatened. As it seems to be in New York, my grandmother, a native of the Bronx who grew up in Jackson Heights, had absolutely no bearings in Brooklyn, as if it were a whole other country. “Ridgewood is two blocks that way,” I said, and pointed out the window across Wyckoff. “Oh, it’s right there?” I went into a story about how my doctor is in Ridgewood and one day I went, they wrote my name down and said “All the Italians here today!” She replied, as if to contradict me, “Ridgewood used to be all German.” Yep.

We walked them to the Starr Street entrance to the L and said our goodbyes. “You did good, honey,” she said, and gave me a kiss. As they eased down the steps, I said, “you know how to get back?” Uncle Keith fake whined “oh, we’ll manage, don’t worry about us.” We all laughed as they turned the corner into the bowels of the station.