A perfect summer in Manhattan slipped past me so quickly that my head is still spinning from all the fun. But now I’m back in Germany, back on Mom-patrol, back on the piano bench at the castle. And back on-line.

“Why oh why would you ever spend the summer in Manhattan,” shriek some of my German neighbors. “Isn’t it hot?” Well, yeah, sometimes, but not as hot as it was in Greece, Spain, and parts of France. I mean, at least we had air conditioners and cocktails with crushed ice, and we didn’t have to flee for our lives in a packed station wagon with burning embers nipping at our tires.

Truth was, we had hot days and rainy days, and even some perfect days, and I was reminded of what it means to deal with the elements while living in New York. You can live in other parts of the world and ignore the weather, but in Manhattan you really do become one with nature, especially if you’re forced to wade through shin-deep puddles while negotiating the staircase into the subway. High heeled sandals don’t help.

Never mind that, my kids had a ball. Every outing was an adventure. After previous holidays in Provence, The Canary Islands, and Austria, we were ready for a city vacation. You really don’t need to make plans in New York, you can just wander outside and see what happens, and the kids loved the spontaneity of it all. Growing up as they do—in a country where every household has a fourteen page color-coded year-long schedule just for garbage disposal—they’ve become accustomed to mapping out every moment of every day. Not so necessary in the Big Apple.

Our holiday got off to a shaky start, which is usually the case with any kind of Goldsby family vacation and typically involves my husband losing a piece or two of his baggage. Last year, immediately following John’s heartfelt speech detailing the importance of guarding one’s luggage, especially in Manhattan, he lost his backpack by leaving it on the backseat of one of those blue van cabs—one that we had taken illegally to get from the Port Authority to our East Side apartment. In the backpack were his wallet, his passport, his tickets for the next nineteen legs of the journey, our house keys, his car keys, and just to make things convenient for a criminal, a parking ticket—with parking space number—for the parking garage at the airport in Germany. He also had a list of all of our secret codes and passwords in the backpack. We were screwed, quite possibly for the rest of our lives.

Like most moms, I’m the designated finder of lost stuff in our household, but this case, I knew, would be a bitch. Sick at my stomach, jetlagged, and secretly glad that he was the one who had forgotten the bag and not me, I went to work, finally tracking down a dispatcher named Chantalle and offering her copious amounts of cash to find the bag for us. Mission accomplished. Our driver, a sweet man named Arturo, showed up three hours later with the bag intact. In return for my diligence, I earned the unfair advantage of being able to say, during any domestic argument for the rest of our lives, ”Well at least I DIDN’T LOSE THE BACKPACK.”

This year, John’s bags were lost by Virgin Atlantic. Our bags arrived in New York, his did not. John dropped us off in New York, then flew on to his teaching job in Louisville the next day without his luggage. A day later, the Virgin still hadn’t tracked down the bags and John was forced to go to Walmart to buy underwear and socks. Oh, the shame of it. A week later and the Virgin still wasn’t putting out. Back to Walmart, this time for a cell phone. Meanwhile, all of his teaching materials were also missing, stuck in those damn suitcases. Ironically, the only thing that made it to Louisville, was a huge box of my new CDs. No underwear, but 100 copies of Songs from the Castle.

At one point I talked to John in Kentucky and he was sitting at a Louisville diner that advertised an all you can eat fried chicken liver buffet, talking on a weird phone and wearing polyester socks. Eventually, the Virgin came through, and he received his luggage just in time for him to fly back to New York to join us. Yes, the airline lost his bags again. At least in New York you can go to Macy’s instead of Walmart.

We lucked our way into many ridiculous and wonderful events, a few of which I will detail in this column:

1. Blue Man Group at the Astor Place Theater. We came up with this idea while searching for a show that would appeal to my kids (ages 14 and 11) and the younger child of my pal Robin Spielberg. What an evening. By the end of the show I was standing on my seat and screaming I LOVE YOU BLUE MAN. I acted like an eight year old, something I last did when I was five or six. Expensive tickets, but major fun.

2. The little Equity theater production at Ellis Island, which stars 3 and a half actors who dress up in about 400 ethnic costumes. Well done, and it made a huge impression on my kids. On the way out of the theater my son suggested that the huge pile of antique suitcases on display in the registration hall might contain his father’s lost luggage.

3. A picnic under a big tree in the park next to the Statue of Liberty. My dad was with us. Drinking frozen lemonade with my father and kids on that beautiful and breezy day filled me with gratitude and love for the generation before me, and the generation after.

4. Waiting in line at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble with 5,000 people —one of whom was dressed as Mad Eye Moody—to get first crack at the new Harry Potter book at midnight. When we got to the front door of the store, they took us in with a group of ten other eager customers and made us run to the cash registers. Employees lined the aisles and cheered for us as we copped our books. It was like crossing the finish line at the NY Marathon.

5. Salsa night at Midsummer Night’s Swing at Lincoln Center. 10,000 people dancing under the stars. Fat people, skinny people, gay, straight, old, young, every color imaginable. It made me feel hopeful for the world, that somehow, if we could all just learn to dance together, everything would be okay.

6. Running into a hundred extras on a lunch break from a film set, all of them dressed as hookers. “Wow,” said my daughter. “Look at all the fancy clothes! They must be coming from a really fun party.”

7. Talking to Jack the fisherman at the Haarlam Meer, the little lake at the north end of Central Park, where you can borrow bamboo fishing poles for free. Jack is a retired sanitation worker who also is a rock drummer. And he knows a lot about fish.

8. Watching my kids climb up and down those big black rocks in the park. Watching them race to the swings, and wondering if my 14 year old son will still be doing this in a year.

9. Hanging out at Steinway Hall with Betsy Hirsch and listening to my daughter play the Steinway D in the Rotunda and my son play Cantaloupe Island on a piano signed by Herbie Hancock.

10. Going to Long Beach with our friend Pam. That is one gorgeous beach, and it only takes an hour on the LIRR. Of course you do have to brave the sticky floors of Penn Station to get there, but it’s well worth it. Just don’t wear flip-flops and stay away from Dunkin’ Donuts. Trust me on this.

11. Watching the Macy’s 4th of July fireworks from Emilio and Carol’s perch on the East River.

12. Transporting my mom—with her broken foot in a Frankenstein boot—from 96th Street down to Midtown to see Curtains, the Broadway show. This involved a bus ride, a mad dash into the middle of traffic to hail two cabs, a drive downtown that felt like something out of a James Bond movie, a dash across 46th Street on foot, and finally, one of those last minute dramatic entrances into the theater just as the overture was starting.

13. Attending the METS game at Shea with our friends from Germany. Europeans do not understand baseball, but they understand fun and beer and how to cheer at the top of one’s lungs when a cute little guy in a cap hits a tiny ball with a stick and it flies out of the park. The first two batters for the Mets hit homeruns that night and it was difficult to explain that this usually does not happen. In fact, most of the rules were tricky to explain. That whole stealing home thing, for instance. Or a double play. Or sliding into second. “And where exactly is this second base?” said my pal Mathias, pointing to right field.

14. Cha-cha and Salsa lessons for kids outside at Lincoln Center, with a live band and a dance instructor from one of the dance schools on Broadway. It was boiling hot on the day we went, but the kids had a blast, and I would venture to say that they are now the only adolescents in Germany who do a proper Rhumba.

15. Whole Foods at the Time Warner Center. I love the Time Warner Center. I love the glass, the architectural lines of the building, the art, the view of Columbus Circle and the Park. And if I still lived in NYC I would probably spend every dollar I earned in the take-out food department of Whole Foods.

16. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. This year we crossed at dusk, just as the lights were coming on, and the city looked almost effervescent—sparkling and alive and full of promise.

17. Fake chicken. Most take-out Chinese menus have Zen sections on them where they offer all kinds of tofu items disguised as things one might actually enjoy eating. My favorite was the fake chicken, but my daughter (who is a vegetarian) enjoyed the fake pork. Even my carnivore son admitted that the fake beef was pretty tasty.

18. Bagels. We went out most mornings for fresh bagels. In the America versus Europe Food Fight, New York bagels are the only items in the bread category that consistently take the gold medal. Even with fake cream cheese.

19. The Metro Card. We bought month-long passes and actually managed to hold onto them for the entire trip. I remember the days of subway tokens, and the way those nasty little plastic 10-packs would burst open and send me scurrying just long enough to miss my train. The Metro Card is one of the world’s finest inventions.

That’s a brief history of our summer vacation. The city is cleaner and safer than when we used to live there, but it still has a grimy energy to it, a jagged edge, that takes the fuzziness out of life and throws my energy into sharp focus. I returned to our little house in the woods, grateful for the peace and quiet, but thankful for the firm kick in the pants the city had given me. Time to get back to work.

It is after all, September.

Robin Goldsby is the author of PIANO GIRL: A Memoir