I Fell in Love Last Wednesday

First there was the mid-1980s fascination with the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry, then the learning about Boston in the late 1980s because the members of New Kids on the Block all hail from there and so much was written about their hometown in the articles I tacked to my walls and pasted into scrapbooks in junior high, and then my crush on fictional former-Boston-Red Sox-pitcher-turned-"Cheers"-bartender Sam Malone, and on and on over the years, but last week, I finally got to visit for the first time what I've always somehow known would someday become my beloved Boston, and I've been so giddy ever since, it almost feels like I've fallen in love with a person and not a place.  Seconds after landing in Boston and walking from the plane into the terminal, I saw the heart below and knew that any trip that began this way would be as beautiful as I expecting, and I was right.

As soon as I had learned this January that the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia (Lisa, don't read past the synopsis or it'll be ruined for you) was going to be performed in Boston this spring, I booked a flight--I studied this play in college in the fall of 1997 and have wanted to see a production of it ever since--and emailed Lisa and Cheryl to see if it would be possible for them to make the trip up from their homes a few hours away for a visit.   "That will be great!" wrote back Lisa.  "That would be wonderful to meet you in person!!!" wrote Cheryl.   :)  Minutes after running into these guys--

 --outside my subway stop at Boston's Old State House Wednesday, then, I found myself hugging Lisa and Cheryl and telling them that having had this trip to look forward to this spring had made the last few months of winter so much easier. 

I love that picture.  ♥  We had lunch in the North End, where I chose the menu's hardest thing to eat while trying to carry on a conversation meatball sandwich, toured Paul Revere's house, walked around Faneuil Hall and the Harbor--the salt water!  the sea gulls!--found desserts (and my first tiramisu and first cannoli, neither of which thrilled me but I has happy to have saved them for Boston), admired the architecture--ahhhhhh, the architecture!--and explored the neighborhood. 

After Lisa and Cheryl headed back to Haymarket Station to catch their train around 3:30 that afternoon, I walked--and I mean walked, until about 6:30 pm, only stopping to take a few pictures, since I became spectacularly--but blissfully--turned-around on my walk to my hotel.  It was the prettiest walk.  I don't know if the city workers were just out in full-force during my visit or if the wind blew it away right before I turned every corner, but the only litter I ever saw on the ground there was cigarette butts and hardened gum.  It was so CLEAN, I was so impressed.  I pick up more trash in a fifteen-minute walk here in my own city than I saw in Boston in two and a half days.  

Gorgeous. 

A friend from high school has completed the Boston Marathon three times so far--Go, Michelle!--so finally seeing Boylston Street, the last leg of the race, and imagining her joy upon reaching its finish line each time, made that part of my visit even sweeter.  

Boston, like any new love--or any love worth its salt, I suppose--makes me want to be an even better version of myself:  Smarter and stronger and more athletic and kinder and more helpful to tourists here at home.  I came back wanting to be a better woman, and maybe it is the effect of the city or maybe it is more "me," but I've lived in New York City, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and outside Milwaukee and didn't walk away from any of those places as inspired as I felt while in Boston.  I connected with something in this place, and I'm still on a high from it.  

A sweet moment from inside Fenway Park Thursday:  Before the game began, a guy probably my younger brother's age in the next section over held the seat beside him steady so his maybe-four-year-old son could climb up onto it.  Once they got settled, an older man leaned forward and said to the young dad--all in endearing stereotypical Boston accent--"If this is yuh son's fuhst time heeuh and he can't see past that bah, I'll switch seats with him so he can see bettuh."  The dad thanked him but declined his kind offer, since his son was too young to pay much attention to the game anyway and likely wouldn't care at all about the obstructed view the "bah" (i.e. bar [i.e. one of the poles that support the upper-deck seats above our grandstand section seats]) caused.  The kindness, though!  ♥

And another sweet Fenway Park moment that continues to make me laugh:  Two guys my age or a little older who were sitting together were talking, and one of them suddenly said to the other, "Don't cuss here."  :)  Except it sounded like "Don't cuss heeuh," making it even more charming.  :)  Love!  

And as I reported to my parents and brothers immediately upon checking in with them: Everyone was SO over-the-top nice and helpful while I was there.  I encountered this kind of I'll-give-up-my-seat-for-your-kid/Don't-cuss-here goodness so many times in my two days there.  I asked someone on Beacon Street the quickest way to such-and-such, and she not only answered, but also pulled out her phone, looked up the destination on a map, then--over my thanks and protests, since she'd helped so much already--patiently read me street-by-street directions too.  Another woman took the extra time to explain which local bus was heading toward my destination and how often it would pass along a certain street, and she pointed out the nearest stop for it too.  When I called the theater needing to switch something with my ticket-order for the play, I told the man on the phone I had my card ready and could read off the numbers to pay the fee as soon as he was ready, and he laughed and waived the fee, saying, "I'm not charging you five dollars after you traveled six-hundred miles to see this."  My soft-spoken cab driver kindly answered a bunch of my questions about Fenway Park on the way back to the airport at the end of my visit.  So many kindnesses.  And Cheryl gifted me with a rainbow-striped pen for my writing.  :)  And Lisa paid my admission to the Paul Revere House.  :)  It felt like the entire city--all the people in it, all the pretty and well-kept grounds, and even the perfect weather--knew what this trip meant to me and sweetly conspired to make my visit as beautiful as possible.  

And just when one would think I couldn't be more charmed--and before the Red Sox game had even begun Thursday afternoon--the sweet "Cheers" theme song was played in the stadium, leading me to text my younger brother and simultaneously catch it on video. 

Love!  ♥

And the play was beautiful, and I cried watching it as I do while reading it.  I eventually mailed my former English professor a postcard from the airport to let him know I'd finally seen it.  :)

Much too soon, I was again flying over ocean and islands on my way home.  I don't know what part Boston is destined to play in my life, but it's captured my heart.  I'd only been home about twenty-six hours before I'd booked a flight to return this fall.  ♥  (Most of this trip's budget was still unspent when I got home and thus went to the start of visit #2's.)  Until October, Boston, my love! 

♥

With Lisa and Cheryl in Boston Wednesday

Until I have time to write a proper love letter to Boston, let me just say how sweet it was to meet Lisa and Cheryl there this week.  After years of reading each other's blogs and emails and exchanging Christmas cards and handmade gloves and fudge and care packages, to meet "for real" and enjoy lunch, dessert(s), and a walk around a beautiful city together was such fun.  ♥

Two Salads

                         (my first found hearts in awhile)

Neighbors

Last week at this time, I was delighted to find the above postcard in the day's mail:  The stranger I'd briefly talked with on a walk in February to whom I'd sent a surprise Valentine had written back.  The postcard's front was one of Monet's dreamy water lily paintings.  The note on the back mentions that, "[His] water lilies also resemble hearts."  Yes.  The postcard had made my day anyway, but that observation continues to tickle me.  How sweet this world can be.   

♥

Tuesday's Walk

Happy Easter

Daisy-Henriette :)

One of the highlights of watching the finale of "Downton Abbey" yesterday was being surprised to see Daisy transformed into my grandmother's 1927 high-school-graduation portrait-self.  Even their dresses were so similar.  I started crying as soon as I saw dolled-up Daisy after Anna styled her new haircut. 

For Grandma's high school graduation present, her older brother treated her to a trip to stay with him and his wife in Detroit.  Below is Grandma on that trip, looking like she could be visiting "Downton's" Mary and Henry at the race track. 

Such a dear hairdo.  I tried its once in my mid-twenties and can assure you that it just doesn't happen with naturally curly hair.  :)

But Daisy and Grandma--and certainly posh Mary--more than make it work.  

Those eyes!

That lace collar!

Sweet, sweet Grandma.  And sweet "Downton" too.  I didn't like a lot of this final season, but the finale was solid.  Their "Happy new year" and the home in the snow, and with Grandma on my mind. . .I cried a few times while I watched this yesterday.  "Auld lang syne," indeed. 

On Its Way to a Neighbor

While out walking a couple weeks ago, I noticed the heart-shaped Ivy leaves growing along the front of a house.  I paused to take a few pictures of them, and while crouched down to get the right angle, I heard someone call out, "Is something interesting?"  I felt a momentary flutter of panic then realized I could hear a smile in the voice.  I looked up and saw a woman backing her car into the house's driveway while she waited for my response.  I explained that the Ivy had heart-shaped leaves and that they were too striking not to photograph.  Still smiling, she said she was glad to hear that something on her property was photogenic.  She had been living there for more than forty years, she went on, and it was nice to hear that other people saw things they liked about it.  The property is beautiful, so I easily found more than a couple other "photogenic" things to mention about it.  "Are you a professional photographer?" was her next question.  I explained about my walks and how the camera makes them more fun for me, and as I gestured to her Ivy again, she commented that the picture would make a nice Valentine.  She was quite right, so after making a mental note of her house's number, I had the photo made into a greeting card last week and I mailed it out to her address this morning.  I have been wrong about things like this before, but I am guessing this pleasant person will not mind the surprise. 

Back at It

The holiday hoopla threw my writing routine out of whack, but this first week of February, I'm finally settling back into one.  This is how dreams live or die, it seems:  A few days of not working toward a goal turn into weeks of not working toward it, and then a couple months have passed, and then a whole half-year, and then the dream becomes something one was involved in in once years ago. . . .I return to this, though, and I will keep returning to it:  to my seat at this table and to these stacks and bags of index cards and diaries and family photos, and to the belief that this matters.  

Onward.