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! 

♥

Yankees-Red Sox = Best! Fight! Ever!

Swistle recently asked her readers about recurring arguments they have with their loved ones that would seem stupid to people outside the relationship. Boy howdy! Can we all say "Yankees-Red Sox" in unison? Tonight's game is the last of the teams' series this week, and I am just grateful I missed even one game due to this week's work schedule. Mike is a Yankees fan. And that is all the necessary back-story for what became our first fight. One night a few months after Mike and I had started dating in 2007, Boston beat New York and Mike ranted so much post-game that I felt like I was suddenly living with a stranger--and a crazy raging stranger, at that. "Why can't you just be happy for them?" I asked. "They went how-many-years without doing well and they're such a good team now. Why can't you just be happy for them and their fans?!?" Mike goggled at me speechless as if he'd just watch me sprout a second head. Apparently, my question was The Dumbest Question Ever, and upon seeing his reaction to my own, we were off to the races!

Because this is one of "those" fights, it couldn't have ended easily or quickly. Oh, no. At least an hour later, we were still at it, not getting much further than my "Why can't you just be happy for them?" and his "Because I hate them." Mike got more and more red-faced as I elaborated, "I know they're not your favorite team--I get that. But after they've been the underdogs for so long, why can't you just think, 'Well, yeah, I'd be happier if the Yankees had won, but good for them! They played well, and this has to be sweet for their fans'? Why can't you just look at it like that?" Mike continued ranting and raving in disbelief, intermittently shouting winner comments like "You just don't get it!" and "I just can't talk about this with you!" until I really thoroughly disliked him and went to bed crying in frustration. And I hadn't even cared who won, if this is unclear. I was just stunned by his adamant hatred of a group of ball players, for goodness sakes, and with his complete inability to articulate it beyond, basically, "I just do." So I retreated to bed and lay there crying and thinking that we were going to break up over this and wondered which other neighborhood I could move to in this new-to-me city, and then I would cry harder imagining scenes of bumping into him around town and the awkward post-breakup conversations we would have. . . .Mike and I had been friends for nine years before we'd even started dating, mind you, so the idea that I thought we'd break up over a Red Sox victory is ludicrous, but so it goes.

He felt bad that I was crying, of course, and came to me, and I took that as an opportunity to try once more--!!--to "resolve" this between us. ("Why sleep on it when you can drag it out until you can't stand each other" was my motto in the early days of our relationship, apparently.) So I started again: "Even if you don't like them, can't you just enjoy watching them play? I don't like football, but I can watch a player run fast or make a good catch or throw the ball what looks like a mile and be impressed by it! Can't you just forget about who they are or who they're playing and just enjoy their talent and skill and power?" Mike looked like his head was about to explode by this point, and likely only because I was working as a breakfast cook at the time and had to get up just a few hours later, we finally dropped it and went to sleep, although probably not without making a few energetic neck-wringing gestures to the other's back.

Tonight, I just say "Oh boy" and otherwise ignore him when he yells at the TV during the game, although there are nights I randomly yell "Gooooooooooo, Red Sox!" just to liven things up around here. :)