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I went here. Boston! My in-laws invited me for Thanksgiving. That is correct: I spent the holidays with the ETBF’s family. Got up at 5 for a 5:15 cab and a 6:50 flight. Leaped into the heavens in a shroud of mist and fog. Couldn't get good sharp video so I thought "let's just use blurry ambient dark o'clock airport lights."
Slept! Before I knew it we were on the ground, and it was a simple series of transit transactions. Bus to station to Government Center to wait for the Green D, wincing at the tortured shrieks of the old unoiled cars as they shuddered into the station, screaming.
Traveling here alone felt . . . okay. Surprisingly so. It had only been six weeks since I was last on a train and a plane. The Letter at Walbers, then the Train to London, then back to . . . The Situation. Six weeks? Seemed like six months. Six weeks ago I was going back to nothing, or rather the start of the beginning of the prologue to nothing. Now I was leaving something . . . that will still end up being nothing. Does that make sense? It’s been six weeks of absolutely great fantastic meaningful serious deep wonderful emotional connection and it’s still going to end up being nothing. For now I am here, by myself, but with her family. Even better: Thanksgiving will be at . . . sister-in-law’s daughter’s husband’s family’s place. In-laws have a pied a tierre in Newton, since some of their kids are still in the Boston area. It’s the bottom of a house, nicely redone, warm and familiar. I’ve been here before. There’s a wonderful late 19th / early 20th mood at the train station a few blocks away.
I let myself in and made friends with Walter, the very quiet Spinone dog. And then I took a nap. It had been a long day and it wasn’t even one PM. Every day is so damned long. I suppose that’s a good thing. On Wednesday brother-in-law and I moved a snowblower from their backyard to his daughter’s house. It was not like mine, a lightweight. This was a substantial piece of machinery. We had to get it into the back of a rented Home Depot truck, and it was apparent after the first 1 - 2 - 3 LIFT attempt that no, we would not be lifting it, not on any number. Tim, Brother-in-law, remembered that he had a big flat plank of wood in the basement, because why wouldn’t he? We propped it up, and tested it, and I foresaw catastrophe. Surely we should do a TikTok and go viral when the board snapped and the snowblower fell to the ground and one of us got impaled on a blade. Ah! A pot. A large pot, malleable material, but heavy, filled with dirt. Let us brace the board thus, and shove the snowblower up the ramp with one mighty push. Success! Next job was to drive to the place where it would be stored, and that meant driving through endless twisting roads and streets, because there is no grid and the area is laid out like Rome in 1 BC. Good to see the niece and her new one, and chat a bit about The Situation, the whole . . . huh? What? of it all. I mean, everyone knows, so it’s . . . how are you? Oh, I’m in false bravado now, should cycle to fury and then rote despair in the next six hours. And you?
Daughter arrived on the T and we all headed into town to the Museum of Fine Arts.
We visited the Winslow Homer exhibit. Mostly water colors. My favorite was a piece of juvenilia:
I found a copy online, which shows what he was referencing:
Explanation:
Obligatory entry in the series of Self Unmoored Yet Framed and Contained: L’Homme Brun
Evening drinks at the Liberty Hotel, so named because it was a jail. A circular jail, it seems, incorporating the latest in humane incarceration ideas. “A panopticon, perhaps” I said while we discussed the layout. I wasn’t enthused by the hotel’s public spaces, which had that mishy-mashed Kimpton-esque incoherence. But the coffee was good. (No drink for me, yet, because I was flat out exhausted.) Met daughter outside - she was walking from the T stop - and told her we were having drinks in an old jail. She walked inside and said “Oh, a panopticon!” How I miss her. Dinner at a little place in Beacon Hill, snug and woody and merry. It was Wine Wednesday! Just our luck. Two glasses, appetizer, entree for the low-low price of Ouch, but still a bargain, I suppose, given the spectacular markup on wine. I will never not feel a surge of dismay when the price of one glass for the most basic wine is twice the price of a bottle of the stuff I keep on hand at home. I know this says a lot of tiresome things about me, from my lack of oenephilia to a penurious nature for the indulgences of life, but there you have it. I wince inwardly. Same with whiskey, which I love. I know the price of just about all the brands you’ll find. I can accept a 100% markup as part of the experience, but 400% seems audacious, almost mocking. And you’ll pay it! We know you will! Of course that’s how they keep the lights on, because they’re not hauling it in from the entrees, so you feel bad if you don’t order a drink. Hence the liberation of Wine Wednesday. It seemed sensible. Why, we can’t afford not to do Wine Wednesday. We walked back to the car through the old neighborhood, heavy with fog. Warm evening, too. Just the tonic I needed. |
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Thanksgiving was . . . astonishing. There were 60 people there, and everyone was related. I suppose, in a sense, I was too, right? Sister-in-law’s daughter’s husband’s family. Practically in the first paragraph of the will. That was enough for everyone. And of course Natalie was there too, being the cousin of wife of husband. That’s enough too! It was one of those roving merry series of immediately intense conversations where it’s a 1983 album one moment and post-war transit policy the next and then you’re talking to a charming precocious kid then everyone’s singing an Irish ballad and then it’s pie. Again: just the tonic I needed. Except every so often I find some reminder that all this, which had been assumed to go on unto expiration, is now a rare commodity, and you’re talking to an old married couple about vacations and where they want to go next, and where you went last summer, and you remember: oh! Right! That’s over for me. I keep seeing that everywhere. Oh, that’s done. Oh, I’ll not do that again, or if so, alone, so, probably not. Sister-in-law was advising me to go on these group tours, sometimes they have them for singles of my particular demo (I hate “senior” and I will not use “senior”) and I smile and nod and eye the nice knives in the block on the counter. Here, just plunge it in now. Silver Senior Single Tours! Warning, may require two minutes of walking at a 5 percent incline! No. Any more whisky? Ah, grand.
The weekend was spent, in part, up at the in-law's retirement home in New Hampshire. The Dream Place. everything built to specifications, all new and perfect.
It's marvelous. Way up high. Lake below. Ken Burns lives down there somewhere, I'm told. For a while it gave me mubblefubbery b/c I couldn't help but think what ETBF and I could've had if she hadn't sundered and cleaved in twain our accumulations, and I'm looking at these prospective houses online that never fail to disappoint in one way or the other. But that didn't last. Merry dinner and long, long conversation into the night. Three hours and lots of bourbon later: I’M A’ MOVIN’ TO BOSTON Maybe. It’s in the mix now. Natalie wants me to move out here. Why not? Why not rip it all up and come out here, find a place in, oh, Quincy, wherever, take the T into town and go to the museum, have dinner with Daughter and in-laws - why not The next day we drove to Vermont, the yin to New Hampshire's Yang, all the way to Woodstock. (Not that Woodstock.) Sunny day, throngs on the street shopping and strolling. Ate at a hotel that was just 100% New England, right down to the Chowdah on the menu. Hey, do they have a marvelous little Richardsonian Romanesque library? They do!
And then back to the main base in Boston, drop off daughter, and spend the night at the kitchen table, in-laws out at another event. Listening to the Apple Classical Chill channel and doing this, then it's column time. Nice day. Haven't thought about the house at all, hope it's still there. Feeling pleasently indifferent. Tomorrow: a day around Daughter's neighborhood, then . . . back. To what?
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