My real reason for a wintertime Boston visit was to spend time with my friends, Karen and Laura. Karen teaches at the international school and Laura at a public school in Waltham, another suburb of Boston proper. I met Laura at Warwick Uni back in 2006; she was on my course but we didn't really become friends until I moved to London. As is wont to happen, you choose the part of the city you live in based on where you know people. I didn't know her entirely well but Laura was kind to another American abroad and let me sleep on her Clapham couch while I did the mad London flat search. She introduced me to Jen and a beautiful friendship was born. She dated Dave's brother and moved in with him before it all blew up into spectacular fireworks of a doomed relationship.
Laura moved back to Boston in perhaps late 2008/early 2009 and we kept in touch online. Life moved on for both of us--she got married and went on to have three kids, I moved across London, to China and back. Despite the crazy, we remained friends. She came to London for a very long weekend last November and we all picked up right where we left off. Our roots run deep and, to get to the point, I was very excited to see her in her natural habitat.
On day three of my trip, I took a taxi across the suburbs and made my way to Laura's classroom for an end-of-term peek into life in an American high school. It looked a lot like what I'd remembered from my formative years. And from there, I got a glimpse into the three-child school run, snack time and karate drop off. Libby, Laura's oldest, has a penchant for history, so Laura drove us around to the green that once housed the Battle of Lexington and Concord. No pictures, my phone sucks.
In a brief flash, Laura and I did a handover of the children to her husband, whom I briefly met in the flurry of making grilled cheese en masse. And then we headed into downtown Boston to meet Karen for dinner in Boston's North End, the city's oldest residential neighbourhood, and home to a sizeable Italian-American population and the restaurants that feed them. As we sat down for dinner in one of these candlelit brick-walled institutions and conversation flowed, I got to see the upside of living all over the place.
It's having people you can pick up with right where you left off. It's knowing that you don't need to explain yourself for long absences in communication. And it's knowing that these people will drop everything to spend a little bit of time with you when you're in their part of the world. I was drunk with good feelings, not to mention red wine.
We rounded off our dinner with a trip to
Modern Pastry, one of North End's many family-owned bakeries famous for their cannoli, amongst other decadent pastries.
Laura drove us home and both she and Karen reiterated my need to come back to Boston in the summer sunshine and/or to work and live. They'd show me the ropes, they'd help me settle into a ready made community. I have no doubt.
The next morning, only a tad bit hungover, I made my way back into Boston proper to see the
North End in daylight. A wander down little side streets and allies yielded tiny bakeries, long standing delis and more Italian restaurants packed with charm.
A turn in another direction takes you to more historical sites, such as the church Paul Revere rode into to let his compatriots know that the British were indeed coming. Revere's house, now a museum with limited opening hours during Christmas-time, also lies down a back street of North End.
If you venture just a bit too far West, you'll cut through West End and end up in the
Beacon Hill district. Here, the streets feel distinctly fancier. Gas lamps line narrow streets with row house buildings and it's not hard to imagine a long-standing community and their horses dating back to the early days of American colonisation filling the streets. Imagine stepping into Brooklyn Heights and that's the feeling. I felt underdressed to step into one of the many chi chi shops so I just did a window browse.
And since I'd just about frozen through at this point, I found my way to the nearest transport hub and made my way to
Harvard. Because it bears being seen. After walking around the town of Cambridge, MA and through the empty university campus, I will say something controversial.
It was pretty. But it wasn't
that pretty. It was old. But it wasn't
that old.
And if I'm honest, I don't know how I'd feel about being a student there. The surroundings felt VERY expensive, particularly for someone on a student budget. There was a pretension that didn't exist at my little old state university. Projection, I suppose.
And so I made my way back to Karen's apartment for one final evening of pre-Christmas festivities. We made our way to some of Karen's favourite Brookline haunts, for drinks, Mexican food, margaritas and gossip. With some perspective away from Shanghai, we reminisced about the good and not so good moments of life on the opposite side of the globe. It was a warm hug after a long term and one final Boston reminder of the strength of long distance friendships. Seeing Boston was just a bonus.
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