Loving Boston

 It was May of 1975. My first semester as a graduate student in the Department of Higher Education at the University of Kentucky had been interesting, even pleasurable, and had come to an end. There were at least two weeks until the summer session was to start, so there was time for some vacation. Several very close friends from college were in Boston, or very close to Boston. I did not yet have a car, but I could still get very cheap (not free like when I lived at home) stand-by tickets on United Airlines from my parents. So I contacted my parents and my friends and off I went. 

This was my first trip to Boston, but one of my college friends Charlie, had spent many hours telling me stories about Boston so I was in high anticipation. My very first impression of Boston was a positive one: the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority had a terminal right there at the airport, an easy walk even with a large suitcase, from the arrivals baggage claim. 

Now I'd heard a lot about the MTA (or MBTA depending on who you talk to), from my friend Charlie. There's a folk song about a man named Charlie who "rides forever 'neath the streets of Boston" for lack of a nickel to get off the train.  (sorry about the ads)

So I came prepared with plenty of change. At that time, the fare to get on was just 35 cents, but my destination point, out on Commonwealth Avenue after the train emerged from underground was one of those places where you had to pay an extra dime to get off the train. I really came to love the MTA over the next five days, as I rode it all over Boston to see all kinds of things. Unlike many cities with which I was familiar the MTA wasn't just used by poor and low income people. Everyone, doctors, lawyers, legislators, housewives, college students, school kids, used the MTA. It was busy and bustling and vibrant transportation system in 1975. 

My hosts for this trip were my friends Carol and Stuart both Oberlin grads, married and in medical school. It was the end of their first year, and they had lived out near Boston College, near the Commonwealth Avenue MTA line in an apartment that they realized after one year of med school was not big enough for both of them to have space to study effectively, so they were hunting for a new apartment, and I got to participate in some of that search. My silent presence actually made it easier for them to get the real estate agents to accept they needed a 2 bedroom apartment.  

Over the years I'd heard many parodies of the Boston accent, but despite knowing many people from Boston had never heard one, until that real estate agent that Carol and Stuart and I met with, she actually said that she had "paht [parked] her cah [car] at the Gahden" (it not clear what "Garden" she meant since the Boston Garden was some distance away). Hers was of course not the last Boston accent I heard over the next six days and I loved it. 

Aside from the apartment hunting, Carol had a number of fun things planned for us. The two most memorable were Boston Pops concert and a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts. I remember the Pops venue, lined with drapes and the floor level with little tables, we sat in a balcony above the floor, and enjoyed the music. I could not tell you any specific piece that the Pops played, only that all of them were familiar and almost certainly at least one was by Gershwin. I just remember loving the sensation of being buoyed by brilliant, bouncing music, a smile on my face the entire time. Afterwards we treated ourselves to hot fudge sundaes at Brigham's - very decadent! 

The stand out memory from the trip to the Museum of Fine Arts is of course the Sargent portraits, especially the portrait of Madam X, so beautiful in that amazing black gown. But I spent most of my time with the impressionists, especially Monet. The MFA has one of the largest collections of works by Monet outside of France, many of which it acquired before and at the time of Monet's death. No one paints light quite like Monet. [Monet Grainstack (Sunset) from MFA]

After a few days, the demands of medical school occupied most of Carol and Stuart's attention, so they provided me with a home base and I contacted other friends who helped show me more of Boston's treasures. First up was my friend Charlie who had just graduated from Oberlin a little behind the rest of us, because he interrupted his four years to engage in good works. He would be heading off to graduate school at University of Michigan in the fall in biology or ecology.  Charlie had me meet him at the Boston Commons, where we enjoyed a leisurely walk and lots of talk, and a ride on one of the swan boats. 

Charlie took me to Bailey's for a hot fudge sundae. It was in an old, elegant ice cream parlor just half a block off the Common on West Street. I don't think it still exists today. Everything in the shop was white and silver. There were small marble topped tables with wrought iron legs and chairs. The ice cream sundaes were served in silver pedestal bowls, on top of silver plates with long-handled silver spoons. The fudge sauce was thick and exquisite, so very dark chocolate. It was one of those rare sundaes where the sauce was abundant enough to last through every bite of ice cream. 

After the Sunday we went back to the Commons to the Freedom Trail and walked just a little ways, our first stop was the Granary Burial Ground where we looked at the famous graves, including "Mother Goose." Then we walked on to Kings Chapel, then down School St. to the Old South Meeting House where the Boston Tea Party was planned. We also checked out the Old State House and the Boston Massacre site, before ending our day with a wander through the wonders of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace (lots of Boston accents heard there!). We went back to the Commons to the MTA, he headed back home to Wellesley and I found the line back to Commonwealth Avenue. I was in love with the old Boston, all the trees, and the old buildings of warm red brick. Everything was so easy to reach by walking or on the MTA. 

The next day, my friend Frank played host to me. Frank had been working for a grassroots organization Fair Share that was fighting for equity in property taxes and utility bills for low income people. Fighting for the underdog was so very Frank. He would soon though be heading to the Episcopal Divinity School in Boston, to embark on his life long career. 

Frank's family might be considered Boston Brahmins (a term coined in the 19th century by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.). I took the MTA to Frank's family home in Brookline just outside the Boston city limit. It was fairly early in the morning, because there were high school age students waiting to catch the MTA at the Brookline station. Frank's family home was just a few blocks away, although I no longer remember the name of the street and all my correspondence from those past days was destroyed by a leaky roof and mold some 15 years ago. It was a neighborhood of well-kept yards and gardens, and large, tall homes of brick and clapboard.  My memory paints Frank's family house as brick but memory is a fickle thing so it easily could have been clapboard. It was at least three stories in height. Frank gave me quite the tour of the inside, pointing out a number of things that various ancestors (great grandfathers and great, great grandfathers, etc.) had acquired from China or India or other places whether merchant vessels had done business. It was both a graceful and comfortable home. 

Tucked away at the top of the house, with slanting ceilings from the eaves, was a playroom/library that Frank and his siblings had enjoyed. We spent some time in the playroom, talking, looking at toys and pulling out books. One book in particular caught my eye, one I hadn't seen since I was a small child: Make Way for Ducklings. Since the story is set in Boston and the Commons and Public Garden, I pulled it out and we read through the story looking at the lovely illustrations. Something shifted in that moment, or maybe I became aware of something that was already there. 

Frank and I had been friends for about five years at that point, part of a larger group of friends who ate together, went to concerts together, had parties together, studied together. There had been a brief moment about three years earlier, maybe as short a one day, when we thought we might have been something more, when during a larger group Christmas caroling, we'd been sent to collect something and ended up canoodling (snogging?) for half an hour before rejoining the group. Then things went back to the status quo.  But in that little playroom with reading those children's books that old momentary feeling emerged again, a little stronger, a little more serious. 

We put the books away, and went downstairs. Frank had planned to take me to lunch at a restaurant nearby, within walking distance in Brookline Village. As we left the house, he stopped for a moment, reached up and cut a rose from one of the vines grown next to the house. I know it wasn't a red rose, but don't remember whether it was pink or yellow. He gave it to me to carry with a flourish. We had a lovely lunch - with my rose sitting on the white table cloth next to me. It was a elegant restaurant with white table cloths, china, silver and crystal. I may even have had a small glass of white wine with lunch. Everything suddenly seemed very romantic, and Frank was so very gallant. 

I do not remember how we got from the restaurant to the rest of our afternoon adventures, nor do I remember what happened to the rose. But I do remember what we did that afternoon. We went to the Boston Athenaeum a very old Boston institution that is part library, part museum, part club, and in 1975 it was a bit more exclusive than it is today. Remember I said that Frank's family might have been considered Boston Brahmins, well, his family held the number one membership in the Athenaeum, passed down from generation to generation. So Frank could walk right in and bring me as his guest. 

I had seen the Athenaeum from the back the previous day while touring with Charlie. The building looks out over the Granary Burial Ground. Frank took me inside, which is gorgeous. Beautiful sculptures, paintings, sumptuous old oriental carpets that look better as they age, and of course books!  We wandered all over the building trying not to disturb the people reading, studying and researching there. The highlight of the afternoon came when Frank pulled me into the corner of the second floor, opened a door, that looked like a window, and we were suddenly outside on a small triangular balcony (that is actually larger than I remembered), that felt very secluded. One side of the balcony was a windowless wall of another building that abutted the Athenaeum. Much of the balcony was not visible from the second floor windows, although it probably was from higher Athenaeum floors. It was suppose to overlook the Granary Burial Ground, but in late May or early June the trees were full of leaves and the balcony was screened from the ground as well. We felt, even if it was not entirely true, completely hidden from the rest of the world. So we did what young lovers often do, at least the PG version. No buttons were unbuttoned, no clothing disturbed, no body parts grabbed, but there was a lot of kissing and clinging, and an emotional intensity that overwhelmed me. 

We settled ourselves, returned inside, left the Athenaeum, with Frank planning what we might do the next day. He put me on the MTA and I went back to Carol and Stuarts, and absolutely panicked. At the time I didn't really know why I was so panicked, I didn't understand myself very well. So I did something pretty awful, something I regret doing, although we didn't have this term back then I "ghosted" Frank. That night I called friends in New York, and asked if I could spend the last few days of my vacation with them. I called the airline and changed my reservations from Boston/Lexington to New York/Lexington. I called AmTrac and got the time of the first train from Boston to New York the next morning. I packed my bags and then without a word at all to Frank, I just up and left Boston and went to New York. 

All these years I have held on to the memory of that Boston visit as something special and precious. At some point in the last two years, I happened to discover that Frank (who is thankfully still my very good friend despite how badly I treated him at that time), did not remember it at all. That's when I realized that he would not have held those memories in the same way as I did at all, for him it was something that ended really badly. Because I treated him badly by just disappearing with no explanation, no goodbye. 

Why did I panic? Reconstructing the past has many pitfalls. Our memories are fragile at best. Trying to remember the emotions of the past are especially fraught with dangers. My guess is that I was afraid of losing myself and the career and life that I had just started upon at the University of Kentucky. I did not want to be a traditional wife and mother, and at the time I probably assumed that was what Frank wanted and needed. I also knew at this point that I wasn't a Christian, although I was six years away from making the choice to convert to Judaism. I could not see myself as a pastor's wife. Now, of course, I had no idea if Frank was actually interested in marrying, much less marrying me. I made assumptions that may not have been at all true. The bad thing I did was not staying and talking to him and finding out what was on his mind, as well as telling him what was on my mind. Instead I just ran away. 

I am really grateful that Frank is a better person than I am, and that he was persistent enough to make sure that we stayed friends, because I have especially enjoyed our correspondence as we age. He's a pretty wise feller.