A number of years ago, I had made a trip to Boston to see Kira and wound up taking this same route to pick her up from work. Back then, my walk had taken place on a cold night in late fall, when most of the leaves were already down, and a chilly rain had fallen leaving puddles at every turn. What a change in such weather on this afternoon. With the heat rising, I walked through the center mall of Commonwealth Avenue, beneath the canopy of shade-giving trees, past the statues of historical noteworthiness, all the way to the entrance of the Boston Public Garden. In the midst of the glorious spring, I thought back to the last time we met in person – it must have been on this trip to Boston in January of 2020 – which was the last time I’d gone anywhere before COVID hit. I didn’t know the import of that trip, and how I would have to turn it into that year’s Holiday Stroll.
Now, those memories mingled with the path of today, and they jarred me with a sense of sadness, a loss of that way of life. Maybe just for now, maybe for a while, maybe forever. Commonwealth met the Public Garden. I crossed the street and entered, wondering where Boston was sending me, what messages I was supposed to receive.
“Take what you like, give what you want.”
The words were printed on this little stand that appeared as by magic in the midst of the Boston Public Garden. There was a message there. An important one, and a pertinent one. It holds true as much for friendship as for life. But there was something underlying it as well, a darker tone of ominousness that lurked right around the corner. I paused to take a photo of these puppets, spooked and slightly disturbed by them, as if they were some gingerbread house waiting to ensnare the unwary. Then I thought I should have more faith in people. As I walked around the stand, a person in a mouse’s costume sat next to it – I hadn’t seen them there and I was startled. Silent but for a nod, the human face beneath the mouse’s was barely discernible, and covered in lace, making for an even more disturbing visage. Backing away from the giant mouse, I came upon a trumpeter playing to no one in particular.
If there was a message in his song, I could not hear it, and I felt like I was missing something, or going the wrong way. Still, I followed the path toward Beacon Hill, unwavering. Boston held its secrets usually for good reason. All would come right in the end, I had to believe.
A fringe tree lowered its bowers and panicles of bloom – and suddenly a happy memory of Kira and I in this very garden came back to me. I’d unconsciously avoided the fringe tree I recalled – the one I made Kira pose in front of probably a decade ago. Now, inescapable and right in my way, I could not avoid it, or its sweet perfume.
It smelled of the same intoxicating fragrance – bringing back that day, and other days even further back – in Suzie’s side yard, in the Wasilkowski’s front yard – in all these yards of childhood – and I wondered if life would be mostly memories from this point forward, and whether would that be entirely awful.
At the end of the path, I crossed to Charles Street and followed it almost to the end, where a Thai restaurant – The King and I – had a table available for us. I sat down at the appointed time, and in a few minutes Kira walked in. It was the first time we had seen each other since January 2020. I sensed her to my right before I could bring myself to look up to see her. Averting eye contact is my main tell of being upset with someone.
So much had happened since that winter, and for so much we had been out of touch, as was her wont when things got difficult. I needed to talk to someone then, and she wasn’t there. Worse, she hadn’t shared what was going on in her life. Weaker friendships had fallen apart over far less, but so had stronger friendships. I knew this, and wanted us both to have an opportunity to address the last year and a half, and see where we were, and how we each wanted our friendship to continue. Could the pandemic have taken our friendship as one of its many casualties? For the first time, sitting across from her, I allowed the thought to cross my mind.
We each spoke and we each listened. I felt our friendship still there, yet I felt it shift into something different. I also felt it hesitate and hold, and I embraced that. Such things weren’t to be decided or determined at a single lunch. We were not the rash young people we’d been when we first met in Boston in the fall of 1998. We would not yell and scream and storm out in a mad scene. We would not part in anger, nor would we part in happiness or resolution. Nothing is that easy anymore. We parted in a chilly uneasiness, unable to hug and stranded in our respective points of view. It was as bad, and as good, as it could have gone. For once, I expected the actual outcome, and it came to pass.
It didn’t feel good, but it felt right, for now. In the past, when I’ve felt similar sadness, I’ve found my way to some body of water, to feel grounded, to feel connected to this world. Hastening my pace, I walked all the way to Boston Harbor, where I once walked after a guy I thought I loved didn’t love me back. On this day, I sought the coolness of the sea, to clear my head and help me see.
This was a different sense of loss – not quite complete, not nearly resolved – and I wondered at what other people had given up, willingly and unwillingly, over the past year and a half. There was a hardness in myself that wasn’t there back then – I felt it, and it was a good thing. It had gotten me through. In many ways there was less I was willing to accept, and in some ways there was more. Both seemed to be working against Kira and I hanging out for the moment, and that was ok. Part of me isn’t ready to hang out with people again anyway.
Turning my back to the sea, I let the water keep some of my anguish, and then let some retail therapy work its magic like only shopping can. Emerging from the almost-bustle of downtown, I found my way back to Public Garden, feeling more grounded and more certain than a couple of short hours ago.
