Preparing for this year’s wedding anniversary, our fifteenth if you’re counting, I made a quick trip to Boston last weekend to drop off some outfits and accessories, and pick up some food for our arrival reception this coming weekend. Maybe it was the fact that fifteen years had already passed, or the deeper foreboding idea of my fiftieth birthday coming up, but whatever the case I found myself engulfed in a strange sea of nostalgia.
That compelled me to wind my way to Quincy Market, where my Mom brought us on our very first trips to Boston when we were kids. The world had changed a lot since then, and this part of Boston was no exception.
What was once a bustling tourist trap, filled with bull market carts, shops and restaurants, this surety of cobblestone has slowly and steadily declined, with more empty store fronts and deserted carts than filled places. It was a reminder that you can’t go back, that you can’t recapture the magic of the past. There are newer and showier spaces now, but every once in a while I’ll return to this place, so steeped in history – mine and this country’s – and so riddled with memories.
