One of the best ways to begin a weekend in Boston is with a glass of white wine in the late afternoon. Awaiting the arrival of my friend Kira, I sipped on this one, while the lights outside the window began to twinkle.

Our task was simple: scope out some possible locations of post-party eats and drinks in the event that JoAnn’s birthday revelers wish to go out after our little gathering at the condo.

As is often the case, the anticipation and the moments leading up to everything were the most delicious…

“It was in my heart to help a little because I was helped much.”
– Kahlil Gibran

Whenever I walk by and read that, it makes me feel better. There’s something grandly Dickensian about it, putting me in the mind of secret and not-so-secret benefactors. The sentiment is pretty grand too, reminiscent of the words of Velma Kelly: “I Simply Cannot Do It Alone.”

It was one of those crisp January mornings that seemed to light up the whole world, a prism of brightness lending hope to the gray winter. The sky was blue, and the sun was doubly redolent, reflecting off snow and ice in a blinding symphony of whites and mirrors. The nearest hardware store I could think of was on Newbury Street, and though it was small it had what I needed, and was close enough to Tower Records to afford a quick browsing session. While there I realized that far more interesting things might be happening at the condo, and I could browse these CD aisles at any time. Quickly, I made for home.

After returning for weeks to empty rooms, stillness, and silence, the sense of company was a strange relief. It was like somebody had revealed a hole in my heart that I’d never known was there, but that I’d been functioning without all these years – and part of me would always rue the knowledge imparted then. It would make the emptiness that followed so much worse.

At that moment, though, coffee gurgled in the kitchen, and tendrils of smoke mingled with the smell of fresh paint. It was transformation in action – the kitchen was turning into a striking patch of green, and the first bold border of red was slashing its way across the living room. A ladder reached for the ceiling while a dirty drop cloth, stained with the drippings of paint jobs prior, covered the floor.

I dropped the bag of supplies on a bit of empty counter-space, and began plotting the ragging-off effect I wanted for the living room. Working in tandem, my Uncle rolled the red paint on, as I pressed and mottled the area with a wet rag, leaving a rough, textured look. From a distance (and in most photographs) it only looked bright red, but up close there was detail and interest and no two areas were exactly the same. My Uncle seemed surprisingly impressed – the usual reaction when I did something right. There would be years in which to prove myself to him, but still not enough time.

The day drew too swiftly to its close, the last of the early-to-bed-sunlight disappearing out the bedroom bay window. The front two rooms were complete – only the bedroom and bathroom remained. We would finish in a day or two, and then it would be over. I didn’t want it to end. I wasn’t ready to be alone.

My Uncle was a painter – that was his job. Not of the John Singer Sargent kind, more of the Sherwin Williams sort, but he showed me there was nobility in every profession, if done properly and meticulously, without skipping steps or doing shoddy work. For all of his shortcomings and flaws, he was good at his job, even if he didn’t always like it.

I thought about him this weekend, as I painted the bedroom. Oddly enough, it wasn’t until the third day of painting that he came to mind, and then like a mad rush, as if he’d almost forgotten to visit. Maybe that’s the sign of getting over someone. Ten years after he died I can go three days without remembering. Not the most reassuring timetable for grief.

I remembered the first time we painted the condo together, back in January of 1996. Over the radio Whitney Houston sang that “Exhale (Shoop, Shoop)” song, and my Uncle would mimic the “shoop” part, always a beat or two behind. It cracked me up so much that I had to buy the damn CD and play it just to hear him do it. That was one of the charming aspects of my Uncle – that someone so world-weary and cynical sometimes could have such an unintentionally-innocent, child-like moment.

It was a frigid January, nothing like the cake-walk we’ve had this year. The winds were brutal, and the quick walk from Copley Place to the condo was wicked. No matter how bundled up you were the icy air went through everything, cutting indiscriminately to the core. My Uncle, small and thin from a steady diet of coffee and cigarettes, hurried along – a scarf tied tightly around his head like some Russian peasant-woman. If I hadn’t been so cold I would have laughed hysterically, but my jaw wouldn’t move that much in such awful weather. The image of him like that has haunted me all my life.

Once inside, we cranked the heat and put on a pot of coffee. It was night, but not too late to begin the prep work. He went about setting up the ladder, and I moved the furniture into the bedroom. The smell of smoke and coffee filled the rooms, and to this day there is comfort in both. I asked for one of his cigarettes, then lit it in the bathroom, watching myself in the mirror, seeing if I could fascinate with a cigarette any better than with a fancy coat, but only a dull stare looked back. I would do this periodically throughout the following days, trying to entrance with the trails of cigarette smoke, but never did I learn the enchantment my Uncle had mastered. The most nonchalant flicking of ash in his hands would forever be cooler than my most studied Bette Davis smoking moves. Amid the smoke and the clutter, I slept. The next day, the painting would begin.

It is the place I used to go when I was at a complete loss, usually at the end of a love affair, or the non-beginning of one. This is Boston Harbor in the winter. The wind whips off the water, clanging the high flag-pole forlornly in the night. When the temperatures dip below freezing, there aren’t many people around, and certainly not when it’s dark. It was a chilly refuge for those times I needed punishing solitude.

Once in a great while I go back here, to honor, to remember, to replenish the chill that was in my heart. Not in a bad way – more as a reminder of what I once wanted, and didn’t want. Sometimes winter brings clarity, in the cruel shock of a cold spell, or the whispered words of the past, lost on the wind, roped into the clanging of a lone flagpole.

One of the things I miss most about Boston, or any big city, is the way the afternoon lingers just a little bit longer, thanks to the buildings that hold its amber light until the very end. That’s something you don’t get in the suburbs – once the sun starts going down, it fades quickly. I like to hold onto the light as long as possible.

For one of my last acts of 2011, a quick impromptu trip to Boston, and the cozy condo that has always provided a bastion against coming winters and ends-of-the-world. This photo was taken as I walked the Southwest Corridor at 6 AM, in order to make it back home in time to cook the New Year’s candied yams and pecan pie.

At such an early hour so late in the year, the air is usually frigid and dead, but on this morning it had the slightest bit of Spring to it, and the foggy haze was closer to a thaw than the very beginning of a freeze. Perhaps Winter will go easy on us this year.

A woman walks in spurts ahead of me, stopping to talk and mutter to herself every few steps. It is a mad, mad world, but a magical one, and life, even at its most forlorn, has a dim, haunting beauty to it.

Afternoon sunlight of a fading December day holds the brick in Beacon Hill resplendent. A bit of holiday bustle on a Sunday as the pungent pine aroma of evergreen wreaths breathes through muffled scarves. Christmas lights twinkle on the shaded side of Charles Street, while pots of paperwhites burst with star-like blooms through frosted glass. The bells of tiny shop entrances ring as dogs await their owner’s return. It feels like another era, another place, when cobblestone streets and gaslights were ubiquitous.

Now it’s merely quaint, if it exists at all. If I tried to return, to find my way back to this same place, this same moment, I would fail. When the night comes, this will be over, and when the month goes so too will the magic.