One of my favorite things to do when I’m in Boston is to walk the city – not with any goal or destination in mind, just the act of walking and exploring and happening upon whatever happens along the way. It’s at odds with the carefully-choreographed precision that characterizes so much of the rest of my life, and it’s how I’d like to act more often. The last weekend in Boston proved good practice for that kind of letting go, though that also came with memories that surfaced and rushed to flood the heart with ideas for which I wasn’t entirely prepared, but I allowed myself to feel it all, and let the tears fill my eyes when they came rather than force them away.
One little kiss, a moment of bliss, then hours of deep regret
One little smile, and after a while, a longing to forget
One little heartache left as a token
One little plaything carelessly broken
Remember the night
The night you said, “I love you”
Remember?
Ensconced in the Boston brownstone, one floor above the street lined with other brownstones, I finish my dinner that first night and take a moment to read a bit on the couch. Cole Porter plays in the background, lending the weekend a lovely soundtrack, the way he often provides a summer setting for evenings that turn solitude into magic. Many a Boston evening has been spent in similar fashion, and I’m suddenly waxing nostalgic for all the nights that came before. That can be troublesome and dangerous depending on what sort of mood Spirit decides to take me, but when the night is still light, as it happens to be at high summer, nothing feels as dangerous as it perhaps should, and so I prepare to walk.
On that first night of walking, I made the conscious decision to engage with whatever and whomever crossed my path. My first stop was a new plant store in the South End, and after the woman working there welcomed me in I asked her how long they had been open, telling her how beautiful the space was. She told me the quick story of how they had moved from a nearby spot, and then she thanked me as I told her I’d definitely be back, then continued on my way.
Meandering through the South End, I crossed through Chinatown then the financial district before finding myself at the harbor – Spirit seemed to be guiding me to the water, and as I looked out onto the water that led into the Atlantic Ocean, my mind wandered all the way to Cape Cod, to the first man I can remember ever remotely crushing on – a guy who was running the dolphin show at a place called Aqua Circus. He probably exists mostly as a made-up visage in my mind of a slightly-curly-and-reddish-brown haired man, the same shade as the bit of chest hair that showed at the top of the zip-up hoodie that wasn’t zipped all the way up. While that lives as possible fiction, I distinctly remember that before his show began he asked if I would be his helper for the night, and I hesitantly said yes because I knew there was no alternative to saying no to him, and I didn’t want there to be. The help I was to provide consisted of retrieving several small rubber hoops that he would ask me to give to him at a certain point in the proceedings. It was the first time a gentleman had showed any interest in me – I wasn’t more than ten years old, and I felt like the whole world had suddenly opened up and revealed some wonderful secret to me and only me. Enraptured, I sat at the edge of my seat until he looked for me, then I carefully made my way to the hoops, and onto the little stage at the end of the pool. While the dolphins had been my main interest, at that moment they fell away, their clicks and clucks and calls fading into the slow motion world where this young man stood before me, all gratitude and a golden smile and a public round of thanks that the audience joined in granting me, and all I wanted was to help him more.
Strange how that memory came flooding back as I looked out over Boston Harbor. He was one of the first men I remember stirring something in me that no girl or woman ever would, and I don’t always think of him, not the way I would think of other men this evening. The screams of a seagull brought me back to the present moment, and I backed away from the water.
It was at this place where I once ran on a winter’s night after I foolishly fell for a one-night-stand in Rochester, NY – the man who brushed the snow off my car the next morning, and so I decided I had to love him. Not knowing any better didn’t diminish the pain that ensued, and I remember arriving here after a breathless almost-run from the Government Center T stop and soaking up the solitude and loneliness – unlike the summer night at hand, that winter’s night was entirely bereft of people. I was alone, and I could cry without worry of anyone seeing – and I did, to the sad soundtrack of a flagpole clanging desolately in the wind. Tears welled up again, not for the present moment, but for that young man I was back then, the guy who didn’t know what to make of all those feelings, all those yearnings, all that loneliness. As for the one-night-stand guy, he would contact me years later, as many of them would, inviting me to meet if ever I was in his town, and by then the magic was always gone, the hurt eradicating whatever I once felt for them. It was never really about them anyway.
Remember you vowed
By all the stars above you
Remember?
I made my way through Faneuil Hall, the place I worked through my last years of college and beyond, then Spirit impelled me to follow the roads to the place where the very first man who kissed me used to live. It was right across the street from the very first Boston hotel I stayed at when my Mom brought my brother and I to the city. Some walks are steeped in nostalgia, and for whatever reason I was brought back to those two pivotal times and places, each sad and astounding and wonderful in their own way. For the very first Boston stay, my mother took us to see ‘E.T.’ at the movie theater nearby; I was more excited about the small plant store across the way, where I’d spend a good hour just inspecting and taking in the tiny collection of houseplants they had on display.
As for the man who gave me my first kiss among other firsts, I remember the stale smell of his little room. The towel around his waist. The sad little sink kitchen set-up that butted up against the bed. The worn and torn Alcoholics Anonymous book that stood on the windowsill. The way his stubble felt like it was cutting into my face, the way I wanted more. The way he was breaking my heart and the way I didn’t know why. We are so careless with each other, even when we know better.
Remember we found a lonely spot
And after I learned to care a lot
I followed the river back toward home, the opposite way that man had taken me when we first walked together on a warm and sunny September day. You can’t correct the past by retreading it, but once in a while you understand it a little better, and in that understanding is a little bit of resolution, an easing of whatever faded hurt might remain. All these nights of walking in Boston may be my attempt at chipping away at the pain. Most times, nothing comes of it but a few thousand steps; sometimes the tears land, and some healing happens.
Making my way through the Boston Public Garden restores my sense of calm, and all the happy memories that the garden holds. It carries a different charm in the evening, when the bats are flying about and the waterfowl have tucked their heads into their necks. My head was feeling scattered, and whenever that happens the garden grounds me – this one and all of them. Once I felt right again, I continued on for the last leg home, passing a diner that I would eat at the morning of my departure.
You promised that you’d forget me not
But you forgot
To remember
In the sunlight of the next day, all the darkness is forgotten, and all the nostalgia too. The past once again recedes into the past, the ghosts of people who once populated and seemed so important to me disappearing behind the colorful blooms of flowers who take happy pride of place in the mind. The world rights itself on the daily if we let it. Yet I don’t depart unchanged.
Into my dreams you wandered it seems, and then there came a day
You loved me too; my dreams had come true, and all the world was May
But soon the May-time turned to December
You had forgotten; do you remember?
