Finally! Hey, all of you avid readers out there! I don't want to lose ya. You've been great! 3/13/3-14 Yesterday, I went to Boston. Armed with a newspaper and a sandwich, I drank a second cup of coffee at Pugsley's before boarding the green line D in Brookline Village.
At the Arlington T stoip, I stepped off the train and up the steps of the underground station to Boston Public Garden. I wondered where the Swan Boat was for the winter as I crossed the bridge over the dried up remains of the pond. I walked along the pathways beside the college students and the lunch hour crowd. Assorted pigeons and squirrels assembled amidst a lone seagull on the Boston Common. I made my way up the hill to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. I decied to pass right by the Downtown Crossing shopping area and headed for the water.
Traffic rumbled overhead as I crossed the cobblestoned highway to Waterfront Park. I passed the New England Aquarium on my way to Long Wharf. I walked along the road by the Charter House Restaurant and the ferry waiting for its season to sail tourists around the waters of Boston Harbor.
To my relief, hardly anyone walked the stone piers of Long Wharf today. I sat down and ate my sandwich. Several months ago, inOctober, I would have been tensed to hurry back to the real world. But my relaxed position was proof that those days were long forgotten. Too cold for seagulls today. I studied the knotted ropes of ships' moorings. The cold air that gusted over the boats rocking in Boston Harbor calmed me.
Now it was time to go to North Station. But first, I would walk a little ways north, past Waterfront Park.
I gazed into the windows of a restaurant called "The Aquarium." Business crowd. I traversed further into the North End, imagining what it would be like with my sister, Kelley or a bunch of friends, strolling and joking through the streets of Boston.
"Umberto's," I read. Just like in New York! Boston's Little Italy had an Umberto's Restaurant all its own. Ristorante di Theresa, I read. For lack of a better name, they had thrown on Theresa's name to the Italian gibberish. A car drove slowly by. A young man called out to someone on the street. Small lanes led through the rows of shops down to the waterfront. A "Peace Garden" was set up on the lawns of a Catholic church across the street. All around her, neighbors seemed to know each other, cars drove slowly by, men paused in the streets. She glimpsed more waterfront up ahead, but there were hardly any people in the streets now and she turned back to Boston. She passed by the Peace Garden, its various stone lambs and lions and saints basking under the trees and permanent Christmas lights.
TO BE CONTINUED. See ya all hear next week, perhaps Monday or Tuesday.
Have a good weekend and stay safe. Hope to see you at the HYGIENIC XXXII "Salon des Independants" Winter Arts Festival on Saturday night, January 28th. Starting at 8pm. (But I may go earlier.)
Until tomorrow,
Denise
