Boston

Yesterday I made a quick stop in the supermarket. On the book rack I saw several new guidebooks to different cities and countries: Germany, Ireland, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Chicago, and Boston. For some reason I found myself picking up the Boston guidebook and taking it with me to the checkout counter.

Now you may ask why I would need a Boston guidebook if I’ve lived in that city six years? The answer is pure and simple: nostalgia. I miss Boston very much and although it’s changed a lot since I last lived there I was seized by a desire to look at the old, familiar pictures, study the map of the T, read about all the food you can get in Boston. And I really did find myself feeling so very nostalgic, reading about clam chowder and baked beans, and Legal Seafood, and looking at a picture of the South Station train and T station, and reading the names of clubs I used to hear about all the time on the radio: the Middle East, ManRay, Axis...

On the one hand I felt this huge pang in my heart that I couldn’t go back there and live those days again. Because they will never come back, the days of discovering that lovely city, with only a T token and ten cents for a phone call in my pocket.

The feeling of flying into Logan Airport, seeing the water of the Atlantic Ocean turning into grassy little islands and firmer land and finally the tarmac of the airport!

The joy at having the customs official at Logan look at my passport and my visa and say, "You’re going to Wellesley? That’s fantastic. I wish I could have gone to Wellesley." And her smile at me and my shocked delight that she hadn’t asked me to open all my suitcases and show her all my underwear.

The taste of my first pain au chocolat at Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, and watching the old men shouting at each other over the stone chess tables outside and the homeless man standing there with a tin foil all over him and watching and giving advice on how to checkmate the other guy in ten minutes!

The exhilaration of going to my first party and coming home at three in the morning, with hundreds of other excited college students, some drunk, some sober, some asleep, hanging onto the straps of the Senate Bus as it lurched down Route 16 at five miles an hour.

The horror when it broke down on the highway and everyone had to get out of the bus and wait for a new one to come by and pick them up four hours later.

The feeling of waiting for a train in South Station to take me home.

Waiting for a friend in the Kendall Square Au Bon Pain and thinking I’d been stood up only to realize that he’d been waiting in the other Au Bon Pain across the street, and running into each other only by chance just as I was making my way back to the bus stop.

The frantic and insane atmosphere of Filene’s Basement and watching my friends come back from the bridal dress sale with ripped clothes and bargain wedding dresses even though they didn’t have boyfriends.

All the cafes and all the little restaurants and all the bookstores and places where I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars as if it were candy, and my first taste of peppermint stick pie, clam chowder, New England lobster. The first two I loved and the last, I hated.

The thrill of going to the Social Security office in downtown Boston and getting a social security number in my first week of college.

The horror at discovering how seedy parts of America could actually be, and learning that there was a red light area two steps away from the theater where I went to see Les Miserables for the first time, and coming home on the T with my friends, all of us red-eyed from the tragic end.

The smell of burning leaves and the first frost, the pumpkins everywhere grinning at me from steps and stoops and staircases and windows.

Hearing the Boston accent for the first time and wondering what everyone was saying, only to go home for Christmas and having everyone tell me I suddenly talked funny.

Waking up for the first time in eleven years to see snow on the ground, the hush in the air and the sparkling white covering up the gray streets and buildings.

The feeling of going to an ice skating rink at MIT and watching everyone whiz by on their skates while I could barely move forward one inch without feeling that my ankles were going to snap, and the feeling of my hands and knees hitting the ice as I pitched forward, and the laughter that was pulled from my bruised body at my own clumsiness.

And the feeling of stealing a tray from the college cafeteria and taking it up to Severance Hill at night, sitting on it and sliding down the hill, my tailbone aching for three years afterwards. The rush and the sting of the cold air on my cheeks, and the way my nose ran but a cup of hot cider could make it stop immediately.

My first meal at the John Harvard and realizing that pub food was really, really delicious, but that I didn’t like the smell of beer.

The feeling of lying down under a tree in Cambridge Common and studying a textbook while watching Pakistanis and Indians playing cricket on a lazy September day, my first week at Harvard.

The feeling of the cobblestones under my feet on Brattle Street.

Copley Plaza with its movie theaters and stores that we went to every weekend, rain or shine, snow or sun. Standing in line for the movies and discussing the selections with other people we’d never seen before and would never see again and all the laughter I must have laughed at the cheap MIT movies, especially Total Recall when Arnold Schwarzenegger claimed the center of Mars was made of ice and all the MIT students howled until they cried.

The feeling of being a Bostonian, and the sadness when it had to end.

Images like the facets of a diamond, as perfect and as beautiful, like some impossible dream that you can’t believe you were lucky enough to have.