I understand the attraction of the standard vacation: a week
at the beach; your trip to Paris or Rome; skiing or diving at some exotic resort.
I’ve done those things and they’re great. Sometimes, though, it’s good to go
off and find smaller experiences, less spectacular in some respects but equally
enriching in other ways.
I decided
to visit New England in the winter. My first stop was Boston. It’s always exhilarating
to be in Boston, except it’s a little intimidating to drive a car there. I can
see why everyone takes the T. There is no grid in Boston, no logical
explanation for the layout of its streets. They are one-way. Some of them start
out paralleling each other but end up coming together at right angles. And
there’s always traffic so a misstep can be costly. People use their GPS to go
around the corner to get groceries. And there I was trying to maneuver from
Cambridge across the Charles River and then over the harbor to South Boston, a
good mile or two away. I must have been out of my mind.
Samantha’s
GPS voice guided me, sometimes, but there were places where even she got
confused and just stopped talking. My first inclination was to demonstrate the
tiniest bit of road rage, but something eased me away from that into an
enjoyment of the city, dressed as it always is in a cloak of vitality and
beauty.
Next I
drove to Windsor Loch, Connecticut to visit the New England Air Museum. They
have an exhibit of fighter and bomber aircraft. As I stood in the midst of
those planes I was struck by how small they are compared to how they look in
war shots and movies. At the same time, I got a heavy sense of the power and
aggression that the planes embody. I could almost see the canopy flying off and
the pilot ejecting from the F-86 after having been hit. From inside the bomb bay
of the A-26 Invader, I pictured the doors opening and the load falling out, then
the pilot turning sharply left or right to avoid getting caught in the
devastating blast that would follow seconds later. Images notched themselves into my memory. I will think of them again.
Next stop
was my mother’s home on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. This cottage has
been in my family since Mom was a teenager. It has become the Old Homestead. Most
of my trips to the cottage have been during summer months. This time, the lake
was frozen and a crop of colorful bob-houses had sprung up off shore. It looked
like an odd shanty town sitting out there in the middle of the bay. Between the
shacks, children played hockey. Further out snow mobiles raced and spun
themselves on the ice. Cars drove around, just because they could, and
airplanes came and went using the unclaimed stretches as runways.
How neat, I
thought, as I watched this cluster of life dare nature at the same time it took
advantage of her. I wanted some. So I stepped off our dock onto the frozen
lake. It was thrilling to walk away from safety out onto a landscape that had
the opportunity to crack open and suck me in. Each step was a flirtation with
danger. The adventure was small, but it brought something different to me. It
was a moment of excitement that formed itself into a memory as colorful as any
other.
During the
week at Mom’s I visited my brother in Portsmouth. Every now and then you
stumble across something wonderful that, for whatever reason, has been largely
overlooked. Maybe the thing is understated or otherwise modest in its
trappings. No flash that catches the collective eye, which is probably a good
thing. So, there’s Portsmouth, a charming coastal city that sits an hour north
of Boston and an hour south of New England’s lake and mountainous regions. The
city center is a collection of restored historic buildings inside which you
find a variety of coffee houses and book stores, eclectic shops, diverse
eateries. The people are on the streets. They are energetic and engaged. I
picture throngs of “Remote” workers living there. Portsmouth was a delightful
find.
I left New
Hampshire and headed south to the Cambridge side of Boston to spend a few days with my daughter,
Kirstyn, and her boyfriend. I find it harder now to say goodbye to Mom. The
visits have that sense of urgency that comes when parents get older. No matter
how healthy they seem, they are advancing toward the end zone. There’s nothing we
can do but love them, knowing in that bittersweet corner of our hearts that one
day, much sooner than we can stand to think about, they will no longer be here
to remember the old days with us.
So I said
goodbye and watched her disappear in the distance, like time fading away into
itself. I memorized her smile and the love in her eyes and felt a renewed
appreciation for having had a great mother.
In
Cambridge I spent a morning at one of Harvard’s libraries researching a
photographic depiction of Soviet gulags. Empty eyes looked out from sunken
sockets and told of horrors not understood by those of us who did not suffer
them. Diagrams of the various camps had several things in common: double rows
of barbed wire fence that loomed high above crude barracks; the Forbidden Zone;
guard towers; the Punishment Room. Hand scribbled notes spoke of death by
starvation or disease or exhaustion, if not by execution for some wrong word uttered.
It was a painful and sobering glimpse of unspeakable torment.
After spending
several hours with the collection, I looked up to absorb what I’d been seeing. Out
the window Harvard Yard was suddenly white. The snow wasn’t falling from above.
It was howling from the side and swirling upward and blowing straight at the
windows. The blizzard had begun. Time to hustle.
Outside, I
bent into the wind and felt the coldness of gritty grains slapping my cheeks. Was
it snowing or was someone blasting a sand trap nearby? Before I’d cleared the
campus I looked like a snowman. My eyelashes were almost too heavy to
open up after a blink. In the square people were dashing about to grab a few
things at the market, hit the liquor store one last time, and get home. My eyes met those of strangers and we shared a knowing smile.
Kirstyn,
Dave and I hunkered down and watched the storm descend. All day. Then all night.
Then all day again on Saturday. Between us we must’ve had a dozen electronic
devices charging, just in case. We could do without heat or food or lights but
God forbid we should not be able to use our phones or our computers.
When it
stopped snowing Kirstyn and I took to the streets, to the extent you could find
them under the twenty five inches that had fallen in the past twenty four
hours. There were no cars—they’d been banned. The T stood still. Store fronts
were dark. Everywhere people climbed the smooth white mounds. Some dug tunnels;
others built snowmen. Frozen hands held cameras this way and that to capture
the beautiful spectacle. Kirstyn and I walked for miles, down the middle of the
road; up over drifts; along narrow pathways hurriedly carved by a few ambitious
souls. Cambridge was crisply silent except for the muted sounds of trudging boots
and buoyant voices. It was lovely.
On Sunday we drank mimosas and cooked delicious food with some of Dave's family who'd braved the storm's remains to come for brunch. We talked of so many things I can't remember them, except to recall the richness of conversation well spent.
And then it
was time to go home. I moved through security and to the gate like a loaded pack
mule. I watched out the window as we sped up and away. Boston retreated first,
then the harbor. The New England landscape shrunk below as we climbed through the
cloud layer, a dizzying fog that offered nothing until it broke open and
delivered us to a painted sky. Shards of gold and orange swept downward into a
rim of sleepy red that settled itself into white clouds along the horizon’s rim.
The blue sky gradually faded back, the festival of colors muted into night and
we flew on.
It had been
a good trip.
