Being Boston - the First Weeks

I get into Boston much later than expected: my flight was delayed over 4 hours. Our cat did remarkably well, not a peep or a fuss and I’m so proud of him for being so good. Jason picks me up at the airport and brings Bailey with him. Bailey is more excited to see Lebowski than he is to see me, but that’s okay.

I’m so excited to see Jason and our new apartment, but I’m so fried and tired that I just want to go right to bed. Our five-story building is beautiful, old and faced with tan brick. We take the creaking old elevator up to the top floor: you slide open the glass exterior door, and then push back the accordion metal grate on the inside. I do a quick walk through with Jason before I go to bed. Our high ceilings have textured wallpaper or beams, depending on the room. The main hallway has classic half wall paneling and built in display shelves. Our bedroom has a bay window, and in the morning I’ll see just how much light we get.

Intricate glass on our elevator

The way down 

Textured wallpaper in our hallway

Under the covers lump is Lebowski; on top of the covers lump is Bailey

Motto

The next few weeks are a blur of unpacking, settling in, and realizing just how much of a change this new city is. I try to focus on the positives, but it’s hard. Not only am I so far away from all my family and friends, the culture here is so different from Washington. The people are much more gruff. Drivers don’t follow road rules: they make their own lanes, they don’t signal, they honk incessantly, and the left-hand turn across traffic seems to be king. In the first week, though, we meet a delightful couple when we buy a desk and chair from them off craigslist. And we meet a couple that lives two floors below us with their cat, Ty. They’re all very kind, very welcoming, and it makes me feel better to experience such warmth.

The best way for me to a place is on foot. We live in the Brighton neighborhood, and I walk for miles, mostly exploring further south and east. Jason works in Brookline, which is an old Jewish neighborhood. I think 1 in 3 men I see are wearing yarmulke, with many also wearing Talit. The women wear long dresses and head scarves. I walk past religious buildings of all types, but certainly more temples and synagogues than any other city I’ve visited. Of the business I pass, the majority seem to be dentist offices and salons.

The buildings are immediately one of my favorite things about Boston. Many of them are over 100 years old. There’s hidden detail everywhere, from small relief carvings in banisters to terracotta and stone building adornments. Bay windows and deep windowsills. Many buildings have wrought iron fences and balcony railings. I recognize maples and oaks among the other deciduous trees, but a lot of the trees and shrubs are unfamiliar. In this neighborhood they’re old, and their boughs have been allowed to spread across the roads to meet in a green bower over the cars. Streets are narrow and ill-defined, and in no discernable grid. Molly tells me that the roads were literally designed by cows: cattle cut great paths through the land, and then city planners just paved over where the cattle had gone.  

We're nearing Memorial Day, and the memorial street signs in our neighborhood have wreaths and flags

Corinthian columns on a local apartment building

I was really tickled by this sign. They can leave the door code out in public because you have to be able to read Hebrew to decipher it 

On a school next to our apartment

I love the wind here. It’s hot and so humid, but the weather makes up for that with a cool breeze that’s often blowing. I know I’m close to the ocean but the salty tang doesn’t make it this far inland. I’m often struck by a strange, stinky-sweet smell coming from the sewers. Mostly though the air smells clean, and of sweet flowers. We picked a beautiful season to move. I send pictures to Maggie to help me identify strange flowers. The wild roses are familiar, as are the belladonna and lily of the valley. Maggie points out wisteria, and I still need to figure out what a certain flowering tree is. It smells vaguely like lilac, and looks like a cross between that and Queen Anne’s lace.

This tree had flowers that reminded me of butterflies

One of my walks takes me to Chestnut Hill Reservoir. It was created in 1870 to supply water to Boston and the surrounding area, but has only been used in emergency situations since the 1970s. I see rabbits, chipmunks, turtles, geese, and swans. I’m most delighted by the chipmunks, which I don’t often see in Washington. It feels very special when I catch the bright red of a cardinal or a flash of blue from a jay, even though I know they’re relatively common out here. A walking path rings the reservoir, and I’m reminded of Seattle’s Green Lake. Initially I assume the Reservoir is bigger, but it turns out it’s only 1 ½ miles around, half the size of Green Lake.

After dropping Jason off at work one day, I see wild turkeys ambling out to the road and a long grove of strange-looking trees. I circle the block and park to check out both. The turkeys are like turkeys everywhere: lumbering idiot birds that intimidate me hugely. I hear their chortling clucks but keep my distance. It turns out that the trees I’ve found is Longwood Mall, the (presumed) oldest stand of European Beech trees in America. The trees are massive and magnificent, their heavy branches sometimes dipping all the way down to the ground before curving upwards again. There are signs all over urging people to treat the trees with respect, and I’m dismayed to see so much graffiti carved into the trunks.   

Turkeys

Beech trees

Later, I go to the Public Garden. It was the first botanical garden in the US, but that’s not why I’m going: I hear there’s a cool cemetery nearby. I walk perhaps a half-mile of the Freedom Trail through the Common to get to the graveyard. The Trail is not what I expected: it’s lined with benches, most of which are occupied by homeless people asking for money. One man sits apart on the corner, shouting the weather report and baseball scores of the day for spare change.

Bluejay

Boston Gardens gate

Toward one end of the Freedom Trail

I walk beyond the beautiful fountain and up the street to Granary Burying Ground. It dates back to 1660, and holds the remains of some of Boston’s most illustrious historical figures. Today, it’s surrounded on three sides by brick buildings. Business people work inside, and some of them have their desks facing out into the little square. On a second floor window, I see brightly-colored paper figures: a nursery or preschool must be there. I visit John Hancock’s tomb: it’s easy to find as it’s so tall and elaborate. It takes me several passes before I find Paul Revere’s resting place: there’s a simple pillar marking him, next to the much smaller (presumably) original headstone. The most common decoration are engraved skulls with wings, although I see some hourglasses and willow trees. It’s shady and quiet here, even though traffic whizzes by the front of the cemetery.   

John Hancock's grave

I love the way they used to attribute graves as the  "property of" the deceased

Some of the graves had their headstones embedded in the surrounding brick wall

Paul Revere's big gravestone next to Paul Revere's little gravestone 

People left stones on top of Revere's monument 

On another day, I walk several miles to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I go past Harvard and MIT, through the hospital district. It’s much faster-paced in this neighborhood, I feel more like I’m in a big city than I do in Brighton. The MFA is staggering in size. The outside is grey stone, with huge ionic columns supporting the classic Greek pediment above the door. I’m tickled to see they are displaying a huge Pride flag along with the American flag.

Back of a garbage truck

Opposing doors on the walk

Interesting street art on the way to MFA

The crosswalks in this neighborhood are intricately designed

Yes

The MFA, Boston

The museum and its collections are just as vast on the inside. I get lost several times and finally give up on the hope that I’ll see it all or tour it logically. I start, by chance, in a small gallery with jewelry. The pieces are dazzling, many of them designer and absolutely encrusted with jewels. They’re grouped by the symbols they share. My favorites are the snakes, the confronted animals, and the medusas. In ancient times, snakes were worn for protection and power.

Medusa

I move on to other ancient art, and my favorite section is on funerary arts. I see mummies, carvings, vessels. Princess Henettawy’s coffin is on display, and it’s from 1000 BC: it’s one of the oldest things I’ve seen. I’m sure there’s a smart way to progress through the galleries to see things in a logical or at least ascending time-period order, but I’m too overwhelmed to figure it out. I wander in and out of hallways, mostly choosing where to walk next based on which room has the fewest fieldtrip groups in it at the time.

Princess Henettawy's coffin 

I like the tongue-in-cheek caption here

One room was visible storage and restoration, and they answered questions via whiteboard messages

I somehow end up in the colonial America gallery, and am delighted to see so many works from my art school text books. The Portrait of Washington (Gilbert Stewart) that was replicated on the dollar bill. The massive Watson and the Shark (John Singleton Copley) dominates a deep-green wall, commanding your attention with its drama and detail. Silverworks by Paul Revere. Paintings by John Singer Sargent. I’m taken back to art school, and god I miss the people and the dedicated time to make art. Working late in the studio, collaborating with friends, the rush that is peer critique and kick in the guts that is instructor critique.

Silverwares by Paul Revere

A reconstructed room of a local wealthy family

Dolla Dolla Bill, y'all

A young boy and his friends kept giggling and saying "Jesus is dive-bombing the crowd!"

Watson and the Shark

This room was the collection of a man who collected art based on its mathematical properties: he used equations to decide what art was the most perfect or beautiful and only collected that (much of it is based on symmetry) 

I make my way to the contemporary art galleries, and love this strange hanging sculpture and some shadow play cutouts. Visitors move quicker through the contemporary art galleries than the historic galleries. Why is that? Is it that it’s easier to digest meanings with the distance of time? That the unfamiliarity of older work inspires more curiosity? Simple sensory overload of the neon tubes and bright colors in the modern galleries? I’ve been looking at art for almost 3 hours, and I’m tired and at my saturation point. But I make sure I find my way to the basement for the current Matisse exhibition. The space is crammed full of people, looking, taking selfies, chatting. To be honest, I don’t get as much from the Matisse exhibit as I thought I would, but that’s mostly due to the massive amount of people who make it impossible to contemplate, and my own over-stimulated nerves. I’ll need to go back to MFA several times before I see it all.    

There is so much culture and art here in Boston. I just have to be brave enough to go out and find it all. I'm glad I have the chance to try. 

Being Seattle - The Goodbye Girl

Jason got a fantastic job opportunity in Boston, so we’re leaving Washington for a few years to try it out.

It’s a huge change. Neither of us have lived anywhere but Washington. It means I have to give up my first museum job. We have to leave our Spokane friends and family all over again, and this time also leave our Seattle people. The logistics of getting two adults and two fussy pets 3,000 miles is tricky, not to mention all our things. I like the idea of a big shake-up, but I’m worried, too.

Finding an apartment from across the continent is even more difficult than we imagined. Boston uses brokers, which means you find an apartment you like, and then pay an agent one-month’s rent to get you the application and submit it for you. I’m sure many of them do more than that for clients, but it seems to us we’re just throwing away several thousand dollars since we are doing all the leg work ourselves. The first place that responds to us and has a unit to rent can’t provide us photos or a floorplan, but they’re happy to take our money. The second place we finally get a response from keeps moving the goal post, even after I’ve sent them money to secure a unit. Their emails are a mess, never responding to the correct chain, and often talking about a third floor unit when we keep correcting them saying we only want a ground floor unit. An availability of April 24 gets moved back to May 1, and then June 1. On the day we are going to sign a lease for June 1, they email again and say the unit will be undergoing maintenance and so not available until maybe the middle of June, but they’ll let us know before June. We have to make some noise to get our deposit back, but eventually do.

Jason’s job can’t wait for him any longer, and he flies to Boston without me to start working. We’re fortunate in that he’s friends with his coworker, so he stays in their apartment. We have to be out of our Seattle apartment by May 1, so I move in with my mom-in-law, Judy, until we can find a home in Boston. I take the pets, a few clothes, and some art supplies to Judy’s. The rest of our pared-down furniture and things fills a small storage unit.

Jason and our puppy neighbor, Mel

Bailey in the jungle

I spend the last days of April packing and cleaning. I’m cranky about cleaning the apartment by myself, and then frustrated at myself for being aggravated. It’s harder to be alone in a new city away from your family and friends, working 12 hour days, and adjusting to culture shock than it is to scrub a toilet. I feel petty for being upset. I go through the rooms, touching the walls and thanking our apartment for four good years as our home. We had some very difficult times there, and some very beautiful ones, too. It was our only home in Seattle, and it saw us through three graduations, five wedding anniversaries, two masters degrees, several jobs, some desperate depressions, a few snowfalls, and dozens of delightful times with friends.

I don’t know when I’ll get to join Jason in Boston, so I spend as much time as I can seeing people in Seattle. Lunch with Kaitlyn. Photos and dinner with Sarah and Amy. More photos with Rachel and Katherine. Each time I see someone, I say “No, no, it won’t be the last time we hang out before I leave” but I’m never entirely positive that’s the case. I meet Christina and her baby, Sebastian, at Alki Beach. Jason and I always loved the groovy, beach-town vibe of West Seattle, and I have good memories of Alki. We visit the Loghouse Museum, a small community museum in a preserved log house. They have a world map where visitors can place a mark to show where they’re from, and I’m delighted that people from all over the world have visited. Maybe if the world is that connected, Boston won’t seem so far. Christina is so logical and scientific, funny in a dry and blunt way. We talk about relationships, motherhood, careers. I hide a small reliquary near the beach for a stranger to find, and it’s later found instead by a friend.

Liz visits from Spokane, and brings her beautiful little family with her. We visit the zoo and the aquarium, snatching little starlings of conversation between playing with Liz and Matt’s young daughter, Lydia. Lydia gravitates toward make-believe wherever we go. The zoo has a little African house, and she mimes a bedtime ritual over and over again instead of looking at the zebras. The aquarium has diving suits and flippers, and she and I spend very involved minutes being fish and mermaids and divers, bringing food back to our home. The real diver and sea creatures are much less interesting to her, and she talks instead about what color fish I am.

A diver feeds fish at the Seattle Aquarium

Lydia's attention makes my heart sing

We feed French fries to seagulls at Ivars on the Pier 

When Liz and I do get to talk, it seems familiar: relationships, motherhood, careers. The big pillars of our lives. I’ve known Liz for 21 years this autumn, but she always has something new and interesting to say to me. We recently started a podcast called Ouija Broads, where we talk about weird things in our neck of the woods. I like hearing the history, but my favorite stories she tells are the personal ones. She recently moved back to Spokane from the east coast, and I feel particularly deflated that she’s come back to Washington just as I’m leaving it.

Selina visits from Spokane as well. She's a constant, and being a military kid knows how to maintain a long-distance friendship. We talk about art and moving, about relationships both romantic and platonic. She's such a feminine powerhouse, such a moving example of how to be a strong, tough, and also delicate woman. 

Kate teaches me how to dye fabric with natural dyes, like indigo, cochineal, and sandalwood. She’s a witch, stirring a bubbling cauldron of colors. We talk about art, process and progress. And about people, oh yes: about people. We talk about the trips we’ve taken, and where we’ll visit next. Something I really like about Kate is that she does the things she says she will. She experiments and tries and follows through. She has her own small business, selling her dyed textiles. I like that bravery. We go on a beach walk with Sarah and her sweet dog Red, and I can't stop smiling at how happy Red is to be disgusting and dirty, rolling in dead flotsam. I photograph Sarah's exhibit at a local gallery, and I'm so moved by her passion and voice. 

With Kate at Montana Bar

My tattoo, Kate's dyed fabric

Red, about to get really gross

I visit Spokane and see family and friends, but it’s not enough time to say and do everything. I almost never feel I put in enough quality time with my mom and dad and brother and sister-in-law and stepson when I’m in Spokane, and it’s just amplified knowing I won’t see them for months after this trip. I try to spend meaningful time with Judy in Bothell, but I feel like I come up short on that, too. I’m shortchanging the people I love most, because they’re the ones who don’t make a fuss even if the dollars don’t add up. I already miss my family so deep I can’t think about it or my eyes well and my throat tightens. My brother grounds me and inspires me in equal measure; my dad shows me there’s no other way to be except tall and strong; my mom is the woman I want to be, so loving and funny and brave. How can I leave them? I break down in tears every time I remember how much physical distance the move puts between us.   

On the drive to Spokane

Daddy, with Gus the dog

I spend time with my Maggie, my first friend in Seattle. She’s my hedgewitch: she knows more about Washington’s plants than anyone else I know. We take walks, and she points out flowers and leaves, telling me their names and any interesting facts she knows about them. Trillium is her lucky flower, gorse is the yellow-flowered bush I see everywhere, and she points out salmonberries and thimbleberries. She takes me to a hidden little meadow full of periwinkle, and we talk while sitting on a log floating in Lake Washington. She listens to me talk about people she doesn’t even know, and with such gentleness and attention.  

Mystery flower and seed pods, which of course Maggie figured out is
a Paulownia tomentosa 

Trillium, Maggie's lucky flower

Becca joins me a few times in Bothell. We look at antique shops, and walk on a floating boardwalk through a wetland preserve. We leave an offering at the Princess of Pike Place's grave.We try on blue lipstick at the mall, I’m too shy to ask for a makeup sample to take home. But Becca has no problem asking for me. She tells me how she probably would not have asked for herself either, but doesn’t have any hesitation asking things for others. I’m grateful for allies like Becca, in things small and large. We talk about ourselves and about other people. We talk about the weird gap that opened between us when she moved back to Seattle after a summer away, and how we’re glad we closed it with time and talking. And we talk about the people we’ve recently felt disconnected from, and whether we can fill in the holes for the friendships to be whole again.        

On the boardwalk with Becca

Adding our offerings

I quarrel with a new but dear friend, and of course it’s about our relationship. About expectations and what can and can’t be given. About wants. About fulfillment. I think we’re talking through things when suddenly he stops talking to me entirely. The rejection hurts deeply, it feels like I’m not worth the hard parts of a friendship. And it hurts that maybe there’s something I can’t fix, that all my acceptance and patience and love aren’t enough.

I quarrel with an old and foundational friend about our relationship, too. About perceptions and words and old hurts and new ones, too. About how “being there” maybe isn’t enough when the other person doesn’t feel your presence. About emotions she can’t express and anger I never healed. This fight shakes me even more, because if someone I’ve known for this long can’t share authentic feelings with me, then how can I expect anyone to?

And I quarrel with a family member. With a woman I care deeply for, but who I haven’t shown that to, enough. This hurts the most of all, because I feel fully in the wrong for this fight, and all my apologies feel too late. It’s a reminder to answer texts even when I’m tired. It’s a reminder to make time for my family above all, even though they’re the first ones to say “If you don’t have time for me, it’s okay, I understand.” It’s a reminder to slow down enough to show my genuine love and appreciation for her presence in my life, and my heart breaks to think maybe I’ve gotten these reminders too late to fix our bond.

Relationships and people. I’ve long been bothered by the (supposed) Eleonore Roosevelt quote, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” I almost exclusively talk about people, it seems. Ideas and events are fantastic, but they don’t hold my interest or focus the way people do. I learn theory best through case studies. I retain history best through personal accounts. I have a hunger and a passion for people. And, honestly, that hunger has turned into a sickening gnaw lately. I love people so much, but I’m so exhausted by them, too. I feel tired and spread thin and diminished, and I blame it on spending too much time on people and not enough time on myself.

Which is actually bullshit. It’s a lazy way of placing blame. If I’m exhausted by people, it’s probably because I’m spending too much energy on non-restorative people. Or things. Or my own thought spiral, an oroborus of anxiety. My roots, and my truth, is that I love people, and I love spending time with people. I need my time alone, too: to draw, to quilt, to edit photos. But those hold no joy for me if I don’t have a person to give that quilt to, to talk art technique with, to share my photography with. I’ve been holding those separate in my mind too long, forgetting they don’t exist in a vacuum, and they’re not competing priorities.   

Small minded. I don’t like that quote because I don’t like thinking I’m small minded. I don’t like thinking I’m less intelligent for not wanting to talk on a cosmic scale. But the longer I sit with it, I think that’s just ego, baby. That’s just feeling badly someone else’s priorities (and quotable quips) don’t match up with your own, and worrying they’re right and you’re wrong. I want to talk about people. So I will. I’ll talk about people because maybe that’s how I bridge those distances. How I keep them with me every day, even though we are 3,000 miles and a lot of time zones apart. Small minded, but big hearted. That’s pretty self-congratulatory, but my ego doesn’t mind.

Jason finds us the most beautiful apartment in Boston. It’s in an old building, on the fifth floor, and full of natural light. It’s been remodeled, but has kept the original charm of beamed ceilings, wainscoting, ornate door mantles. The cost is staggering, even to my Seattle-attuned price-gauge. But Jason is adamant he wants to get me, get us a good home that we look forward to being in. He makes plans to drive our UHaul from Seattle to Boston with his coworker, working in shifts so they can make it in 3 days. I think to myself that maybe I don’t deserve this man as my partner, that I don’t deserve the friends and family that I have. I am surrounded by the most beautiful, brave, strong, smart, vulnerable people. I don't deserve this grace. 

But I’ll gladly spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy.

Bailey, in the UHaul and ready to hit the road

At Lake View Cemetery