Shining moments

Dec. 5, 2007
The Boston Globe had a headline today: "Our Minnesota wish list," and they write about inheriting Minnesota transplants Big Papi (David Ortiz), Randy Moss, and Kevin Garnett. About Al Franken, they say, "Stuart Smalley should abandon his bid for the Senate seat occupied by Minnesota's Norm Coleman and move to liberal-loving Cambridge, where he could hone his stump speech while waiting along with the rest of us for Ted Kennedy and John Kerry to retire." They also pine for Paul Westerberg of The Replacements, Prince, and Winona Ryder (Really, Ryder?)


I'm staying just across from the Boston Commons, and I can see the big tree wrapped in Christmas lights and the festive, frozen Frog Pond, filled with ice skaters and lookers-on. Beacon Hill is ultra-tony and safe, so I've been able to wander around on my own, watching not to trip over the cobblestone sidewalks or walk in front of the cars winding their way around these tight hills. I'm staying right next to the Old State House, and yes, I've seen many of the JFK, Jr. look-alikes, walking by briskly in navy wool coats and plaid scarfs, clean shaves and dark hair, trim and neat and preppy.

My cabbie the other night said there were more than 60 colleges and universities in the Boston area. Our rowhouse manager tells me that Boston University owns more real estate in this city than any other entity. I said that they must have bought early and often and he said, "No, not really. When you think about their enrollment, and at $50,000/year tuition, and think about their endowments from wealthy alumni, you see how they can afford to acquire all this land, even today."

My daughter and I flew in Saturday and spent a long weekend before she returned to Minnesota and I moved on to my work assignment here during the week. The trip was our gift to her for her twentieth birthday. It was a mother-daughter affair.

We hit this town fast and hard. We hiked the Boston Public Gardens and Beacon Street. We ate sushi in Chinatown and handmade pasta in the North End. We strolled the eclectic Isabella Gardner Museum near Northeastern University and the somber art museums of Harvard. We ate vegetarian at the Veggie Planet in Cambridge and saw a show in Boston's theater district. We navigated our way through the T subway system and caught a terrific poetry reading/jazz trio combo at the Lizard Lounge near Harvard Law School.

We watched the New Englanders closely, and I found her eye noticing things that mine didn't. For instance, we sat near a young Bostonian woman on our flight out, and my daughter leaned over to say, "Look at that rock on her finger." And after walking through Harvard Yard to Church St., she pointed to all the sleek black limousines waiting, with motors running, along the gated fence, and she said, "I wonder how many of the students and professors have drivers bringing them to school." And I watched her banter with the less-monied locals, the repairman and the B&B manager, and her easy way with them all. One told us, in that accent perfected by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Goodwill Hunting or Mark Wahlberg in The Departed, "If you're in the vicinity of Hah-vawd, you should go to Hah-vawd, because everyone should see it once in their life."

The thing is: after all those years of parenting a child, pulling down his hat, wrapping round her scarf, warning, warning, warning them to stay out of harm's way, it is utterly delightful to travel with them as young adults. We stopped into a small art and frame shop in the Italian North End and there a tall, big, and boisterous woman of Italian and Czech heritage warmly invited us in to browse. It had snowed that evening and the snow sparkled in the light of the streetlamps. More shoppers came in and then a large Italian family--friends of hers--stopped by after having dinner at the celebrated restaurant, Giacomo's. The shopowner got more glasses so she could share her bottle of wine with all of us, and she told stories about her father, who for thirty years prior had owned and run this quaint shop. It was a sentimental scene, made only more so when the woman stopped and looked closely at my daughter. "Italian?" she asked. "No, Irish," my daughter said.

"You are just beautiful," the shopkeeper said. "Just beautiful. Look at her, will you," she said to us all. And then she looked back at my daughter again, "Just look at your eyes, your hair."

It was a shining moment.

Then we went off to La Summa, a very modest Italian restaurant owned by a woman who had named the restaurant after her Italian grandmother. There were framed snapshots on the walls and on top of the hostess station. We ordered fusilli with baked eggplant and sweet cannoli and pumpkin gelato. My daughter, feeling big and boisterous herself now, so warmed was she by the tightknit feel of the neighborhood, leaned over very close to me, and I thought she might say with the same kind of shining affection I felt at the moment, "Mom, I love you." But she leaned over real close, her black hair and deep brown eyes twinkling in the candlelight, and tilting her head slightly towards the dark-haired server, said, "Where do all these gorgeous Italian boys come from? I just can't get enough of these gorgeous Italian boys."

Ha, a shining moment indeed.