Boston vacation, continued

V. Concord and Cambridge

On Sunday morning was the wedding for which we'd officially made the trip to Boston. Actually, it was not a wedding per se, as the bride and groom married in a private ceremony last January, but a party to celebrate. It was out at a country club in Concord on rolling golf greens, and it was obvious as people emerged from their cars whether they were there to play nine holes or toast to Dima and Ahmad. The crowd was very elegantly dressed and seemed to include many people who knew each other well reuniting after a long time apart.

Since I knew the bride from some modest activist work I had done in Boston in the late 1990s--around the issue of humane U.S. policy toward Iraq, ironically enough--and had only met her parents and siblings a few times, I didn't expect to know anyone else at the wedding. We would have felt quite overwhelmed, I think, had a woman with a kind face not plucked me out of the crowd and reintroduced herself as another friend of the bride's from Boston days, with whom I had once gone bike riding. Dima is one of those people with a gift for getting others together, and I began to recall what a lovely person this woman had been. Then we sat down at a table and found ourselves in warm conversation with one of Dima's professors from her undergraduate days at Brown. And when we finally got to our assigned table, it was filled with people who all had been activists in the group with which I worked eight years ago. If Dima has a gift for getting people together in the first place, she also has a gift for hanging onto them over the years.

And over the miles. She herself has lived in New Haven, Aman, and Tokyo since I last had seen her, now relocated to D.C. I knew that she had met her husband when she was living in Tokyo and he was living in Minnesota, and I was eager to hear the full story. Fortunately, the bride and groom supplied it to the assembled company. Indeed, her family put on an impressive show that included funny one-liners and amusing mocked-up newspaper stories from her brother, a touching tribute from her sister, lovely poetry recitation by her mother, and a rich and generous thanksgiving by her father. And the groom's closest friend kept everyone in stitches with his wry remarks on the both the groom personally and life as a Muslim-American today.

Amazingly, Edith sat reasonably well through all this. Perhaps because she was so entranced by a place where ice cream, or rather sherbert, was the first course at lunch?

The lovely bride

Later in the evening--later than our hosts had hoped!--we met up with some fellow academic-parent friends who used to live in Philly but who, sadly for us, moved to Boston this past year. They treated us to a scrumptious Thai dinner at home--the better for toddlers to jump down from the table and run around--before taking us down the street for ice cream. It was great to see them again, allowing us the chance to catch up on all things professional, which we rarely do in the company of other parents, as well as to see their wonderful son, Sam, after a year. He is about six weeks Edith's senior and lost no time in trying to reclaim the ground that he might have lost with her due to the prolonged absence. True to form, Edith remained stand-offish.

Consider their first meeting in July 2005, also over ice cream:


And their reunion last week:

In all fairness to Sam, who may in just a few years be icked out by the suggestion that he was macking on a girl, it should be reported that there was actually a toy car in his right hand in these latter shots, and that he was busy running it back and forth along the step in back of Edith. You know, the old "I'm just playing with my toy car" maneuver...

The walk home from the ice cream parlor was notable for Sam's jumping almost the whole four blocks and for our stopping in on our friends' next-door neighbors, who happen to be my closest friend from high school and her husband. I'd figured this out last December when addressing holiday cards. Small world.

VI. Arlington Center to Newton

Sheets of rain came down all day on Monday, soaking everyone and everything. That didn't stop us from having fun. The previous evening we had reluctantly sad goodbye to our first gracious host in Arlington, Rebecca, and moved two blocks to our second set of gracious hosts, Jenn, Toby, and Gregg. On Monday morning Toby introduced Edith to all his toys and books, as well as to the all-important Eddie, Toby's black-and-white kitty and best buddy. Edith was quickly taken with him and soon was joining Toby in searches for him around the house. His favorite spot is the storage drawer under the crib.

After a leisurely morning in the house, once again enjoying the ease of life with a better-than-equal adult-to-kid ratio, we finally headed out for lunch at a kid-friendly burger joint in Arlington Center. Yummy burgers, and then we dashed through the rain to a maternity center, where pregnant women and new parents can find classes, support groups, essential products, and professional assistance for a range of parenting needs. (We were in search of a bib.) As far as I know, it's a concept unknown in New Jersey. A maternity center, that is, not a bib.

Our next stop was an indoor playspace for children under 6, a concept also unknown in our corner of the world, unless the playspace is attached to a McDonald's. Edith had a great time.

Remember the parachute from elementary school gym class?

Late in the afternoon, we pried Edith away from the playspace and headed over to Newton to have dinner with my aunt Robin and uncle Ken. (You may have noted the absence of proper afternoon naps from this vacation. Edith certainly noted it...) Ken and Robin seemed on remarkably good terms for a couple who has been living for eight months in a single room with one dog, four cats, a guinea pig, no bath or shower (they wash at the YMCA), no cooking facilities (they live off the Whole Foods salad bar), and contractors banging all around them. Aunt Robin gave us a tour of the renovations to their house, which will be beautiful once done but are admittedly extensive. Edith didn't even recognize the space as a home and kept asking to "go back to the house," meaning the one inhabited room, where she had made fast friends with Minga the cat.


For some reason Aunt Robin had felt unequipped to serve us dinner at home, so we went out to a yummy restaurant in Watertown called Not Your Average Joe's. Aunt Robin and Uncle Ken did their best to look unfazed in their attempt to have a civilized meal and conversation with their guests, while a two year old climbed on her parents, rolled on the floor, pushed away all food set before her, announced two successive poopy diapers, and nursed three or four times at the table. I honestly thought it was about par for the course for us in restaurants these days, but seeing it through the eyes of people whose own children left that stage behind 20 years ago but who have not yet embarked on grandparenthood, I could tell that the year with a dog, four cats, and a guinea pig in a 10 x 15' room looked tame by comparison.

One of the play horses Aunt Robin gave Edith for her birthday nibbled at her nose

Alas, the final episode of our adventures will have to wait for yet a third installment, as midnight has struck and I'm feeling on the verge of pumpkin-hood.