Boston Is

Boston is beautiful the first time you see its skyline from the Mass Pike ramp, and every time you see it after that too.  It’s crisp and cool, cobblestoned and historic, a metropolis for the young with a life story older than Paul Revere.  

Boston is an invigorating jog along the Charles by day or a scenic stroll by night.  It’s the posh shops of Newbury a block away from the landmark churches of Copley Square.  It’s the crooked streets and eerie cemeteries and old-town ambience of the North End. It’s all the college students living in an eclectic collection of colored houses on Mission Hill.  It’s the esteem of the Financial District next to the bustle of Downtown Crossing next to the enigma of ivy-veiled brick houses on Beacon Hill.  It’s a tapestry of storied neighborhoods and locales, each with their own history and subculture.  It’s stone cold outside, but with a warm hearth inside.  It’s the definition of New England. 

Boston is a sleepy Saturday morning watching TV with five roommates who don’t need to talk to enjoy each other’s company.  It’s retelling (or piecing together) last night over a strong cup of coffee, maybe over someone’s stash of Starbucks grinds if it’s a really good story.  It’s a stockpile of inside jokes that don’t make sense in conversation with anyone else.  It’s the collection of quirky posters and far-fetched memes I’ll never understand decorating the boys’ apartment like a modern art museum.  It’s the Tremont Street Raiders and the Sticky Six (though there are nine of us these days).  It’s getting all dolled up for the Symphony.  It’s a list of bizarre nicknames following increasingly bizarre stories.  It’s knocking on a friend’s door to say hello and staying hours longer than you meant to.  

Boston is an immeasurable number of bear hugs when you’re coming or going.  It’s a geographical coordinate that keeps us together in spirit when we’re separated by zip codes and state lines and oceans.  It’s a conglomeration of people from as far away as Australia and as local as Bridgewater, or as foreign as Kentucky and as familiar as Brooklyn.  It’s a communal agitation toward the T after midnight.  It’s a collective reverence for J. P. Licks.  

Boston is too much Dunkin Donuts coffee and not enough Starbucks.  It’s a convolution of streets named with no rhyme or reason, except for a small alphabetical grid in Back Bay.  It’s Newbury instead of 5th Avenue, a ‘theater district’ instead of Broadway, Symphony Hall instead of Lincoln Center, and the Common instead of Central Park.  It’s conservative and commemorative.   

Boston is, like anything else in the world, a subjective experience.  It’s a Chicken Cordon Lou from Chicken Lou’s for someone like it’s a Sunrise at Pavement for the next guy.  

Boston feels like home.  It’s manageable.  It’s got plenty of foliage, for a city.  It’s full of vibrantly blooming lives, too.  It’s welcoming.

Boston is not home, though, and never will be.  It’s just a love affair that I’m having, and a tragic one at that.  I’m enamored with everything about Boston: the city, the people, and the lifestyle.  Part of why I love Boston so much at this point in my life is the imminent certainty that I will never settle there.  Right now there’s so much to explore and test and find, but that all will run out one day.  In the end, I know New York is the city for me.  And so Boston means much more to me right now.  

What was I thinking then, running away to a beautiful, irresistible city for college, meeting the most extraordinary people, and having the time of my life, for a limited time only?  Well, Boston took me by surprise.  I had no idea I could fall so in love with it after growing up in New York.  Now my heart aches all over again every time I have to leave.  This love affair is indeed a tragedy.  It’s not the Romeo and Juliet type of tragic, although it certainly feels that way at times.  No, I know we’ll move on from each other in the end, Boston and me.  We’re closer to a 500 Days of Summer tragedy.  Boston is the experience of a lifetime, but with an expiration date circled on the calendar.  There will be bigger and better things one day.  For now though, I don’t look so far ahead.  There’s a commute into Manhattan waiting for me, but for the moment I’ve still got my eyes on the Green Monster, the Citgo sign, and the Boston skyline.