City stay

It was a plan three years in the making, though the actual scope of the plan certainly doesn’t merit taking that long to effect.

Three years ago, Rick and I agreed we’re really like to go into Boston for an overnight getaway: see a live theater performance, walk through the Back Bay neighborhood in which I lived during the years between college and marriage, absorb the ambience of city life that we expose ourselves to so little these days.

Boston is only 45 minutes from where we live, and leaving the house and kids behind for one night really isn’t that complicated an undertaking, so it shouldn’t have taken three years to pull this off. We’ve traveled for longer stints of time to far more distance places in those same three years.

But somehow the stars just never aligned: our schedule and our wishes and our budget never intersected at a point where this little trip seemed viable until this month.

And in the three years since we first imagined it, we’d made a critical change to the plan. Perhaps it has to do with my own growth process as a parent and perhaps it has to do with the difference between having kids age 5 and 9 versus having kids age 8 and 12, but at some point not long ago I decided I wanted Tim and Holly to come with us. “We need a family excursion more than we need an adult getaway right now,” I told Rick when we were finally ready to nail down a plan. “They haven’t had enough exposure to city life lately either. Let’s all do this together.”

So that’s what we did, and even though it was only 24 hours, it was a wonderful experience. We ate at Legal Sea Foods, visited the Museum of Fine Arts, saw a performance by Blue Man Group, swam in the hotel pool, and took a long walk through all our old haunts: past my Back Bay studio apartment, through Rick’s college neighborhood, into the Christian Science Center courtyard where we got engaged. “This is where I was conceived!” Tim exclaimed when Rick told him the stone bench amidst flowering gardens next to the famous fountain was the site of our engagement. “Not exactly!” I exclaimed, startled by his mistake. Conceived of, maybe, which is definitely different. But we let it go at that.

Tim thanked us for including him; Holly followed suit when she saw that we appreciated his words, even though I don’t think she had the same mature awareness that Tim did as far as understanding we could have just as easily gone by ourselves. And that was one thing I couldn’t help thinking was better about traveling with them now than when they were a lot younger: with little kids, you spend a lot of time trying to arrange family trips and hoping the kids appreciate it. At this point, we know they do. And they say so.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have taken us three years to execute on this plan, but I’d argue it was worth the wait. We all had a wonderful and memorable time. Simple enough to drive 45 minutes from home for a single overnight? Absolutely. But all the more appreciated for how long it took us to get there.

City mouse, country mouse

Yesterday morning in Portland, Maine, I ran along the Eastern Promenade bike path that parallels Casco Bay. When I turned at the two-mile mark, the loveliness of the view spread out before me made me catch my breath midstride. What a picture-perfect Labor Day weekend. I was running down a slope heading back toward the city, with the Victorian homes of Munjoy Hill rising to my right and moored sailboats bobbing on the sparkling waves to my left. Farther ahead, I could see a ferry sliding into port, and a couple of lobster boats whose proprietors must have been taking a break for the holiday weekend were moored in their rustic splendor aside the dock near the city beach, where a few dogs were taking their daily dip. A preschooler ambled toward me along the bike path pushing his own stroller, reminding me of when Tim was at that same peculiar phase. (We went to Disney World thinking he was big enough that he could walk rather than use a stroller. We ended up renting one merely so that he could push it around.) Other runners passed me; couples with baby carriages walked along sipping coffee. I felt so happy and so fortunate to be in the midst of this scene: exercisers, tourists, boaters, working people, babies, children, pets.

We’ve spent a lot of time in Portland this summer because last spring my parents bought a condo in the Old Port and are generous about letting us use it whenever we’re able to take the trip up. Some of our friends find it amusing that we enjoy vacationing in the city so much, but it’s because where we live is in some ways like a vacation spot itself – secluded and rural – so to me, it makes sense that when we go away, we want the opposite. At home on the farm, we have beautiful views, lots of silence, animals grazing all around us, and the sweet smell of grass growing. At night, we can see hundreds of stars from our own front step. We can swim or row in the pond, and ride our bikes along tree-lined country roads.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that being in the heart of the Old Port is such a novelty to us. On Saturday night, I went to sleep listening to party cruises returning to port and a live band playing at the outdoor restaurant down the street; I woke at dawn to the sound of the seagulls who follow the fishing boats out to sea.

I like all those sounds, and I like seeing neighbors walk past our front door and crowds of tourists and locals filling the sidewalks nearby. I like walking to the general store two blocks away when I’m out of milk, and I like letting the kids go out together on their own for an ice cream cone. At home, we live far from any shopping districts; we have to drive to do any errands at all.

This particular irony is not so new to me. I grew up in this same small quiet semi-rural town. My favorite vacations during childhood were ones where we stayed in the middle of the action, walking to shops and seeing lots of people all around us. I like solitude, but I get all the solitude I need when I’m home on the farm. And since so many of our friends live nearby, breaking the solitude whenever we want to is effortless. On vacation, I like a change: noise and activity and plenty of humanity.

Of course, it’s always good to get home after you’ve been anywhere. Last night after we returned home, I stood outside and looked at the stars once again, hearing nothing but peepers in the pond and a breeze in the treetops. To many people, that would be a vacation moment. To me, it’s home. I’m lucky to live here. But I love getting to experience something different, also.