Lunch in Boston

When my daughter Llara visited me in Geneva, she would come to my office. I wore a business suit, she would be in jeans and I would treat her to lunch at one of the UN alphabet organizations, ILO, WIPO, HCR, ILO, or ITU cafeterias. Today was a role reversal and when I showed up at her office at the Mass. Board of Higher Education. She wore the business suit and treated me to a taco salad.

As I used to be pressed for time, this was her turn to be pressed. I choose to walk back to the place I am staying to enjoy my former city starting with Boston Common. Each step was like renewing old acquaintances: the Shaw Civil War memorial, skaters on the Frog Pond, The Ducks from Make Way for Ducklings still waddled in bronze. The tiny suspension bridge where my friend Susan and I fed ducks on a Christmas Eve before church. The swan boats weren’t there of course, but George Washington’s statute still stood tall. All squirrels on the Common are obese. I saw one with an entire bagel.

I continued down Newbury Street noting that there were less consignment stores then before. There was the time I was tempted by a $400 mink coat that must have gone for at least $3000. However, my anti-fur ethics over-ruled. Yet in Geneva whenever I see the poster with a fox cub saying "Your mother has a fur coat? Mine lost hers?" I remember the temptation, which keeps from a total-holier-than-thou attitude.

I had forgotten the beautiful churches with architecture that would be at home in any English city. One church had a plaque asking if people were looking to regain a sense of spirituality. A group of students photographed it for the last line, "then get your ass back to church."

If I were ever to live in a US city again Boston or Maine would be the place. My nephew visited from California this week and the fact that I once lived within walking distance of eight colleges and four major hospitals, the Boston Symphony plus a museum or two or three or four, he found amazing. I found it a part of my past that every now and then becomes my present.