We've been in North Carolina for a little over a year now. As much as I would like for it to feel like home, it still doesn't. And, as much as I would like to be "over" Boston, I'm not. Not to be overly dramatic, but I still feel like Boston and I were forced to break up. I'm still a little heartbroken. Sometime, I'll reflect on this a little more, but today, I'll focus on our most recent trip to Boston and what a glorious time we had.
Two of our favorite friends, Tim and Jess, got married, and we went to CELEBRATE! We've been around since the beginning of their relationship and wouldn't have missed the wedding for the world. Brad went up a day early and was able to be there for Tim's bachelor party, and I held down the fort until my parents got to Durham for 4 days of Claire-sitting. My sister (who had a few days of break) flew in to hang out with my parents and daughter while I was going to be out of town, but the good news was that she and I overlapped by 4 hours between flights. Yay!
Just like our trip back in March, each day we were there was packed to the gills with visits with favorite people in favorite places. We stayed with our former upstairs neighbor, Anne, which is always a blast. She's one of THE most interesting people I've ever met and is an absolute hoot. It's always fun staying with her, but it is a little hard for me to be in our old building, knowing it's not ours. Such a bittersweet thing.
The wedding was in our church, which is a gorgeous old building (hello, it's Boston) but oh so extremely hot in the summer. It has this beautiful, tall ceiling (that traps all the hot- yes really hot, even up north- summer air) and no air conditioning. We knew ahead of time that it was going to be miserable...because the wedding was scheduled for 12:00 noon. This caused us to ask, "WHY??" The answer made sense: Fenway is, quite literally, right across the street from the church, and there was a game scheduled for 2:00, which was the originally intended wedding time. During games, there is basically no parking for blocks in any direction. Thus: the hardest part of the day.
The ceremony was lovely and so sweet. She looked beautiful, the decorations were so them, and we got to celebrate their wedding with so many of our dearest friends.
Now, remember how the wedding had to be at noon because of the baseball game? The reception had already been booked for 4:00, so we had several hours to kill between the ceremony and the reception. Therefore, we had a multi-hour tapas lunch with friends! Things you do when you're in Boston without kids...
We drove out to Concord for the reception, which was on a farm (the bride grew up on a farm in Iowa) and was SO FUN! Excellent food, great conversations with friends, lots of lawn games and dancing. Could not have been more fun.
The next day, Sunday, was BUSY. Brunch (Mexican brunch...SO YUM) with friends, a quick pre-honeymoon-flight hangout with the bride and groom, Settlers and snacks with Bobby and Karli, church (yay!), brief post-church visit with more friends, and a long chat with our friends who currently live in our old apartment. It was a ridiculously long day but one of my favorites in recent memory.
Monday started off with a long coffee and chat with Sam and Edith, who are natives of Massachusetts, live in the most quintessentially New England-style home, and have lived there for decades. They are full of wisdom and lively conversation. Brad and I both left so encouraged and uplifted. Wish we could hang out with them every week. We lunched with our friend, Elissa, who is just a gem of a human being. She ministers to students at MIT and is on staff with her church. Given that she is one of the busiest people I know, I was thrilled she had a few open hours for lunch with us (at Regina's, of course!). Lunch was entirely too short. We followed it up with cannoli and window shopping on Newbury St. before heading to Cambridge to meet Drew and Hannah for supper at Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage. Great food and conversation. We miss our friends.
We grabbed ice cream before heading back to visit with Anne for just a taddy bit longer before heading to bed; our head-to-the-airport time was 4:30 a.m. Oi. It got us home by 8:00, so I guess it was efficient. Mom and Dad picked us up from the airport, and we headed to Monuts for morning donuts! A very nice consolation prize for having to leave Boston and then (almost) immediately sending my parents on their way home.
I'm so very thankful that the Lord has allowed me two return trips to Boston within a year of our move. I've been grieving our move in a very real and very hard way since we found out that we were moving from Massachusetts to North Carolina (as excited as I was for Brad to get into Duke because DUKE!). I wish I could say it's gotten easier, but it just hasn't. We've found ways to cope and things to like about our new home, as well as new friends. We're so grateful for those blessings and are looking for new things to love about this new city we call home. Despite those things, my heart breaks a little every time I watch a movie or tv show set in Boston or when I find out people we know are moving there or when people ask me if I like North Carolina. It's miserably hard; just as hard as it was last July. It's also really hard for me to wrestle with the fact that as a very Southern girl, it's expected that I'm happier to be back in the South. I get asked about that a lot. And the truth is: I'm just not. (side note: I don't consider the Research Triangle area of North Carolina to be the South, but that's a ramble for another post)
But on a fun, less serious note, when we got home, Claire asked to wear her Red Sox hat and lobster shirt and kept saying she wanted to go to Boston. That's my girl! She's a Yankee by birth, but don't worry: she can drawl like the best of 'em!
No comments:
Post a Comment