The city looked and felt differently from when we last met. In a year fraught by a pandemic, Boston had been forced to update its cobblestone-weighted history and forge a new way, like the rest of the world. Yet spring still returned, and as we made our way back to celebrate our 10th and 11th wedding anniversaries, it felt like there was hope in the cool air. Happily, we would find Boston filled with blooms and sunshine and all the typical accoutrements of a proper new season, because no matter what happened in the previous year, spring would do her song and dance.
As we pulled out in Andy’s least favorite car ever, it felt strange and wonderful to be going somewhere at last. The drive was a sunny one, with a perfect blue sky studded with the occasional white cloud, and we arrived to blooms and blossoms along every path.
The Southwest Corridor Park – our main route and access to the condo – had just begun its season of glory, with everything from the lowliest geraniums to the American dogwoods that flowered even before their foliage deigned to peek through.
Even more dramatic was this yellow-hued bleeding heart, whose pink flowers danced thrillingly against a sea of chartreuse leaves, the combination a pretty little marriage of color and light – a celebratory pas de deux emblematic of all the love that was in the air.
There was music too, sweet music that called to us from memory, and a soundtrack largely culled from the work of Cole Porter.
You do something to me
Something that simply mystifies me
Tell me, why should it be
You have the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live ‘neath your spell
Do do that voodoo that you do so well
For you do something to me
That nobody else could do…
Andy graciously provided the new fragrance that will mark a new memory: Tom Ford’s latest Private Blend ‘Soleil Brûlant’ – an exquisite spring and summer scent that has already carved out a place in my cologne-loving heart.
After a largely gray and drab winter of discontent, the colors and sights of Boston were again a wonder to behold, and seeing them after such a long time away imbued them with an even greater freshness and potency.
We dressed for our anniversary dinner at Mistral – which was the only restaurant from our original trio of wedding restaurants that remained open. A sad commentary on what the past year has wrought, but we focused on the magic of Mistral and had a lovely dinner.
Andy tried out their Tahitian sidecar while I opted for this lemony fresh mocktail. We looked around at the other diners and felt a jolt of normalcy. Simply dining in the vicinity of other people was tinged with a giddy nostalgia.
Pistachio chocolate profiteroles capped off a wondrous meal, and I thought back to our very first dinner as a married couple eleven years ago. Many memories had been made since then, and we carried all the memories from the ten years before that, when we first met in 2000. They felt both far away and impossibly recent – the ticking of time a constant and unnoticed rhythm that fades into itself unless marked by something memorable, like this return to Boston.
It was a very sweet ending to our first day back…
{Fragrance of the Evening: Portrait of a Lady.)
