Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Summer is wily in its ways, and though the next day dawned in overcast fashion, the sky was light, with no rain forecast until later that afternoon. Acting strangely against knowing better, we headed out into the day without umbrellas, making vague promises and plans to be back for our afternoon siesta well before the rain returned. Famous last words…

The goal of our excursion was to find a ‘festive’ outfit for an upcoming graduation brunch for Suzie’s daughter Oona – when pressed for a more specific dress code, Suzie enlisted the help of her son Milo, who described it as “festive business casual summer night dress code”. In other words, I will wear whatever the fuck I want and everyone is going to like it. Still, it’s nice to have a little goal, especially in the summer, and it gave us purpose as we traipsed through our usual Downtown Crossing clothing haunts.

In truth, any loosely-assembled reason would have worked – the real goal has never been an outfit or an accessory, only a desire to spend time with a friend. We moved through Faneuil Hall then crossed into the North End for an Italian lunch as the clouds rolled in. Many a fun meal has been had in the North End, and I remembered dinners with Mom, Chris, Suzie, Kira, and the twins. Summer leans into nostalgia, even if it’s not my usual province. 

We finished lunch and managed to make it all the way back to Arlington, where we pushed our luck and browsed along Newbury Street as the clouds darkened. As we reached Mass Ave to turn around, the rain had arrived. We went store by store, starting with Muji, pausing at Uniqlo, and taking our make-do siesta at the Mandarin Oriental lobby. We wound our way through the Prudential Center and took one final break at a coffeehouse near the condo, before making a run for dryness and warmth. 

Kira promptly took a nap when we got back, and I did my daily meditation. Soon it was time for a later dinner, and we headed out into a calmer night. A lighter dinner of small plates from SRV right round the corner proved the perfect culinary ending to our weekend. On our way home, this rabbit posed for a picture. 

It had been a largely rainy weekend, and there was something healing in that. Without a bombastic and sunny reason to be out on an endless city stroll, we leaned into stillness and silence. It was enough just to be beside a friend who has also experienced loss, to sit together and breathe together and simply be together. 

There is beauty in the rain that only summer can elicit, and if this is how summer begins in Boston, it’s going to be all right. 

Beneath the full Strawberry Moon, a recent entry into Boston was a wild ride thanks to the lunar madness at hand, but Kira and I needed to kick off summer in whatever fashion possible. That meant dealing with a rollercoaster of weather – from the very finest sunny day that greeted my arrival, to several torrential downpours that did their best to fuck shit up, but summer is happening no matter what form it takes, and we were there to celebrate our friendship and find a bit of solace now since we both lost our fathers in the past year. It’s a different kind of club to which we now belong, and it shades summer differently because that sort of loss, once it begins, doesn’t really end.

Boston laid out its full-moon zaniness with a big-ass Celtics celebratory parade, which apparently was ending just as I was trying to find parking. A sea of people waiting to get onto the Orange Line spilled out onto Dartmouth Street, almost blocking traffic. Luckily there were visitor spots near enough to the condo, as the mass exodus of basketball fans were making their way back to where they began.

Opening the windows in the front of the condo, I let the stuffiness that had accumulated over a few days of 90 degree weather dissipate, then started the window air conditioner and set up a fan to cool things down in the bedroom. These were happy summer practices, and brought back memories of a heatwave during one my first summers living in Boston, as well as the installation of our current AC unit courtesy of Skip during an early BroSox Adventure. Summer memories are often the best memories.

When Kira texted that she was arriving at Back Bay Station, I rushed out to meet her halfway along the Southwest Corridor Park. It was resplendent in full, gorgeous bloom, and as I was bending down to take a few of these photos, Kira arrived and we picked up where we last left off, with perhaps a little more world-weariness to our steps. Kira’s had more than her share of loss over the past few years, and where I would have once filled the silence with my typical silliness and nonsense, this visit I let the quiet simply exist between us. True friendship has always proven itself in the comfort one can experience without filling the silence with words or distractions. We let the flowers speak for us, and they whispered secrets of beauty as a balm and calming background as we returned to the condo and settled in for some mocktail magnificence.

Our dinner plans were a loose hodge-podge of ideas – we started filling up with some cheese and crackers, and I brought the ingredients for a Mexican salad – but we needed a few more items, so we set out on a walk deeper into the South End to find the Whole Foods Market. As we neared it, the sky opened up and a torrential downpour quickly whipped itself into a frenzy of wind and water. The full Strawberry moon was in effect, and we were suddenly trapped as the heavy rain showed no sign of letting up, and we showed no sign of preparation being completely caught without our umbrellas. Consulting the weather report on our phones, it looked like the storms would continue until 8:30, which was much too long to wait it out at a Whole Foods, I donít care if they do have hot and fried food available for purchase. We did have some French fries to wait it out a bit, but when the rain refused to subside, I found a decent deal on an Uber and took it home. Even with that luxury, we were quite wet by the time we got back, and the summer day that had greeted our arrival had turned into a stormy evening. It felt fitting, and sleep is always more sound when rainfall is mumbling somewhere in the background…