Old Haunts

Almost nine years ago, my oldest daughter Hannah was born in Massachusetts.  As much as I would like for her to be a Southern girl, she’s a Yankee by birth.  She lived in the Boston area for a year and a half before we moved to Nashville.  Hannah doesn’t remember her time in Boston, but I do.  It was a tough time for Hannah’s mother and me.  There aren’t a lot of churches in Boston, and the only one to which we felt drawn was 45 minutes away—a tough commute with an infant.  We never had more than a handful of friends at any one time there, and almost all of them were people we knew from college.  I don’t know how you make new friends in Boston.  We never figured it out.

Having a baby is a wonderful gift, but it’s a hard thing to do when you’re not able to share the experience with anyone.

Between the social isolation, the medical problems, the bleak weather, and an income that didn’t come close to matching our expenses, we suffered in Boston.  I loved my job there, and Hannah was a delight, but there were many days where despair took hold.  After two years of struggle, we left, heading back to Nashville, where the weather was great, living was affordable, and we knew we had friends.  The move was a retreat, but that’s what makes sense when life is untenable.

I spent this past weekend in Boston.  My job gives me the chance to travel from time to time, and when I was invited to speak at a conference in Boston, I decided to stay a few extra days.  I hadn’t done much of the tourist thing while I was there seven years ago.  I was too busy trying to survive daily life.  Perhaps my life had moved far enough away from Boston that I could enjoy the city now.

This weekend I walked the Freedom Trail for the first time.  I attended a Boston Pops concert conducted by fellow Furman University alum Keith Lockhart.  And I wandered the streets near Harvard Square where I used to live.  Being back on those streets was a bittersweet experience.  I was reminded of those bad times, of a relationship stretched almost to breaking, of a constant sense of failure in that relationship.

But I was also reminded of my favorite memory from those days in Boston.  On Saturday mornings, come good weather or bad, I would often let Hannah’s mom sleep in.  I would set Hannah in her stroller, bundling her up to her eyeballs if necessary, and wander through the streets of Cambridge.  Here in Nashville, there’s not much point to walking around the neighborhood on a Saturday morning—it’s just street after street of the same houses.  But in Cambridge, you could set off in any direction and be surprised by what you saw.  The houses, the shops and restaurants, the people on the streets.  It was never a dull morning I spent with my little girl navigating those cobblestone sidewalks.

I wouldn’t trade those Saturday mornings with Hannah for the world.

Walking those streets again this weekend, I realized that not all my memories of Boston are dark ones.  When I think of my time there with Hannah’s mother, I’m sad at the opportunities we missed to enjoy the city, and I’m sad that the hope we had for a better life for the two of us was ultimately not realized.  But I have other, happier memories of Boston—memories that belong to me and Hannah, and ones that are all my own.  Coming into my own as a teacher for the first time.  Having dinner with a few of my students in the freshman dining hall, a place straight out of Hogwart’s.  Helping Hannah learn to walk and climb in one of the many nearby parks.  Watching my dad, who died just after we left Boston, laugh and smile with Hannah, his first grandchild.  He loved babies, and babies loved him, with Hannah no exception.

I can’t forget the hard times, but I can choose to celebrate the good times.  Those two years are not just part of my story; they’re also the start of Hannah’s story.  Thank you, God, for the measure of peace I now feel about that season of my life.  I think I’m ready to share more of my memories of that time with Hannah, and to celebrate with her experiences she only knows from photos. She asked me this week when we talked on the phone if I would take her to Boston one day. I think I will.

Image: “The City Slows,” by me, Flickr (CC)