Here's one of the days when happy endings seem like a foregone conclusion. The ice is breaking up over the Charles in gorgeous fractals. Café Pamplona serves Spanish tortilla. Brainy youths walk around talking to each other about Hebrew and Math and the Baldini sisters, one of whom butchers fish for Legal -- that was the exact word this youth used, who I overheard talking about the Baldini sisters.
Do you love Boston, I was asked recently. I hemmed, I hawed, and I answered that I like it. I like it more and more, such that falling in love seems likely but not certain. Today, though, I've been lofted by a potent gale of breathtaking infatuation, to which the L-bomb seems the only possible response. Love. There, Boston, I said it. Love love love love love love. And I mean it.
Here's one of the days when everyone I meet seems brave and beautiful. I know a girl who loves Boston so much she wants to have twin girls so she can name them Wellesley and Waverley. Okay, let's not get carried away, but still: the immutable fact is that it's 60 degrees in Boston on 30 January 2013. Did you hear that? Twenty thirteen. I know it's arbitrary, but this year has a different air than the one I just lived in, a different smell. It fits better in the sleeves and in the shoulders. There is a manageable number of people who I know well enough to learn, say, what they want to name their twin girls. Gentle reader, I'm naming mine Georgia and Wren. People are good. Christ plays in ten thousand places. Here's one of the days when the world begins.
