The Boston Marathon is intoxicating. For a long weekend, an entire region merges with a sporting culture, the two intermingling into en experience like no other. Sure, you’ve done a big city marathon before, and, sure, you’ve been to many a world class metropolis, but Boston on the five days surrounding the third Monday in April creates a unique melange of culture, history, athletic dreams, and the hope of spring.
Friday evening, barely an hour into our stay, Cheryl and I met with my sister Leigh, her husband Craig, and Pat and Joan, friends from Gig Harbor. Craig owns the largest online telescope store in the country, with the physical store in Oceanside, CA. They;d been in NYC for a few days at a national astronomy consumer show, nearly half his employees coming with him, along with a large collection of prosumer star gazing equipment. SInce they were “in the area” (a concept which has a different meaning on the two coasts), at the close of the show, they flew up to Logan, rented a car, and toured Marblehead for a day.
Pat was back after not finishing the marathon last year; not his fault, of course. And Joan had her own demons to excise. She’d been inside the Prudential shopping mall at the finish line, heading in to meet up with Pat, when the blasts shattered her day. Confusion and fear ruled the roost, and they needed to return to a sense of normalcy.
We all met at the Beehive, a double decker supper club with jazz at 8:30, and fusion rock at 10. Dinner was Mediterranean moderne, with an extravagant hummus plate getting licked clean of its tabbouleh, baba ganoush, beets, pita slices, cucumber yogurt, etc, etc. Then a brisk walk half a mile home home to our hotel. Craig had learned how to flow with the traffic while in NY, enjoying crossing whenever it looked safe. In NY, though, the streets are all in a grid, so there are only the four cardinal directions to watch out for, and the traffic so choking it’s pretty easy to see when and where it’s safe to cross. Boston, at least in the original downtown, features streets which started as walking paths, crossing every which way, totally random in the angles and numbers with which they meet. Couple that with the freeway underneath sending out random exits and entrances, and it might pay to cross only with the light?
So when I saw Craig heading out against the red on Tremont, I decided to try a little sprint. No cars were injured in the attempt, but I somehow managed to trip on my toes, and go flying face first onto the harsh sidewalk concrete. Cheryl, whom I’d been running past, shrieked. I was lying there, moaning, taking stock, a little embarrassed and winded, with a strange pain in my abdomen. She’s constantly worried I;m going to kill myself again, and with good reason, I suppose.
I picked myself up, insisting I was OK, except my innards felt a little off.
“Maybe I ruptured my spleen?” I ventured. “Or maybe it’s just my stomach was so full, things got a little jostled in there, and there was no room to maneuver?”
In any event, my pants were ripped in several places, my jacket dusty, and my precious horse chestnut in the pocket a little scratched, losing its distinctive deep brown sheen. Several years ago, I’d found what I would call a “buckeye” somewhere, put it in my coat pocket, and kept it there ever since. It reminds me of my childhood.
In Cincinnati, when we were pre-teens, my agnostic/atheist parents thought going to church every week would be good for us, Leigh and I, but were unwilling to actually go to services themselves. I was an acolyte and choirboy, and still found some solace, if not actual truth, in the Episcopal traditions. Most Sundays, we’d walk the mile or so through a verdant neighborhood to All Saints’. At the right time of year, we’d find the sidewalk furrowed with buckeyes, those dark brown nuts with a light beige “eye” puckered in on one side. We loved to rub them on our noses, shining them up, and just stare at their perfection. My buckeye now was tarnished, scratched from Boston’s decaying infrastructure.
Since buckeyes only grow in the lower midwest and southeastern Great Plains, I think what I have is actually a horse chestnut, which looks remarkably the same, Aesculus hippocastanum vs A. glabra. In any event, it’s a deep emotional connection to my childhood, which nobody else seems to understand except me.
(To be continued)