A Slice of American Pie: Part 10
Boston on a Heart String

I can almost smell the testosterone. We arrive at our 21 year old son’s second floor apartment in Boston. It’s been two years since we’ve seen Patrick. We have never been to a space that he has created for himself. We have come many miles to reach this point with great anticipation. He answers the buzzer and comes to open the main door with enough metal in his ears to look like a land mine gone bad. He has a full beard, circles under his eyes, a shy smile and is taller than his father.

With visions of his old room at home haunting the back of my mind, we follow him up the flight of stairs in this old brick building on Queensberry Street and enter his world. This must be when parents’ tongues begin the scarring process from biting back comments to offspring. I felt like Japanese tourists, nodding and smiling to someone who spoke another language. No city affords the luxury of generous living space, unless you are in the penthouse and earning millions as a movie star or with drug connections. Patrick was sharing this “cute” little space with one other guy for $1330 US per month, a reported steal. I wondered who had stolen from whom, but kept smiling and nodding.

We shuffled single file into his room, dropping our (luckily very small) bags in a less cluttered space, continued our shuffle to the end of the bed and turned and faced each other in a small opening. We were definitely together in no uncertain terms.

His-bedroom-his-kingdom sported a chrome and blue fairy light theme, embellished with miles of wires appearing and disappearing from a collection of electronic devices that must have boosted the stock of some lucky company. The king-sized bed controlled the bulk of the room. It was covered with a soft sea of pillows and duvets.

It was nearly five years ago that I deposited him at a school in the Berkshire Mountains, having packed up our home and his life into boxes and scattered it all in various directions. I see pieces of it sitting all over now, an odd marriage of childhood and manhood. A counted cross stitch that says “Patrick’s room” is on the door. My sister made it for him when he was born. There are Maori carvings on the shelf, an old map of New Zealand that we made into a clock years ago, a double blue sheepskin rug, a music box from the Easter decorations, our old video camera and a yellow lamp I recently tried to locate. How odd the things that this seemingly unsentimental boy has squirreled from domain to domain.

We meet his roommate who has no piercings and admire the toilet brush that dispenses cleaner. The floor mop has a similar system, squirting liquid to neutralize the city dirt.

We stumble over words and paraphernalia. Father Paul is a fix-it-man from the word “go”. He is already making a mental shopping list, rearranging, tidying, sorting … but it’s not his. Not at all. We sit meekly at the edge of the bed and begin playing video games with Patrick. He always was better than either of us. We order take-out from Wing-It and share the spiced boneless chicken wings and celery in the middle of his bed as we watch a movie on the conveniently located TV.

We jockey for the bed. I offer to split it three ways but he finally retreats to the shorter-than-he-is couch in the entrance way dragging a sleeping bag behind him.

I always thought cities were an eclectic collection of tall building and hurrying strangers. Patrick leads us into the unknown and we huddle behind him, continuing the dazed tourist stance. Role reversals should happen gradually, but he quickly usurps Paul’s role, asserting himself as leader and we meekly and with little choice, fall into the follower position as we start out into the maze of Boston.

He ushers us into the bowels of the city on the underground subway system, paying the toll from his coin collection squirreled for this and laundry machines. Emerging, I am caught off-guard by how residential these tree-lined streets with brick apartment buildings feel, with new, modern sky scrapers in the distance like a painted canvas. There are green parks, flower boxes overflowing, small tidy entrances and the neighborhood stoops where people once gathered on warm summer evenings. It’s a Sesame Street neighborhood. I don’t know if people know each other anymore, but the feel is here. Doormen mark the entrances of more up-market establishments.

And today Boston is on holiday. It’s the Fourth of July and the country is ready to celebrate its independence once again. The flags that covered cars and vehicles after September 11th have sprouted wings and been transformed into a myriad of declarations of pride. They are on clothing, jewelry, billboards, pens, hardhats and menus. It is not necessarily a show of support for the government, as much as it is for the country itself. (One t-shirt read: “I love my country. It’s the government I fear.”) But today, basked in sunshine, it is easier to forget the political pain and turmoil. The party is on the banks of the Charles River and we’re going to join the other half million people for American’s premiere birthday party. It comes complete with the Goodyear blimp, cannon fire, patriotic singalongs, rock and Broadway stars, the Boston Pops Orchestra and is capped with a spectacular fireworks display.

The crowd picnics and waits for hours as dusk lingers. But I am here to celebrate my man child – to see his blue eyes again, hear his voice, and gaze in wonder at the beard that has usurped the baby soft cheeks of years ago. The fireworks begin, drawing applause from the crowd. I see his profile, laughing with friends, at home in this foreign city. I am at home in his presence. It is enough of a celebration to eat take-a ways on a big bed, email photos from one side of the room to the other, tell stories, remember and walk together in step for a short time. We were his tour guide through the early years. Now we step aside and wonder where this young man will lead us next. It is tour enough for me.