My roommates weren't exactly tiptoeing. Had it been a cold winter morning, they'd have crept around in the dark, hushing each other in deference to their still-slumbering friend. But it was a gorgeous summer morning, and as they hustled around filling coolers, loading up beach bags and digging through cupboards for suntan lotion and extra batteries for the radio, they demonstrated no appreciation for the early hour.
"Sure you don't want to come with us?" one of my roommates asked, pulling a T-shirt over her bikini. "It's a perfect beach day."
I declined the invitation with a grunt and poured a cup of coffee. Van Morrison suddenly blared from the stereo in the living room. As I wandered back to my bedroom, I heard a loud thwack in the kitchen, where another roommate was repeatedly smashing a five-pound bag of ice on a countertop.
Finally I heard my friends shout goodbye. The door closed and the apartment was quiet. I sat in bed, drinking my coffee and looking out the window into the back alley. I imagined my roommates, ferrying their heavy loads a few blocks to wherever they'd stashed the car overnight. Soon they'd be on the Southeast Expressway. Soon after that, they'd be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic at the Sagamore Bridge.
Not me. I love the beach as much as anyone, and there are times when even the hassle of getting there has its appeal. I was sure that my roommates were, at that very moment, feeling giddy at the prospect of getting out of the city and joining the masses for a day by the sea. Usually I'd be with them, high on the smell of cocoa butter and the sounds of the Top 40 blaring on the car stereo. But today I would be alone. I would stay in the city, where nearly a million people live and millions more come to work, and be all by myself.
I'd discovered what amounts to a best-kept secret right after college, when I moved to Boston. Without a lot of extra money, I'd been occasionally unable to join the steady procession that leaves the city on summer weekends. At first I'd felt sorry for myself, bumming around the Back Bay, poking my head into nearly empty stores and cafes that, during the week, had pulsed with activity. But my loneliness soon subsided, giving way to something that felt like solitude. And it occurred to me: I have the city to myself.
Out on the Charles River for a run down to the Esplanade, I'd find the footpaths empty. Over at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or the Museum of Fine Arts, I'd find only a docent or two at the front desk and a couple of wan art students sketching in front of some great masterpiece—each of us left alone to our reverie. There were empty stools at Michael's Waterfront in the North End, where people are usually packed three-deep at the bar. I could travel the Green Line from Government Center out to the Riverside stop in Newton and back with a whole trolley car to myself, stopping for a movie at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline on the way back without having anyone behind me kicking the back of my seat.
Now, as my friends sped Capeward, I was an old hand at finding quiet empty spaces amid the urban landscape. Today I would walk the Emerald Necklace, Olmsted's famed parkway, out to Arnold Arboretum with a book. There I would find a shade tree at the top of one of the hills looking back to the Boston skyline and spend the heat of the day reading and napping. As I walked back, the setting sun would set the tops of buildings ablaze in orange light. Later, I would stroll down Commonwealth Avenue to Boston Common and up over Beacon Hill, past darkened townhouses whose occupants had all escaped the city for a weekend by the seashore.
It's been many years since I was a young bachelor living in Boston, but I still look forward to the quietude of summer. As a New Englander, I love all four seasons, and winter is my favorite. But summer, with its long days and warm temperatures, seems like an easier time to do things and go places. Though it is a time when many people take vacations, it is not necessarily quieter or slower than the other seasons. Quite the opposite, in fact: we tend to cram the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day with activity, trying to squeeze in every bit of fun we can before the first frost. The lazy, hazy days of summer seem harder and harder to find.
With a seven-year-old daughter, I understand the excitement that summer instills in kids. When it stays light outside until well past bedtime, when you walk around in light clothing without having to worry about the sting of cold, it fills a young imagination with a sense of limitless possibility. For my daughter, the soundtrack to summer is a symphony: the clatter of roller coasters, the crack of fireworks, the clamor of children as they splash in the pool. For me, the music of summer is softer but no less enthralling: the sound of insects in the field, the rustle of leaves signaling an oncoming thunderstorm, the stillness of a city suddenly emptied of crowds and traffic.
So this summer, my family won't plan any great excursions. At a time of great national insecurity, with the economy still tanking and gas prices getting higher by the day, it seems the perfect time to stay at home and look for adventures closer at hand. My daughter, I'm sure, will be astonished when, instead of taking her fishing or on a long bike ride in the country, we whisk her off to Boston or Springfield to roam the quiet city streets, to look at buildings that seem to have been put there just for us to see, to visit the museums and galleries that we always talk of visiting but never do. This summer, we'll hop the train to New York City to see the city while the beautiful people have all bugged out for the Hamptons. My daughter will not exactly know why her dad, so rarely one to seek urban excitement, has a sudden appetite to be where the action is. But I know she'll come away from the experience with a broader appreciation for the big city, seeing it not only as a place of endless energy. She'll know that even cities take a little time off in the summer.
