July 18, 2015
It was a Saturday morning. The baby woke up and usually I would be the one to get our daughter. But this morning, Bryon told me he would get her. I laid in bed thinking it was nice. A lazy morning in bed is a rarity.
It didn’t last long.
5 minutes later Bryon came into our bedroom and asked that question-
“Hey, do we have anything planned today?”
I knew exactly where he was going with this. He had spent the last 24 hours looking for a used rowing machine on craigslist because he wanted a fancy one without paying the price for one new.
I respond with an un-phased “where did you find a rowing machine?”
“I found one in Arlington.”
This peaks my interest. Being a native of the Boston area, I knew he meant Arlington, Massachusetts. And I am always up for an adventure and I love Boston.
“So if we go to Arlington, is there any chance we can go to Boston? I want to take our daughter on the Swan Boats.”
The Swan Boats are a Boston institution after all.
Bryon assured me that since he couldn’t pick up the rowing machine from the seller until 5 pm that there would be plenty of time to go on the Swan Boats.
So off to Boston we went. We stopped for breakfast at Chick-Fil-A in Chicopee, Massachusetts.
We arrived in Boston and we parked at Alewife and took the Red Line to Downtown Crossing.
I love my daughters impression of her first subway ride.
A perfect summer day in Boston. Bryon and I decided that we wanted our daughter to know both Boston and New York City when she got a little older. I wanted to do a trip to Boston in the summer and I wanted to take her to a Red Sox game in Fenway Park. Bryon said he wanted to bring our daughter to New York City at Christmastime.
This ended up being our only trip to Boston together.
That face.
Bryon always loved wearing a Pawtucket hat instead of a Boston hat. He loved that only true baseball fans and true Red Sox fans knew that the “P” stood for Pawtucket.
(For all you non-baseball fans, Pawtucket is the minor league baseball team affiliated with the Boston Red Sox. They are located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.)
We went to get the rowing machine at around 5. The machine was a bigger model than advertised and we struggled to fit it into our Suburu Forrester. Luckily we were able to take it apart and get all the pieces in. Bryon was thrilled because he would have been willing to pay more for this model.
Just in case anyone is wondering, it isn’t the model that Frank Underwood uses on House of Cards. Bryon told me once that it is model lower than that.
Bryon and I joked that the guy we bought the rowing machine from was the Boston version of his brother because the houses look the same as the ones in his brothers neighborhood. Also, the guy we were purchasing the rowing machine from had two sons the same ages as Bryon’s nephews and one even had the same name.
The only difference was that Bryon’s brother does not have much hair and the guy we bought the rowing machine from had a ponytail. Bryon was really good at reading people and he said that the guy still had the ponytail to show the world that he was still a non-conformist even if he sold out to corporate America. Bryon always made me laugh.
The rest of these photos (courtesy of Facebooks “On This Day” feature) were taken back at home. Most days I am content with my daughter being my only child. Even if I were to fall in love again, I will be 39 this summer. I am not sure I want to go through the sleepless nights again. And the pumping.
But then I look at these photos of my daughter and then I feel a twinge of sadness that she will be my only child.
Running Forward...My Way 