Tourists: I don’t begrudge them the pleasure they find staring at the colleges and churches. I just wonder – do they lack streets back home? Or do they leave their common sense at the border?
Trinity Street is shorter than my grandparents rural driveway in Poulsbo WA, yet seems to host something like five or six thousand strangers all day, every day, from April to September. Summers in this town are a grind of trudging through impassable, teeming masses of people so I can complete normal errands. Like buying milk.
If I stood aside every time I encounter someone snapping photographs, I would spend my whole life immobilized on cobblestones in the city centre. I would be a statue, not a person!
The crowds won’t even budge for busses, forget cyclists. When I first moved here I didn’t understand all the aggressive bell-ringing, but now I am one of the agitated locals, one hand steering, one on the bell. Not to be mean (though I am often enraged), but to warn the clueless strangers who persist in bumbling into traffic without even turning their head.
My normal routine is to get the heck out of town, preferably out of the country, but this year I am trapped by immigration travel restrictions. Creative solutions are required!
Packing for a retreat to UK destinations more congenial I received email from Satnam requesting my presence at dinner. I was about to decline as I had a date with some robotic flying penguins, but then I thought for a second.
How many invitations have I had in this city? I’ve dined with Satnam and family twice. Don and Barbara five or so times, Sally and Steve about the same. There have been a few scattered other events with locals, and things were more lively when I hung out with students (Jean, Rachel, David & Sarah, all since departed for sunnier climes).
That is it. The sum total of my socializing over six years in this city is less than I would have done in a fortnight back home.
One of the tertiary reasons I left the states? The nonstop temptation to have fun. My Portland house functioned as a community center. My housewarming in Seattle was so crowded I couldn’t even get in the door. When I go back I have almost no time at all to myself, and regard trips to the laundromat as respite. Unless I see people I know at the laundromat as well, which is about a fifty percent chance, no matter which city I happen to alight in.
My life in the states is hectic, filled with people and events and excursions.
When my children were little and I did performances people asked how I managed to get any work done at all, and I always answered I’m an insomniac.This is true, and the first thirty-three years of my life were marked out by large work projects accomplished in the middle of the night and on the run.
The whole thing felt claustrophobic, and I longed for solitude.
Now I have all the time I could ever need. Every day is open, unstructured, without deadlines or commitments, no childcare needed or given, no friends to distract and delight.
What do people do with all of this time? Watch television? I do not understand.
I accepted the invitation and cycled up to enjoy the hospitality of Satnam and Susan, who continue to make an astonishing effort to entertain. They host these dinners all the time; I gave up on this town years ago.
We talked about Seattle, agreeing the scant year and a half or so each of us lived there wasn’t enough. One of the couples at the table offered up scathing critiques of all the things I hate about Cambridge: mostly the hordes of tourists, and the difficulty (twinned with necessity) of cycling. They have a tidy solution: they move to San Francisco at the weekend.
Other complaints include the perpetual Town v. Gown division, river drama, and of course and always, the lack of decent restaurants or grocery stores.
Satnam ranted about all the effort required to assemble the delicious dinner he had just served. I squinted and said Why do you live here again?
He answered To be near my mother.
What a corrective tonic. Would my life be better if I lived in Kitsap County, or even, if I am honest, Seattle? No.
Because all of the details that bedevil my day are superficial. I left my homeland because I want to live in a place where all citizens have access to healthcare and a basic standard of living.
Whatever it takes, whatever it costs, this is where I am staying…. for now.
Happy Independence Day.