Daydream believer

status check - Flushed. Warm. Roasting.
background ambiance - Phones rigning

V here, reporting once again from directly below the air vent in the midst of Sauna Country. The pairing of my common sense and the warmer (this is relative) weather outside has made me wisely avoid wearing sweaters or other particularly warmer clothing whenever I find myself at this computer. But today, the sleeves on my (relatively lightweight) turtleneck are pushed up to the elbows. No one can see that I've rolled up the legs of my jeans (and feel like Huckleberry Finn as a result). And it's still so damn hot.

Normally, I can battle through the heat - better than no hot air at all, right? But it's Friday, it's mid-afternoon, it's warm. Of course I feel ready to curl up under this corner desk and take a nap.

The mid-afternoon doziness has prompted this little stream of memories to start flowing through my mind. Really random things I haven't thought about in awhile, but all thinly linked to something going on or on my mind. After trying to block them out for awhile, I finally decided to just give myself a little time to dwell on them and then get back to waiting for calls from people who don't want to call me.

It all started as I tried to remember if I'd forgotten anything for this weekend at home. I always wind up forgetting something stupid - contact case, cell phone charger, driver's license - and realize it once I hit, say, the I-93 onramp.

So as I ran through my mental checklist (pleased to note that I think I remembered everything for once), I started thinking about the trip and the moment when I round the 93 bend and see my first glimpse of skyline. Which, inexplicably, made me try to remember my earliest memories of Boston.

Before the Vermont move, my family would sometimes forgo the whole train route and drive from the North Shore into the city for our various little family events - Disney on Ice at the Garden, a Red Sox game, whatever. I only have scraps of memory of the actual events, but I vividly remember this small tunnel on the highway somewhere near Lynn. As my inner child remembers it, before the tunnel, Boston was nowhere to be seen. But if I closed my eyes and held my breath during those 15 seconds were were underground, we'd come out of the tunnel and see the skyline spread out before us. I became convinced that if I didn't go through the routine, Boston wouldn't appear.

Granted, at that point, you could have told me any big building was part of Boston and I'd believe you. Which, I assume, is what my parents did to get me to stop asking if we were there yet. "Yep, sure. Here we are. Boston. Another half hour before we get to the part of Boston we want to be in."

I can recall the bright light that poured through windows at Mass General as we took my great-uncle there for treatment or checkups - I remember thinking that these were city windows, because they were big ones. Little towns, little windows.

I remember the Children's Museum and a huge telephone that was there. I was fascinated by the damn thing.

I remember parts of what I think was my first Red Sox game ... I believe they played Detroit, and I sat with my parents and my uncle on the first base side of the park. A man several rows back caught a popup foul ball with one hand - which I found terribly impressive until I looked back later and saw him wincing as he cupped that hand with his other.

I remember walking from Kenmore to Fenway for another game - a later one - as my father recounted the crowd at games when he was younger. On one occasion, the crowd streaming toward Fenway was so thick and pressed against each other, he said, that he was just picked up, squished between the shoulders of two tall men, and carried down a set of sidewalk stairs. His feet never touched the ground. And as he told the story, by those stairs, he swooped down, firmly grasped each of my arms, and carried me down the stairs, me laughing all the while.

If my memory serves me correctly, that was the first time I decided that I loved Boston.