Returning

We walked for hours. In the night, in the wind. Over damp roads and beneath strings of white lights. Sparkling stars, ten-feet high, dangled over intersections and lit our path as we wandered aimlessly through the city.

We slept until ten. Both days.

We bought fresh bread from a 24 hour bakery in the North End. We ate it in the morning; dipped the doughy center in a sticky sweet jar of jam and dusted the messy sheets with the crumbs.

We strolled through the Isabella StuartGardner Museum. We ooh'd and ah'ed over Rembrandt's Self Portrait. And we giggled at paintings we shouldn't have giggled at. We could have spent all day lifting the velvet sheaths and pointing at the signatures of Washington and Franklin and Marie Antoinette - hiding in glass cases, smudged with fingertip prints.

But, we had to eat.

And so we ate. We spent money we don't have, on food we normally wouldn't dare, in restaurants we never visit. And it all tasted wonderful.

In an attempt to find the fitness center in our hotel, we got locked in a staircase and felt like a sitcom couple, climbing down twelve flights of stairs - hooking tired hands on locked knobs, hoping that they might budge.

We wasted time, wandering through red-ticket stacks in bookstores. Bought books. Bought games. (All on sale, of course, of course.)

He watched bowl games while I read from my stocking-stuffer novels.

It was entirely wonderful.

Coming home now - the bills are here (and bigger.) The Boss is needy and scared to fall asleep (afraid he'll wake and find us gone - again.) And, we all go back to work in the morning. House hunting. Post-Holiday cleaning. Budget balancing. Boss-entertaining-feeding-changing-hugging-loving.

But still. It's good to be home.