Suzy Says

Much like the Duchess of Windsor, she for whom Edward VIII famously gave up his throne and who is quoted as saying “A woman can never be too rich or too thin”, I am choosing to focus on the trivial as usual instead of the chaos around me. Wallis gives me a run for my money in the shallowness department. The Duchess’ personal correspondence during the abdication crisis and WWII mostly centered around fashion and social events, and mine is going to be a wrap-up of my trip to Boston. I’ll leave the current events discussions to those of greater intellectual depth. Though I will say it’s somewhat surreal to be walking up California Street and suddenly find oneself in the midst of police in full riot gear running the other way, making me feel like a salmon swimming upstream and in peril of imminent arrest.

Saturday: Woke up luxuriously late in palatial hotel room to bright sunlight. Took the clean and efficient subway system (known to Bostonians as the “T”) to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The house is a glorious fantasy and looks like a Venetian palazzo. It reminded me of the old Getty Museum, which was a replica of a Herculaneum villa, in the sense that they both are gorgeous houses containing small but excEt art collections. The buildings themselves are an additional pleasure, beautiful jewel boxes holding priceless treasures. And you have to love Mrs. Gardner’s motto, which is over the front door: “C’est mon plaisir” (It is my pleasure). Words to live by. The house, gardens, and art collection are all her personal creations and her enduring legacy.

Saturday night I had Museum Feet, that malady caused only by walking around museums and galleries. I can walk for miles with no adverse effects, but for some reason, walking around museums, which is done slowly, almost always causes Museum Feet. So I decided to eat in the hotel’s restaurant that night. Both Dickens and Emerson were frequent diners there, and it was lovely to be off my museum feet and fussed over by an attentive waiter in such elegant, historic surroundings. I learned that Parker House rolls were invented in that very restaurant, and also Boston Cream Pie, so of course I had to try them. They were, as Mr. Burns would say, eeexcEt.

Sunday: Reading the local paper informed me that jazz legend Dave Brubeck was playing that afternoon. Called and reserved one of the remaining 50 tickets and took the ever-useful “T” to Hahvahd’s Sanders Theatre, which is housed within the wonderful Gothic excess of the Memorial Hall. Digression: I’m sorry, but I love that Boston accent. It kills me when they say “Pah’k the ca’h”. It charms me almost as much as the Edinburgh one.

Brubeck is 82 and the other three members of the quartet can’t be much younger, but they kick ass. It was a joy and a privilege to hear them, and also to see how they interact almost subconsciously after so many years of playing together; how they totally enjoy each other’s performances; how it all comes together. They are truly gentlemen. Brubeck introduced each piece, and one of the most delightful anecdotes he told was of his wife begging him to go on vacation and just relax, not work. They went to Hawaii, and in the middle of the night, he woke up with a new tune in his head and wrote it down. But he dedicated it to his wife as an apology. They have been married for 62 years.

He has a new CD coming out next week and is starting a European tour. That’s the way to grow old.

Monday: Dad’s birthday. A perfect, sunny day and close to 70&deg. I was happy to check my coat at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston before seeing the Impressionist Landscape exhibit. The exhibit was blissfully uncrowded, and arranged chronologically, so viewers could see how the earlier artists had inspired and led to the Impressionists. Included in the exhibit were landscape photographs from the 1850’s and 1860’s, which had a wonderful, dream-like texture. It was the perfect way to honor the day my father was born: he who gave my love of art and beauty. Maybe, in some way, he was there with me.