Bostonions are decision-makers. While I have always tended to think of myself as fairly assertive and confident in my decisions, I am completely out of my league here.
This realisation began in the lift last week. You know how it goes - you and a stranger get into the lift at the same time and you've got another 10 floors to travel before one of you will leave. You can stand awkwardly, staring at your feet and their feet and the horribly swirly carpet which big chain hotels specialise in, or you can throw in some anodyne conversational starter to make the minutes seem less drawn out and uncomfortable. The weather is normally a fairly safe converational starter. I was on my best behaviour, inoffensive, blandly dressed, and merely said, "It's a hot day today, isn't it." The man looked at me and began a quiet rant: "If you don't know whether it's hot or not, I'm not going to make up your mind for you. You're English, right. Only English people comment on the weather and then ask the person they're talking to whether their assessment of the weather is correct. You need to make up your own mind whether it's hot or not, don't ask me!" And with that, the doors opened and the journey ended. (Note to self: don't use the weather as a conversation starter in a lift).
A few days later I was at church with the girls. Hundreds of people, hundreds of children enrolled at Sunday school, a good sermon, a beautiful white clapboard building near Cambridge Common. As a stranger, I was asked to complete a slip asking why I had attended the service. It's a tough question, and I was tempted to get all philosophical about the rationality of morality and the possibilities of a greater Being, but there were only two possible tick boxes - was I (a) a member of another church community in a different geographic area, or was I (b) church shopping. After the service I asked one of the established church goers what 'church shopping' was - it's shopping around for the religious community with which you feel most comfortable worshipping. But what if you don't know what you believe in, I asked. She explained that very few people in America were atheist (or admitted to it, at least) but that virtually none were agnostic. That church had sub-groups (called committees, but hey! bureaucracy is everywhere) in Buddhist meditation, living with one's Jewish inheritance, a recently formed committee on paganism. They were even planning a big celebration of the Aztec Day of the Dead for November 5th (you see what happens when you don't have Guy Fawkes?) It struck me that it was okay to believe almost anything as long as you believed something - no-one was saying 'I'm not sure, what do you think?' or 'let me think about this a while'.
And then, today, I took the children to have their feet measured. You know the routine - children's feet grow, you take them to a shoe shop every few months, and someone sits down with them and measures their feet - in the really posh shops in England, you get those funky machines that my girls love to stand on which offer an accurate reading of the width and length of each foot and a commentary on their toe shape and arch. Then you work with the shop assistant to find the shoe which best fits your little darling's feet, and the shoe that fits is never the actual size that they measured because of a tersely explained logic that always seems obvious at the time but too complex to recollect in tranquility. So, today off we went to Boston. First step - find a posh looking shoe shop - easy peasy. We found a shop opposite Macys with shelves of beautiful shoes of every shape and size and labels name-dropping designers that I know and those I have never heard of (which says far more about my absence of taste than it does about the authenticity of the label). Next step - go up to the counter and ask if someone is available to measure the children's feet. There is a slight awkward pause, but it's a straightforward question and they say that someone will deal with me in a moment. Me and the girls peruse the shelves. Then a shop assistant comes over, takes us to a bench covered in shoes and pulls a dusty tape measure from a drawer hidden below the display. She asks the girls to take off one shoe each. One? She flops the tape measure around for a moment and announces that Iola is a 12.5 and Maya a 3. Can she help us to find some shoes that fit? She looks surprised - she has, she tells us, measured the girls' feet and told us how big they are. Why would we need any further help?
I'm guessing, in my non-decisive English way, that sometimes, here in Boston, the decision itself becomes more important than the actual knowledge it carries. Personally, I am quite interested in whether someone else thinks that it is warm or, indeed, wants to reminisce about the truly hot October of 1979 or the contasting weather in, say, Outer Mongolia. I'd love to be party to the struggles that someone might be having to reconcile themselves to a belief in God, or otherwise. And I'd really like my children to have shoes which fit their feet rather than just being given a number which offers a vague approximation of what size their feet might be.
The same barista has served me my coffee the past few mornings and he always asks, "And how are you today?" I am practicing a decisive smile and only allow myself to say, "Fine. You?" It's my first step towards becoming Bostonian (isn't it?).
Love it! Keep 'em coming. xoxo
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