28-May-99 Dinner in Cambridge

. .
.
The frame shop called to say that the prints are ready, and I went back to Union Square to get them first thing in the morning. In rush hour traffic Cambridge seemed less enchanting than it had on our previous trip, but I was confident of the route this time. I was so early that there was no possibility of getting more pasta at Capone's. Darn. At least I got to stop off at an Armenian bakery in Watertown before getting all the way home. It looks to my uncritical eye as though the framers did a fine professional job, too.

The Rogers Street bridge is just about complete. There are still fences to put up on top of the parapet walls, but the roadway is paved and it's just finishing touches. I asked one of the construction workers if there's going to be an opening ceremony, ribbon cutting or anything, but she doesn't think so.

Anne had succeeded in getting in touch with her old friend Linda by now, and the four of us, Anne, Linda, Arlene, and I, drove in to Cambridge for dinner with Charley. We parked at Charley's apartment and walked towards Harvard Square, looking for a place for supper.

Charley's apartment is two blocks from where Arlene and I lived when Charley was conceived. It's always a little strange driving home from his place, going past our old apartment. We've walked from his apartment up to Central Square often, but rarely to Harvard Square. Most of the houses were there thirty years ago, but there are a few new apartment complexes and many buildings have been renovated, probably into condos. The old hippie commune crafts supply store, Earth Guild, which used to carry the inkle looms I made, is long gone and there's now an Italian food market in that building.

Linda had been telling Anne and Arlene of her recent adventures earlier in the day, and I got caught up at supper. Linda had just found her birth mother and had been in Florida for a while visiting and getting to know her biological relatives. In the end she was extremely glad her birth mother had decided to give her up for adoption. There were five children in the picture, three given up for adoption and two raised by the birth mother. Linda says everything she had been told by the adoption agency about her birth family turned out to be untrue -- her birth mother had just lied about it all.

Anne and Linda were meeting someone by the Harvard Square theatre to see Election, and we left them off and walked back to Charley's place.