Not every walk to work over the Fort Point Channel is a festival of brightly painted pianos and fascinating tourists.    Frequently I see homeless people sleeping on the benches that line the banks of the Channel.  There has been an art display on since spring which has put 17 extra and very artistic benches on the sides of the Channel, but the benches most people choose are the sturdy metal ones that have been there for a while. 
By the time I walk by in the morning most of the benches are empty, but often there will be what appears to be a pile of blankets on a bench.  Many of the people (the "lucky ones") have the thick scratchy blankets used by moving companies.  Some rest their heads on backpacks for pillows.  Some tie their shoes to their ankles so they can rest their feet without waking up permanently barefoot.  Not once in eight months has anyone asked me for spare change or the time of day.  Having survived the night they are trying to pull themselves together for the day.
The colder weather makes me worry.  There are always homeless people who will refuse to go to a shelter, like Boston's Pine Street Inn, because they are required to give up any weapons they have.  They would rather make it on their own, outside, and keep the ability to defend themselves.  They know the routine pretty well.  Saint Francis House opens with warmth and food early in the morning and gives them a caring place to be for the day.  The Boston Public Library offers shelter, too.  But as I sit here playing the game of "I won't put on the furnace until November 1" I find myself thinking of them more and more often.  Tonight we'll throw a log into the fireplace and heat the lavender scented neckwraps in the microwave.  We'll watch the Red Sox win or lose in St. Louis on our big screen television and consider it a tragedy if they don't even up the World Series.  And outside in the cold, men and women I do not know will be wondering if they will see the morning.

Every weekday morning when I come up out of the subway at South Station in Boston, there is at least a fifty-fifty chance of encountering a group of people staring at a map.  They have had their breakfasts at their hotels and are off to explore the city.  Some have just gotten off a bus or a train and are struggling to locate their hotels.  The look of awe and confusion is unmistakeable.  I just love coming to the rescue.

Long a fan of not listening to a thing my mother taught me, I talk to every stranger who will listen.  This morning I found two lovely English ladies inside the subway trying to get to the shopping district.  Upstairs was a foursome from Scotland on their way to the Freedom Trail.  While I am not so hot with maps myself, I do know my city, and can point and nod with the best of them.  What I hope I can also do is communicate my excitement at living in such an amazing place.  I do love Boston.  When Himself popped the question lo these many years ago I told him "fine".... as long as he was willing to leave New York and come back home.

New York is exciting, but it overwhelms me.  Ditto London, Paris, and a bunch of other world class cities which I have visited and found fascinating.  This is home.  The history of the place, the red bricks, the sports teams, all of it, are dearer to me than I used to realize.  And every now and then we have happy surprises like brightly painted pianos on the way to work, or AMAZING finishes to Patriots and Red Sox games on the very same night.

It's an eye-opener to be reminded that people travel to Boston from all over the world to see the sights which we take for granted.  On this Columbus Day the leaves are brilliant, the sun is shining and the air is cool.  And to top it off Son Number One will be home today for a few days of fall break.  How lucky can a girl get?  And who knows whom I'll meet on the way home?

Bears have the right idea.  As I lay in bed this morning at 6:30 in a completely darkened room, I realized that four months ago the sun would have been up for two hours already and I would be listening to the birds.  There might have been a tinge of resentment at being awake at 4:30 in the morning, but I still would have been loving the birds.  This morning not so much.  The room was cool, which might have something to do with the air conditioners still being in the windows here (ever the optimists, we) so I was enjoying the flannel sheets under the summer quilt.  Even I am not wuss enough to break out the down comforter in October.  But what did occur to me as I lay there was that it would be lovely to be a bear and sleep through the less appealing parts of the year after a gigantic pig-out in which I could, and clearly should, stuff my face with anything and everything I wanted before a long nap.  And we haven't even turned the clocks back.  And we're two months away from the shortest day of the year.   This is not going to get better soon.

It is necessary, therefore, to create our own light and joy and fun where possible.  At the moment there is an exhibit all around the City of Boston of 75 brightly and creatively painted pianos, all just sitting in public places daring you to sit down and show your stuff.  Some of the paintings are brilliant. Now I love music, but I will tell the world that I sing a whole lot better than I play piano.  I couldn't read a note of music until I was 52.  My then ten-year old Son Number Two was playing away with gusto and I stood and listened and said, "I've always wanted to be able to do that!"  He stopped playing, looked over his shoulder and said to me, "Well, you know, you're not dead yet," which I took as a challenge.  One eight-week high school evening course and eight years of private lessons later, I still feel as though someone gave me the Rosetta Stone as a birthday present.  It is so cool to make sense of all those squiggles.  So yesterday morning I made a copy of all three pages of "Bridge Over Troubled Water", slipped it into sheet protectors, and went to work.  

I left for work early, my mission in mind.  Every day I cross the Fort Port Channel on my way into my office, and I had discovered the day before that there were pianos on both sides of the bridge.  I discovered the first one when the most haunting music came out of nowhere to do gentle battle with the recorded Irish fife music from the Boston Tea Party Museum.  There, tucked around the corner on the near side of the bridge was a pretty young woman who had put down her briefcase and was causing the most delightful, lilting sounds to come forth from a brightly painted piano.  She didn't have a note in front of her.  It was all coming from her head.  I was suitably impressed.  When she had finished I applauded and asked what the gorgeous tune was.  "Oh, I was just "noodling" with something in my head," she answered.  I was in awe.

So there I was the next day, copied music in hand (because nothing stays in my head these days) and I plunked myself down at the same piano.  In copying the music I had cut off the chords from the top of two of the pages.  It took me a while to get settled.  My tote bag kept falling over.  The music kept slipping down and I had to tuck the edge of each page behind one of the brightly painted fish on the front.  Never mind.  I plowed through.  And when I finished I crossed the bridge and did it again in front of the Children's Museum. The piano there had a "Punch and Judy" theme, with a glass window in which were a Punch and a Judy doll. I was sorry to need the sheet music there, because I discovered to my child-like delight that when you hit the keys the hammers hit their strings and they moved.  Heaven.

My playing is sad, but I'm not.  I had a ball.  And I may leave for work early every day next week to find new pianos to play before (or after) work.  Maybe James Taylor....or Bill Staines.  Nothing fancy.  Maybe I'll just keep playing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" until it improves.  And now that I think of it, maybe it's just as well that I'm not a bear.