Staying cool...

Or rather, dealing with the heat together makes the heat more enjoyable! We enjoyed having family meals outside on Martha and Miner's deck when Z's sister Christina was in town, followed by a dessert party with a number of Martha and Miner's neighbors. We also hosted our own dessert party potluck, an excuse to eat and share sweet summer treats and favorite summer drinks with 22 of our closest friends. There was home made ice cream and coconut chocolate topping that hardened as soon as it was spread atop your ice cream, sweet and tart cherry popovers, assorted fresh fruit crisps and so on, all accompanied with white sangria, gin&tonics, mint juleps, and dark and stormys.

It was also an excuse to share and show off our back porch, which is now adorned with tomato plants (started from seed!), beans climbing one of the walls, flowers, and some comfortable adirondack chairs that my mom and auntie found for free on the curb just a block from our apartment. We sit here often, mornings, evenings, weekends, and with neighbors in our building or friends passing by.

On Thursday we attended a beautiful lantern festival in the nearby Forest Hill Cemetery. I've blogged about this remarkable place before: it is a designated park as much as it is a cemetery, with enchanting trees and statues, continually changing artwork and a soothing lake surrounded by willows. This lake was where hundreds of paper lanterns, symbolizing messages of love, peace and hope for the world and for those we love that have departed from the world, were released. We watched for over an hour as more and more lanterns were launched from the shore and then as the lanterns danced with spiritual lightness around the pond, gliding with the aid of gentle breezes. As we sat there in the dark I realized how much I miss darkness, the lack of city lights, as a meaningful pause and closure to each day. These moments of pause are precious indeed.

In the past, I did not find Boston to be so welcoming, but now that I've been here almost two years I feel like we are surrounded by a substantial and truly genuine community of friends. Looking back I realize that we never had to break into any cliques or figure out the long relationship histories of certain friend groups to connect with them more deeply. Instead there is a freshness to all the friendships in our neighborhood, which may be a tribute to the youthful and transient nature of this area. In any case, it's a blessing to be embraced so readily by this new community of friends and family that value eating together, playing music together, going to peaceful festivals together, and playing kickball and games together as much as we do (and the communities that we come from do as well).