Memories take us back to movies, popcorn, friendship, and family

Memories take us back to movies, popcorn, friendship, and family

I am escaping the present. I didn’t mean to leave the here and now. But, really, the here and now is not such a fun place to be. So why stay?

I was on Facebook sipping my morning coffee, scrolling through reposted news stories, reading the comments of people I don’t know (Why do I do this?), getting more and more annoyed, a too typical morning, when up popped a post with a slightly blurred photo of the Randolph Movie Theater, the one that was on North Main Street in the 1950s. And just like that, the present was gone and I was at that old theater, the box office right in front of me, my best friend Rosemary beside me…

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The summer of COVID-19 fed my soul, but it broke my heart

The summer of COVID-19 fed my soul, but it broke my heart

What I will remember about the summer of COVID-19 are pleasures denied. Hugging. Eating out. Visiting friends. Traveling. Singing. Going to concerts and plays. Sports. Crowds. Trains. Planes. Movies. The laughter of strangers. Lunches and dinner parties. All the freedoms that were part of every summer before this one.

But what I will also remember about the summer of COVID-19 are the unexpected pleasures: the clarity of the air, the freshness even on the hottest of days. This summer, Massachusetts’ air has been like Maine air, a just-scrubbed clean that has made not being able to go to Maine almost OK. I will also remember…

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