Finishing up our Boston project

Soon after LP and I arrived in Boston a plot of land was bulldozed on our street in preparation for an apartment building to go up.

This section soon became a large, ugly hole that we didn't really like to walk past. But as 2011 crept by the wooden skeleton of a five-story building started to grow slowly up and out of the pit. The weather got warmer last year and surprisingly a group of protesters showed up on our street, decrying such-and-such labour practices from the property developer. This small band of bedraggled activists would brandish signs on random days over a few months, braving 30-degree plus heat to be seen. But as the old adage goes: you can't stop progress, and in the eight or so months since then, the building has still seen a steady stream of new developments.

Floors! Walls! Brick! Doors! Windows! Electricity!

LP and I digest and discuss all of the minute new details of the new building. "You notice all of those boxes sitting outside of the new apartment building today?" I find myself enquiring when she gets home from work, almost before I've asked about her day.

"Yeah, I think they're for the drywall they're putting in at the moment," LP will say, and we'll stand in silence for a little while and sort of appreciate this new development for a few moments. I'll probably stand and try and hide my confusion for a time, as I don't have any idea what drywall is.

I've come to like everything about this apartment building. I like the way that old policemen, who've obviously checked out a bit and are on some safe detail while they wait out a pension (or so I've decided), guard the construction site with a glazed, bored eye, a cup of coffee and a cigarette close at hand. I like the way that work on the building fills the air with the sounds of forklifts and power tools if I have the windows open. I've come to tolerate the way the builders stare slightly lecherously at LP as we walk past.

LP and I are moving to San Francisco in a little over a month. Her family is there, and Boston was always a graduate school and out destination for us. There are so many destination schools in America that most of the people we know in town have left now and returned to their home. So we need to find ours. We've been living the quiet life for a few months. It makes sense to be near LP's family, and we both have a number of friends nearby on the West Coast. We're getting married at the end of May, and then moving in with LP's aunt for a time and deciding whether to rent or... gulp... buy a place.

So I've come to contemplate recently this apartment building, as it nears completion, as a sort of obvious and sentimental metaphor for how long I've lived in Boston. I haven't been here long enough to watch the neighbourhood shift drastically. But, I have been here long enough for them to construct a five-story apartment building.

We came here with no roots and few possessions and little idea of the city. We leave with degrees and work experiences and new friends and the intimate knowledge of a new place. This whole structure of a life came out of an empty pit, like the building. But it's similarly substantial to us. We're not staying here, but we both readily acknowledge that if the pull of family wasn't dragging us Westwards, we could.

On Wednesday, I can go and pick up my Masters diploma from the registrar's office at Boston University. So I've got what I came here for.

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Finishing up our Boston project