Brookline: The Cousins Visit

A week and a half after my parents return to California, Jane’s family flies in for an autumn visit over school vacation week. We pull Jordan out of daycare again (not much daycaring was done for the price of admission this past month) so that he can play with his cousins and grandparents. It’s been almost a year since we saw everyone in California, and it’s remarkable how much bigger all three of the kids are. We spend Indigenous Peoples Weekend in town, exploring locally and having Jordan stay over at their house - a renovated Airbnb in Brookline’s historic White Place District. In between our dinnertime visits, I walk outside to photograph some of the beautiful old houses on their street; on Sunday morning, the kids play at nearby Emerson Garden, Jordan’s beloved weekday playground. I photograph the cousins riding the swings, rooting through the piles of fallen maple leaves, and huddling beneath the boughs of a large beech tree. After the weekend, we set out for a fall getaway in the Monadnock Region of southern New Hampshire, the photos from which are documented separately.

Massachusetts: The Grandparents Visit

In the month of September, my parents fly over to visit us in Brookline, for the the first time in nearly a year. They were last here in November 2025, a trip split between time in Massachusetts and time in New York City. In the interim, there have been mostly been video calls, supported by a finnicky, AI-powered and partly useless Insta360 phone stand that my mom bought for us in the spring. Jordan’s gotten used to a quiet life with just the two of us: our little village, his daycare friends, some local playdates, and more train trips and travel than (most probably) the average three-year-old. But secretly, he loves attention, thrives off of it, loves yammering away to any adult that’ll listen, really shines and comes out of his shell as he gradually learns to make friends and widen his circle. Jane and I have always wondered if or when we should move closer to our families, and for a huge variety of reasons (e.g. my dad’s cancer recurrence) some of those questions have been front and center at various points this past year. But the truth is that Jordan really likes his home. When I ask him where he wants to live (California? Iceland? Seattle?) his answer is always resoundingly the same: “Brookline Village!” He can’t be without his MBTA purple trains. So we live this lovely and awkward life and half-life; it’s a core practice within palliative care to be able to hold two truths together at the same time, two competing feelings, dual and equally real realities. I love it when our families visit. It’s a joy and a pain to see how much Jordan lights up when he’s around his extended circle of loved ones, snuggling up with Ah-Ma and Ah-Gong, babbling all-of-a-sudden again in Mandarin - his cute, bilingually-accented toddler Mandarin. He strings together some funny sentences and sayings that have us all rolling, no doubt something he picked up from me or Jane along the way; he talks like an old fart, as bilingual Chinese kids seem to do.

So that they can maximize their time with Jordan instead of commuting back and forth from Plymouth to sit around at our house waiting for dinner, for most of the month, we’ve decided to take Jordan out of pre-K and put my parents up in an AirBnB around the corner and down the street from our condo; they also supplement by booking a few nights at the Hilton Garden Inn just down the block on Brookline Ave. Jordan winds up staying overnight with them for most of the month (amazingly, his first time sleeping over without Mama or Baba), and he will forever call the Hilton on the corner of Brookline and Boylston “Ah-Ma and Ah-Gong’s hotel”. My parents are around for Jordan’s first time doing homework (tracing “Hola! Buenos dias!” on a sheet), his first school field trip (apple-picking with his daycare buddies), his first time at an art museum, and his first time camping in a yurt.

Below are some of the precious snaps that I took during this three-week stint in Brookline, along with a collection of photos that Jordan himself took with his little toy tiger-camera. He’s growing into a great little kid. With or without his parents and grandparents, I get the sense that he’ll find his own way in life soon enough. I keep telling him not to grow up too fast, but that I’ll still love him when he grows up. He responds with, “Why?!”

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Thursday September 10: Touring “Ah-Ma and Ah-Gong’s hotel” and having Jordan stay overnight. Jordan goes swimming with Grandma and goes out for sushi lunch in Brookline Village.

Saturday September 12: Yurt camping at Lorraine Campground in Harold Parker State Forest. I spot ghost pipes and Canada mayflower for the first time. Jordan explores the pond, meets up serendipitously with old daycare friends at the camp playground, and builds his own fire lay to make s’mores with Mama. None of us sleep particularly well despite being on mattresses with half of our household necessities crammed into the yurt.

Saturday September 19: Jordan takes Ah-Gong and Ah-Ma apple picking at Shelburne Farm in Stow, MA. We go home loaded with Fujis, Autumn Crisps, cider donuts, sparking cider, and hot dogs. In the evening, we all visit the Franklin Park Zoo for the annual Boston Lights / lantern festival, again meeting up with Jordan’s old daycare playmates.

Sunday September 20: We take the grandparents to the Museum of Science, dropping by Cambridge afterward for a quick lunch at Mu Lan Taiwanese Restaurant before heading home. For dinner, a reservation for five at Barcelona Wine Bar in Washington Square, followed by dessert cakes at Athan’s.

Saturday September 26: A rainy nor’easter weekend. We invest in a Museum of Fine Arts family membership pass and take Jordan and grandparents out for a museum morning. Jordan snaps photos of us in the car, and around the museum’s art exhibits. He makes a crayon-colored folding screen box and gifts it to his grandparents; for dinner, I take over the kitchen and fire up a double French-trimmed rack-of-lamb persillade with roasted potatoes and a cranberry-apple salad.

Sunday September 27: The rainstorm continues unabated. Jordan has a well-attended morning gym rock-climbing session while I, the family valet driver, sit in the car a few blocks away. We grab brunch at Brighton Cafe afterward.

Wednesday September 30: A dinner reservation at Brookline’s Bar Vlaha on my parents’ last night in town. And in between the weekends, a lot of evening strolls and condo-to-condo shenanigans.

Cape Ann: Purple Train Weekend #2

The MBTA Commuter Rail offers $10 weekend/holiday passes, which is all the more reason for us to bring Jordan on a second Purple Train trip to cap Labor Day weekend and the end of summer. We’ve been getting deeper into learning on Youtube about our regional rail systems, and Jordan is super stoked to head back to North Station, to pass by the Boston Engine Terminal in Somerville, and to ride to the end of the rather scenic Rockport line on Cape Ann. It’s been a few years since Jane and I visited Rockport (and our first time by train), and the experience by rail is decidedly superior to navigating Storrow, Route 1, and the inevitable North Shore / Salem traffic that crops up every fair-weather weekend in summer and fall (which we experienced just the weekend prior on our road trip up the coast of Maine). On board, Jordan can’t stop chattering the whole way about the B.E.T., the different station stops, and the coastal views. He takes a fascination to the emergency brake valve over the car’s front door. We share some breakfast items purchased from McDonald’s (a smoothie, two hashbrowns, and a sandwich). At the end of the line, we disembark with a sea of other holiday weekend travelers, and Jordan nearly blows an aneurysm at the number of purple trains on the side rails in Rockport station. We take a stroller walk toward the harbor, stopping to photograph the beautiful end-of-summer gardens and front yards in town.

Rockport’s “downtown” is a madhouse today, by far the busiest we’ve ever seen it in multiple (mostly early morning) trips to this normally sleepy seaside hamlet. After stopping at the local farmer’s market (Jane buys a floral tea mix, while I buy a “family” of sunflowers for our apartment), we search in vain for a lunch spot that doesn’t have a line coming out the door. After doubling back a few times along Bearskin Neck, we grab some takeout cups of chowder and snacks from Bean & Leaf Cafe. It will have to suffice until I’m able to grab some seafood from Roy Moore Lobster Co. a little later in the afternoon after the crowds die down. We walk the short distance down the Neck to our apartment for the next two nights - a second-floor unit in a historic Cape house whose weathered wooden beams evoke a ship’s masts. After eating our lunch, Jordan and Jane fall into a death nap. I head out a few times for food and to take a stroll around the harbor with my camera.

In the evening, after our takeout seafood dinner at home, all three of us head out to stroll around the waterfront. Jane and Jordan run off the climb the seawall protecting the back harbor, while I make laps between both sides of the Neck to look for sunset and dusk scenes. Some of my favorite shots: the string-lighted alleyway that sneaks beside Roy Moore’s to the outdoor seating behind the kitchen, where Jane and I first ate in 2020; a lit doorway down the street from our apartment (the kindly older woman watching me bemusedly as I photograph just past her and her husband’s driveway); Motif #1 lit by the glow of lamplight; and a serendipitous shot of glowing windows from the back harbor, in one of which sits Jane and Jordan eating ice cream at the ice cream store hilariously and blandly named The Ice Cream Store, which has had a line out the door from noon to sundown. After awhile, I catch up with Jane and Jordan and order my own ice cream. Jordan and I sit on a bench (belonging to Guppa, local French bulldog-hero) while Jane heads off to browse the remaining open jewelry and gift stores. Then, it’s back to the house by way of warm sodium-lamp glow, past families and kids enjoying the seaside night.

On Sunday morning, we’re up early to have breakfast and head out and explore. After a short walk to Front Beach, Jane and Jordan grab snacks at The Blacksmith Shop Cafe, while I walk to the end of Atlantic Avenue, where a short footpath leads up to a rocky bluff on the headlands overlooking Rockport Harbor. I call Jane and Jordan to join me here, and Jordan enjoys jumping across the granite rocks and admiring the many late summer fruits on the nearby shrubs: northern bayberry, crabapple, huckleberry. After taking some photos of Mama and son (above the harbor, and with the Straitsmouth Island Light at the tip of Cape Ann in the far distance), we head back to the apartment to eat lunch (lobster rolls, clam cakes, smoked salmon, and chowder from Roy Moore - again!) and rest. It’s a lazy afternoon thereafter; Jordan refuses his nap, so we watch some TV before he and Jane head out for another walk and more dessert - this time, frozen custards from Gifford’s. We grab another takeout dinner (a crabmeat roll, fried clams, and steamed corn from the bistro across from Roy Moore.

In the evening, I walk back to the headlands on my own, to catch sunset and photograph dusk from above the harbor while Jane and Jordan browse the shops below. As the light shifts and the sun sets behind the village, I find a nice spot on the cliffs to sit and watch as the crowds thin on Bearskin Neck, and the boats come into anchorage for the evening. I wind up taking an unexpected video call from my co-fellows Elyse and Lindsey, and I catch up with them while sharing the sunset and watching darkness set in. Then, it’s a clamber back up the cliff, down the footpath, and back home along window-lit streets.