Brookline: Marcescence

Marcescence (n., of a plant part): The quality of withering but remaining attached in the winter; a biological trait believed to be adaptive or protective in certain deciduous tree species such as beech or oak

January finds us in the depths of the winter now - one of the coldest, darkest ones we have had in our time in New England. The mercury has largely fallen below freezing in the past several weeks, and the early nights have had me alternating between feelings of cozy and stir-crazy. On the holiday weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a snowstorm blows into town after Jordan’s Saturday morning dance lesson and bookstore sing-along/library/pizza run. We spend Sunday largely cooped up at home, enjoying the weather from the comfort of the windowsill. Jordan and I cuddle on the bed and play “sneak-a-peek” (I Spy), although he has largely taken to telling me what he wants me to sneak-a-peek at from the window (which I must then, in turn, tell him to look for, which of course he will promptly spot). I make Syracuse salt potatoes, and we have all manner of snacks after Jane makes a grocery run. On Monday morning, I draw the window blinds to find a glowing white world of snow, freshly fallen overnight. Close as we live to the Longwood Medical Area, it’s a rarity for the stuff to remain unplowed and untrammeled for long. I get the photography bug for the first time in weeks, and head out on a long walk with camera and my winter gear, accompanied by Jane and Jordan for the first few blocks.

It’s been years since I engaged in proper winter photography - not since before Jordan was born, I believe. Even up here in coastal Massachusetts, snowfall is becoming rarer and rarer, and it’s still not usual for me to be free the day after a storm. When we moved from Baltimore up to Boston, I had a dream that I would really invest myself in New England, documenting all its seasons, and seeking out its soul by understanding its nature, its landscape, and its people. Some of that dream has panned out - mostly in spring and autumn forays - while much of it has fallen to the wayside amidst “real” life, parenthood, etc. Winter remains largely a time for hibernation and recuperation, rather than for creativity or inspiration. Still, what I’m experiencing is not just a seasonal lull or rut. I find myself in a strange position, much like the marcescent oak leaves that cling stubbornly to trees laden with snow this morning along the Emerald Necklace: withering as an adaptation; stuck in place but not truly attached; am I part of a cohesive whole? Am I doing something valuable even if I wouldn’t say I’m thriving? These type of questions pop into my head, naturally, when I’m out and about and alone, in the urban woods, looking outward and inward with my camera and my thoughts. I make my way through the snow, down to Olmsted Park and to the edge of Wards Pond - an old running route. I crouch down on the forest floor to get an angle, my breath condensing upon my eyelashes and my viewfinder. The sun comes out halfway through my walk, and blue skies and clearing storm light pierce through the white woodlands. I take some lovely backlit compositions on my way back north. I think I spot the swan family from last summer - the adolescents all grown up and bearing white plumage - swimming along the shore of Leverett Pond.

Six winters here, and this is the first time I’ve photographed this stretch of the Emerald Necklace in complete winter condition. It still feels odd to me that after so much time, I don’t feel nearly as attached to this place - the birthplace and home of my only child - as I felt to Baltimore. Jane reasons that Baltimore was different; we were in our twenties; it was a formative time in our lives; we were making a home and doing everything for the first time. Maybe so. I still feel like there’s something pheromonic about place, just as there is about emotional attraction and love. Some type of spontaneous chemical interaction between sense, emotion, and memory. When a place resonates with you, it’s not just visually captivating. It smells right. The air feels right. The sights and sounds and human community become part of a bigger fabric, and that fabric becomes a definition, a sense of grounding, a sense of home. Years later - I’m still looking for it. I’m in no hurry to leave this place, but there’s been - always has been - a perpetual feeling of moving on. If we ever leave Brookline behind, I wonder how sentimental I’ll be about it. For now, I hang on, doing what I can, seeing the world as I may, and carefully observing the passage of time.

New York: A Big Apple Interlude

With fall nearing its end and Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, we take a long weekend getaway to New York City, traveling again by rail for the second November in a row. We’re joined by my parents (visiting from California) for Jordan’s first time in the Big Apple (and my and Jane’s first time visiting since my summer internship in 2011). We spend a handful of days exploring by subway, walking around Midtown and Central Park, visiting the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, riding the Roosevelt Island tramway, and catching up with my friend Ali for the first time in nearly two years. Toddler family as we are, we’re mostly limited to half-day outings around town, sticking close to playgrounds and parks, and skipping most of the big tourist attractions with the exception of Liberty Island, where Jordan poses with the “Statue of Liberry.” It’s a four-hour ride back to Boston on the Northeast Regional, and Jordan chatters non-stop the entire way home.

Massachusetts: Writing the Future

"Sometimes, overwhelmed, she retreats into the forests of the past. She has come to think of them as her private Archive, herself an Archivist, and she has found that the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change."

— Daniel Mason
North Woods

Quickly now, we’re moving into November and late autumn. October seems to have come and gone in a hurry. Dating back to late September, it has been a whopping six weeks since all three of us spent a weekend together here at home (counting two weekends on-service for me, two weekends in Baltimore and solo-dadding, and two weekends on the road in Cape Cod and New Hampshire). Autumn colours have been strange here this year, as they have been all over New England. In some pockets, there was early colour and early leaf drop. In other places, the changes have seemed to last and linger; the red maples around our house here in Brookline are putting on the best display we have seen in our years living here. Overall, the foliage has been patchier than most autumns, owing to yet another summer of severe drought. But at last, the oaks and birches are having their moment, and the ground is as crisp and golden as each morning’s air. The region’s hardwood forests - and their flora and fauna - are just as beautiful as always if you get out there and look.

Aside from the visual landscape, autumn has been strange this year for me, for another reason altogether. At work, sweeping upcoming changes in the landscape of Boston palliative care mean that I find myself making a series of long-range career decisions where the tradeoffs are clear and present. I am quite used to thinking about the future, and about change; I’ve written ad nauseum, it seems, about the dreams I have (of dying), and the awareness of impermanence that permeates my everyday life and my creative energy. And yet - it is rare for me to be quite literally writing the future: putting visions down on paper and knowing they will affect me and many people around me. Always too soon, the time draws near when I’ll have to make some weighty decisions. And thankfully, I think I am someone who has processed this moment long enough (and gone through enough therapy and self-therapy) to know roughly where I stand. That does very little to diminish the weight of the decisions, though. Nor the emotional toll.

For now though, the fall rolls onward, and the year marches toward its end. On the docket: a train trip to NYC, more grandparent time; a year-end visit to California. As the days grow shorter and the nights grow darker, I begin to close in on the things that really matter. Wool socks, a good book by lamplight, Jordan growing up quickly beneath our roof and before our eyes. A certain spaciousness and clarity that comes with the colder weather and the barren trees. Open sightlines, long horizons. Maybe, one of these days, a future to call one’s own.

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October 31, 2025: Jordan’s third Halloween, trick-or-treating up and down the residential streets here in North Brookline with his bestie from daycare. We have matching costumes (a zombie family), which of course means that Jordan will wear his mask for no longer than two minutes before removing it permanently. He’s been talking about eating our (and everyone’s) brains for the past half year - our little zombie, developing quite the forceful personality.

November 1, 2025: A morning spent at the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, MA, which I visited with my field naturalist cohort almost exactly a year ago. In the Trailside Museum, Jordan enjoys seeing the venomous snakes, playing with binoculars and slide, and meeting the nature center’s rehabbing animals. He self-determines that he should buy a stretchy frog from the museum gift shop; when we point out that he does not have his own cash or credit card, and ask him who will be paying for him, he turns to the cashier and asks, “Can you buy it for me?” The kind man very nearly does. We take a brief walk up the nearby trailhead to take a family portrait (our first in awhile), and Jordan builds a “leaf house” for his stretchy frog before we head home by way of Panda Express in Dedham, MA.

November 8, 2025: Shots from the few blocks between our house and the Brookline Village T stop, the last few glorious maples doing their thing for the season.