January weekend adventures

Some weekends are more low key. This one had two larger adventures, which were both a lot of fun!

On Friday I dropped my 15-year-old off at the high school and drove on to the airport to fly to Boston. There I headed over to Symphony Hall to meet a friend and listen to the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven’s 8th and 9th symphonies. This was an afternoon performance (1:30) but was a full house. I was less familiar with the 8th symphony – it’s short and light. Then the 9th is, of course, the 9th. The choir was fantastic and it’s hard to keep from smiling when the full ecstatic chorus (the Ode to Joy part) is going. It is quite the juxtaposition to hear that masterwork with some of my daily Beethoven — we’re working through his teen years right now and among other things, there was a lieder that was an elegy on the death of a poodle. Apparently he had some breadth in his work.

After, we met up with other friends for drinks and then did dinner at a place where I ordered a cocktail that involved carrots and wasabi. I believe I slept for 9 hours straight in my hotel room. Always a treat of traveling! The next day I flew back to PHL and, because there are no actual business travelers on a 1 p.m. Saturday flight, I got a surprise upgrade. That is also an occasional treat of traveling (though it’s a really short flight…).

The second adventure: on Sunday, my husband and 15-year-old and I went to the Eagles game. We went to the Eagles/Packers game two weeks ago and enjoyed being part of the crowd and that energy. I did not feel sad about watching the blizzard game last week on TV, but when the Eagles won that game, and the weather forecast looked decent for this past Sunday (in the mid-30s and partly cloudy during game time), I decided to look for tickets. I was stalking Stubhub and when some seats came open in a section I like that were priced far below a lot of the others, I grabbed them.

I know the game was a blowout, but it didn’t actually feel that way until the last quarter. So it was exciting to watch, and then as it became clear that the Eagles were going to win, the buzz in that stadium just rose and rose. We stayed until the end, but then because a lot of people stayed for the ceremony afterwards, we were able to get out of the parking lot with very little traffic. So a win all the way around! We were home by 7:30 pm, which meant our Sunday evening proceeded as it normally would to get everyone in bed and ready for the week.

In the meantime, here’s another wintry sonnet, currently called “Wind chill.”

Here winter has a scent — a hint of smoke,
as somewhere, fire warms a drafty room.
My footprints mar the snow, a deer’s hooves broke
the sweeping white already, and a plume

of flakes lofts with the wind. I huddle close
into my coat, exhale a great grey puff.
The cold demands you think of it. My nose,
exposed, feels like I cannot get enough

of this tight air, it freezes down the throat.
But one can’t while the days away inside,
and so I burrow deep into this coat,
and face a sun whose warmth is just implied.

How strange to be so chilled, and yet the light
makes dazzling diamonds, blinking cold and bright.