Full of beans

 It's not a secret. 

 My daughter hopes to live in Boston next year. A city she's been to six times in her life, not counting parts of holidays spent on its outskirts.

As she plans for this monumental move to Beantown (mainly by putting dorm-room "essentials" into her Amazon shopping basket and taking them out again) she had the idea that what we really needed - as a family - was an immersive experience in the neighborhood to which she'd soon belong.

Midweek. During a rainstorm. Dragging us around like wet teabags, our thrifty brains thinking we could have at least one more use.

I'm not judging the wisdom of this trip if that's what you're asking.

She managed our limited time with a fair amount of decisiveness and good humor; even when we all seemed so out of place.

Especially when the four of us duck-walked our way down Huntington, and she realized being a college student with parents in tow wasn't exactly the vibe she was going for.

Her father missed the forest for the trees, too, as she whisked us off to the remarkable landscape she had discovered inside ... the Prudential Center … Where she pointed this way and that … to chain stores with which we thought we were all too familiar.

"We're going to a mall? Oh, wait! This is the 'crappy coffee' part of the date, right?"

I laughed a little too loudly, which I immediately regret.

The last thing I wanted to do was rain on her parade. I whisper, reminding him – and myself – that we are tourists in her city now. 

The Boston I remembered was ancient and romanticized. Quincey Market lived in my mind as a place my parents would take us after visiting the penguins. There we could buy cut flowers, or fish with the heads still on, or an armload of crusty baguettes. Not that we ever purchased any of those provisions. Our hotel didn't have a kitchenette in the 1970s either.

Even back in the olden days, we bought our food pre-made, too. 

It was just a long weekend in a nearby city where we'd perused toy shops and kitchenware boutiques along a wheel of quaint cobblestone streets. 

I remembered the harbor seal who did tricks behind glass near the Aquarium ticket counter. I did not remember how dark and dank his small tank seemed. 

But for all the things I had misremembered, this trip I saw the city anew. 

The way the houses curve, rows and rows of them undulating along the streets like ribbons on a breeze. The way low stone buildings with manicured lawns anchored to sparkling glass towers. 

I can't imagine any of us will soon forget standing inside a globe of the world, our whispers echoing around its familiar curves. We four made up two-thirds of the 10:20 tour.

Hope springs anew under the other celestial and terrestrial curiosities in the lobby. It feels like the city told us a secret.