Excursions with Rem

School is now in full swing and Craig and the girls leave the house each day with the morning gun blast from the Constitution; Craig walking across the Navy Yard and Miren and Lise walking toward Bunker Hill Monument. Fabulous September days accompany Rem and me as we seek to fill the hours before Craig joins us for lunch or we meet the girls on their walk home from school. Mornings find us in the park building sand castles and sand cakes, searching for books and graphic novels (Rem loves these) at our neighborhood library or taking carefree walks along one of the nearby piers.

We are often more adventuresome and join the bustling masses in and around the city. These outings seem both  more relaxed and more hurried than our excursions with the entire family. I submit fully to my four year-old's whims and abilities and enjoy the running commentary of our every move.

The walk to North Station passes slowly as Rem explores the familiar route with an exaggerated freshness. He pauses under the bridge to shout, his voice amplified over the drone of cars above. I coax him on. He picks dandelions in Paul Revere Point Park making detailed wishes punctuated by flamboyant blowing. A quick run down the slide in the playground and he is off to the locks. Rem searches for trash in the Charles River and asks a thousand questions about the mechanisms of the locks that separated the Charles from the harbor.  He wonders aloud why I like the sun and he likes the rain and then we hold hands and jump over every crack along the walkway over the locks.

Rem zips through North Station rushing ahead to the stairs and the in-bound arrow before asking indulgently if we are taking the Green line T (we usually do). He leans against one of the columns, careful to stay away from the tracks. Trains noisily pass over our heads and behind us before one stops in front of us. The black of the tunnels does not dissuade Rem from sitting backwards and staring out of the window on the uncrowded T. Squealing as we enter each station and the underground world lights up briefly Rem relishes each step of our adventure.

Last week  we exited outside on Huntington Avenue for our first visit to the Museum of Fine Arts. Rem stepped off the train asking for the scavenger hunt that we prepared for his museum visit. We drew pictures of all of the things Rem thought we might encounter in the galleries and he was eager to get started. The two of us spent most of our time in the well-organized, beautiful spaces of the Art of the Americas wing. Rem loved the carousel figures and the musical instruments while I tried to linger with the John Singleton Copley and the Homer Winslow paintings. Our family is so entrenched in the Revolutionary history of Boston that Rem pointed Paul Revere and Warren Prescott like he might in photos of relatives.

Rem reached his two hour limit on schedule (after finding everything on his scavenger hunt list) and we headed to the Shapiro Family Courtyard for a quick snack before our trek home. After watching Rem's awe and delight in the over sized Chihuly icicle tower that glimmers in the sunlight, I was sorry that we hadn't visited sooner when a visiting Chihuly exhibit was on display. Because it was just the two of us we could leave after the short visit feeling fulfilled and uplifted. And I had the return trip home to look forward to.