I’ve shit on Boston most of my life. The reasons are many and mostly tiresome from having been repeated so often. Suffice it to say that I’m not a fan. Yet, because my parents live there, I keep having to return.

Before leaving for my current drive east, I found these drawings. They date from the mid-90s, when I was first a cab driver. I made them in the Logan Airport taxi lot, while waiting to be dispatched to the terminals. Nearly fifteen years later, I would make a similar, but more extensive series of drawings and paintings at the two airports in Chicago.

I’m sitting in one of my brothers’ old rooms, trying to come up with something nice to say about this town. Tomorrrow I will have coffee with my high school art teacher. I haven’t seen her in nearly thirty years. Another former student contacted me about a scholarship being set up in Osna’s name at my high school. They want a donation. I keep going back and forth about it, because I hated might time at that school so much, yet this one teacher was one of its few saving graces.

I make up my mind to make the donation, but realize that I left my checkbook in Chicago. It’s due in a couple days and is only accepted by mail. I go to the post office for a money order and watch the clerk, who has a tremor, struggle inputting the amount into the form on her screen. She’s new, but not young. The guy in line ahead of me is off to the side, waiting for her more experienced colleague to return, to handle the registration of a certified letter. I make the process even lengthier by also requesting a stamp. She freezes before recovering and asking if she can take my payment for the money order first. I toy with hand-delivering my donation to the school, which is a couple blocks away, but decide I don’t want to revisit the place.

On the drive back to my parents’, the car ahead drifts left before making a sudden right turn into a driveway. No signal or warning of any kind. It was a selfish, mean-spirited maneuver. It brought a flood of related memories, reminding me of where I am.