Winter Wonderwhirling: The Final Day
Day Seven: Exploring the Harvard Art Museum, the anatomy of creme brûlée, and the meaning of life…
If I had to choose one reason to move to Boston, my selection would be clear: Tatte Bakery is the absolute best combination of favorite foods and the atmosphere is unrivaled.
I decided on a whim to tack these few days in Boston onto the end of my NYC trip. There was still time to do my usual scouring of food blogs for croissant recommendations, but I knew that I would be in good hands with Delaney and that if there was going to be the best almond croissant to be found in Boston, Delaney would have found it months ago.
When I come to a new city I usually do a ridiculous deep dive into researching their best almond croissants. I thought I had found Manhattan’s best when Delaney upstaged me with a trip to Madame Kaiser two years ago. The worst part about the whole thing was that this french bakery was only a few blocks from my school and I’d never even before considered it. (It WAS a chain after all.) I couldn’t help grieving a little for all the almond croissants I hadn’t ordered from Madame Kaiser up to that point while I’d had the chance.
Madame Kaiser tuned out to become another covid-casualty and is permanently closed, but my respect for Delaney’s croissant knowledge will always be at a ten.
This brings us to Sunday morning standing outside Tatte Bakery (pronounced Ta-tay like “latte”), two girls in happy clothes biting into almond croissants in reverent silence in the middle of Harvard Square. If the silence was only broken by my moans of “wow” and “omg this is the best thing I have ever eaten.”
“Delaney, you’ve done it again!” I said, wiping powdered sugar onto my jeans, and taking another sip of coffee. I’d been skeptical of Tatte since it is a local chain and I usually stick my nose up at anything to do with chains, but this bakery had obviously grown into a chain for a darn good reason. Such had also been the case with Madame Kaiser. They made a heavenly croissant and I was hooked.
I’m not a coffee drinker, but working at a coffee shop has made me into a proper snob when it comes to good beans. No one roasts coffee quite like our little gem in Corvallis, but if I’ve ever tasted a rival it was at Tatte in my foam-laden cafe au lait.
We’d slept hard and long after our full Saturday, but we were up and dressed with time to grab our Tatte goods on our way to today’s partaking of the arts.
I’d scored free Sunday tickets to the Harvard Art Museum and we were eager to see what it had in store. Unlike the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, which Delaney knows as well as the back of her hand, neither of us had been to the this one yet so we had no way of knowing what a marvelous collection was waiting for us.
We dusted the remaining croissant crumbs from our outfits and checked our coats. The museum was designed more “up” than “out” so we explored the first exhibits on the ground floor without knowing exactly what was in store on the upper floors.
We started with some contemporary art, which I didn’t have to pretend to understand because thankfully Delaney cares for it about as little as I do.
We moved backward in time finding some beloved impressionists. Isabella Gardner had collected several impressionist works and was close friends with many impressionist artists, but her collection was mostly made of much older works. I felt a little thirst for their unabashed brushstrokes and joyful colors being quenched as we passed by each frame. I’d spent a couple of hours with the Impressionists at the Met a few days before, but these were all new works to me and I felt like I’d uncovered some sort of secret in finding them here, in a college museum in Boston, MA.
We passed a bronze bather that made us both do a double-take. She was life-size and unbelievably “real” and unidealized. She was short, her nose was crooked, her breasts uneven, her belly full, and she was wading in shallow water. She was as happy and graceful in her movement like a bird landing on a wire. She was the sort of art that made me feel pretty and proud to be a woman, unlike the horrible female nudes I’d seen at the Neue Gallery with my friend Kelly. I could see why someone would have wanted to sculpt her exactly as she was — it said that it took the artist 15 years to create her.
The paintings in that room were almost exclusively happy. I was delighted by a Monet depicting a train pulling into the Saint-Lazare station whirling with blue smoke. We had a good laugh at a small scene painted of a countess taking the reins from her perturbed coachman and racing with a dog down a French shoreline.
We were surprised by a Madonna & Child scene painted by Picasso in 1957. It was a far cry from what you tend to see of his garish work - this was peaceful, quiet, and sobering. It made me wonder how much more there was to this artist so well known for his angry nudes.
We shuffled through the early modernism and surrealism, eager to get back to the older works that weren’t so angry and imposing, but we stopped for at least ten minutes to read every single caption under David Smith’s Medals for Dishonor. It was a series of fifteen reliefs produced between 1937 and 1940 critiquing a period marked by the far-reaching social and political consequences of the economic crisis and the onset of war.
It was a very serious topic that we shouldn’t have found humor in, but we couldn’t help bawking at the very dramatic and very over the top descriptions the artist had written for each one, with phrases like “The rape of the mind by machines of death!” and “The song of sewage -dust to cut returneth and life to food returneth - mass bombing and mass murder!” Each caption was so wonderfully opprobrious that I thought the real art was in the writing and less in the reliefs.
Next we climbed the stairs in search of older stuff and wound our way through the East Asian wing. Delaney had to pry me from a case displaying a scroll of “Legendary Beauties through the Ages,” showing women in fabulous robes painted delicately at work. They were so deliciously feminine and while each one stood about seven inches tall, the detail in their gowns, accessories, and faces was incredibly focused.
I couldn’t fathom how a brush and ink could ever be coerced into making such finite details, or how ink could be mixed into so many soft petal-like shades, but there they were and I was speechless. Those little illustrations are easily my favorite art from the whole trip.
I left the scroll only a little begrudgingly because we had heard from a guard earlier that two Rossetti paintings were waiting for us across the hall. It would take a Pre-Raphaelite or two to drag me away from my little brushstroke beauties.
We wove through the Renaissance and into the 17th-century Roman works, gaping at some etchings and prints and wondering how you could create such effects of light with only etching into copper plates.
There was a good laugh to be had in the Rococo room, judging the pretentious Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit, a bust of a very proud-of-himself man with a very slimy smirk and ridiculous powdered wig. We delighted in the luxurious clothing of the subjects and outrageous hairstyles.
Rococo gave way to Romanticism and Neoclassicism, where we had another good laugh at “Emperor Napoleon” and his portrait in ceremonial garb complete with ermine and red velvet cloak, a golden orb, and a royal scepter. I mostly felt embarrassed for him.
The museum finally gave way to my beloved Pre-Raphaelites and we stood again in silence before two 8ft frames featuring Rossetti’s redheads.
The only thing worse than my going to school next to the best almond croissants in NYC without knowing it was walking past the Pre-Raphaelites in The National Gallery in London at least nine times before I was acquainted (and since obsessed) with them.
I have seen Rossetti’s work before, but only in a rush and without knowing what I was looking at. This was before I knew anything about art really and was just excited to be in an art museum. This time, I got to bask in the full glory and splendor of his paintings for the first time since falling in love with him and I wanted to just bathe in the sumptuous shades of indigo jade. Someone really ought to make a bath bomb that makes your water that color. I would surely be a cold, shriveled-up dumpling before getting out of that bathtub.
His flowers were so lifelike I wanted to pick them and tie them into chains. The femme-fatale gazes of the subjects were so deep I surely would have done anything they asked of me. The Pre-Raphaelites were so dutifully convicted that it was their job to capture nature precisely as God intended, and could therefore spend three months capturing the essence of a single flower.
We moved along with plenty of sighs and whispered commentary on various details from the works, trying to take in art from the next room, but our eyes were still painted over with beautiful blooms and fiery redheads from Rossetti.
A few rooms thereafter were wasted on us as we came down from our Rossetti high, but another small room of impressionists drew us back to reality and Delaney nearly ran up to the first Sargent on the wall. It was a study for the painting we saw of his the day before at the Gardner Museum.
A perfect surprise.
Monet’s Thames painting was the star of the room, but all were a delight.
We’d taken about all we could handle at that point, so we ventured through the remaining galleries at a faster pace, stopping back by my little scroll beauties on the way out.
It was early afternoon by this time and our stomachs were growling. We don’t even have to decide where we were going for lunch because the answer was obviously back to Tatte.
We sat upstairs, surrounded by glamorous Harvard students doing homework and talking about their very fancy lives, but I was too busy savoring every bite of my lunch to get much juicy eavesdropping in.
We ordered Shakshuka and an avocado lox toast. Both were served with homemade bread and had us about in tears at their fresh deliciousness. We sat in the window, feeling a thread of winter sun on our necks and talking about things that two days and centuries of art can only lead your mind to — the point of life and the role of suffering.
You know, small lunchtime talk.
It has been my slowly cultivated opinion that the role of suffering in my life (however brief in comparison to most who share the human experience!) has added up to be one of my greatest gifts in life. My experience of emotion, especially the most challenging ones, has led me to be able to read with more clarity art, music, literature, and just people in general. I feel that my suffering has led me to a richer experience of life and the world around me.
I can’t pile that statement onto someone else’s experience of suffering, especially those who have had to become acquainted with a brand far beyond my humble comprehension. Hurricane Katrina and the slew of other atrocious facts of life were certainly no gift to anyone.
But, I think many have suffered much more than I who would agree that sometimes, pain is a gift.
I think that art is a key reflection of that. We feel all of the things an artist has to say because we know to some degree what positive and negative emotions are being conveyed. We’ve all been there. The pain we’ve experienced has made room for more appreciation for joy and art is how we can communicate these concepts.
As much as I enjoyed my lunchtime “food” conversation with Delaney from the day before, it meant so much to me to be able to explore these ideas with her there as we dipped homemade bread into thick tomato sauce and spread Irish butter on toast.
These are scary topics to bridge in today’s overly sensitive environment, but the right friends help you navigate these things without judgment, and proper nudging in areas where you may need reconsidering. Most importantly, the right friends are still your friends when you don’t agree on something deep, and it's ok because you have a world of other interests and passions in common.
We sighed our way out of the cafe, bellies, and minds as stretched as far they could be and utterly content.
We explored a used bookstore next. It was the good kind, with shelves so close together that the owner surely had to pay off the fire chief at inspection time. We stopped while Boston’s resident wild turkeys crossed the road, causing a proper traffic jam. We took pictures with street art and listened to a man playing the piano on a street corner. We walked the bridge as the stars came out and watched a woman spreading ashes, alone, on a dock below us.
We stopped in at a record shop where I purchased not one, but two Crystal Gayle records. Their “country” section was about 2 ftx1ft so I didn’t expect to find any Gayles, but they had about seven.
“Which one should I buy?” I asked Delaney, holding up two top contenders.
“I think the fact that they had so many in such a small country section is a sign that you really need to get both.” She said. And this is why we are friends. And I did.
We ended the day at Delaney’s favorite cafe in Cambridge, Zuzu’s Petals, — a cake and wine bar set in a little Venetian-style shop with about four tables, sixteen types of wine, and four choices of cake making up its entire menu. (Read more about this place by clicking the “Zuzu’s Petals” button below.)
We sat in her regular corner booth and ordered a chocolatey red with the chocolate mousse and the server’s choice of a second dessert. This was our dinner, after all, so we couldn’t just split something.
Delaney shared with me about what it was like going from being top of her class in her small town to being thrown into Columbia and having to compete with hundreds like her. She, like someone else I know, is a recovering perfectionist. I knew what it’s like going from being special to being average, and neither of us has ended up where we thought we were supposed to end up for all of our specialness.
The server brought out our mousse in a vintage teacup along with a gleaming dish of creme brûlée. The chocolate was so dark and so rich and so soft that I thought it might make me high. It certainly made me giddy. The owner of Zuzu’s is a chocolatier, and her chocolate is no joke. The creme brûlée was equally as decadent.
“You know I sometimes order creme brûlée without the sugar on top,” I confessed to Delaney. She looked horrified.
“But that’s the best part!” She exclaimed.
“I guess this makes you the brûlée to my creme!”
I said it a little too loudly, and surely with the same expression of our snooty Napoleon from earlier, as I was all too proud of my reply!
Creme Brûlée at Zuzu’s
With that, she scraped the rest of the sugar crust to her end of the bowl and I started scooping over more custard in my direction.
We explored the idea of our specialness and the possibility that where we are and what we are doing is exactly where we are meant to be. I certainly can’t imagine a more important or incredibly special place for Delaney to be than in a lab where she works on curing cancer every day. But, our competitive natures and perfectionist proclivities make it challenging for our personalities to find rest. It is much easier for us to point out for each other the ways we really are making it, and that’s what friends are for.
We need each other because sometimes it’s easier to see what another person needs to hear more than what we need.
Such is the case in finding the perfect almond croissant, and, in life.
Winter Wonderwhirling: In Conclusion
I managed to fit the stack of books for my mom, my two records, THE shoes, a vintage dress to repair for Delaney, and fabric to make Kelly’s jacket all into my little carry-on. I made it home to Oregon in the middle of the following day and cried actual happy tears when I hugged my husband — so thankful for the friends, art, food, and experiences I had just partaken of, but also thankful for my home, my place int he world, and the gift of The Human Experience that God has granted me.
The first time I went to New York it was to find myself. The last time I went to New York it was to re-claim my moxy after trauma, and this time I went to New York (and Boston) to accept myself and I learned that these places and these people will always be a part of my ever-unfolding story and there will be many more chapters to come.
Thank you for joining me on this adventure, and stay tuned for more adventures to come!
Katherine
