Riding the Bus Home to Lawndale Street
March 15th, 2026​

The journey always began the same way. From our house on Lawndale Street, I'd walk to the main road — four lanes wide, busy with traffic — and wait for the bus. For a nickel, it would carry me the fifteen minutes into Harvard Square, and a whole world would open up.

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Harvard Square had everything a kid could want. There was the University Theater for movies, the Harvard Coop bookstore to wander through, and plenty of streets to explore just for the pleasure of exploring them. Often I'd connect to the subway at Harvard Station and ride deeper into the city — Harvard, Kendall, Charles, Park, Washington — until I surfaced somewhere near Boston Common. I liked walking through the old cemeteries most, trailing my fingers over headstones dated to the 1770s, thinking about the people who had lived and died before my country even existed. At Christmastime, the department stores ran enormous model train displays — full-scale, not the little HO sets — and I could stand there for a long time watching the engines make their rounds.

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But no matter how good the day had been, the best part was always the ride home.

Fifteen minutes on the bus back to Belmont, and I'd be buzzing with things to tell. The bus would drop me at the main road, and I'd cut through a neighbor's backyard, come down the hill, and push open the back door of 23 Lawndale. There was a small alcove, and then immediately the kitchen — and the kitchen was never empty.

My father might be at the table in his undershirt, reading the newspaper. My mother might be on the phone, laughing at something. Or several of my siblings would all be there at once, playing cards or talking over each other, recounting their own days in loud, competing voices. There was always warmth in that kitchen, and always something happening — a new TV show to watch, a new record someone had brought home, some story that had to be told right now.

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My siblings were five years older than me, which meant their friends came around too. My mother encouraged it. On some evenings, someone would roll up the living room rug and put records on, and people would dance. My friend Dave Fulton came for dinner once and was startled to discover that when a dish came around the table, that was your one chance at it. "There is no second time around," I told him. "There's only one time around."

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My brother Jim had a gift for bringing people home. His roommate from the Soldiers' Home, Pete Loeduwick, came often — Pete could clear a table with cheerful efficiency, including finishing off a carton of Indian pudding ice cream nobody else would touch. Jim also brought home a pair of German students once, and another time he arrived with Donna, who would later become his lovely wife. She'd meant to go home to Wisconsin for the weekend, but the trip was too long, so Jim brought her to us instead. That was how we first met her.

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Thanksgiving was the occasion I loved most. Jim reliably appeared with someone in tow — a friend, a stranger, someone who needed a place to be. My mother had two rules: no politics until dinner was finished, and no one ate a bite until she said so. Given the size of our appetites and the speed at which conversations moved, we sometimes came close to violating the second rule before she even sat down. There were years when Jim brought home rabbinical students from Harvard — one Reform, one Conservative, one Orthodox — and the three of them would argue theology over the turkey with the kind of joyful intensity that only comes from people who truly care about what they're debating. I didn't know much about Judaism then, but I knew I was watching something good.

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I didn't understand at the time how lucky I was. I just knew that coming home felt like arriving somewhere worth arriving. The back door, the alcove, the kitchen, the noise — it all added up to something I carried without knowing I was carrying it, until much later, when I finally had words for what it was.

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It was the feeling of being expected. Of walking in and finding that the world inside was warmer than the world outside, and that there was always room for one more.

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