Goodbyes Are Sad

Ido came up to visit me in Boston this weekend. I hadn't seen him since I had moved out of NYC, so that's about 7 months. He's now moving back to Tel Aviv, Israel for a year or two (or so), so this visit was more of a kind of goodbye-for-now type thing. For me, it was more of a kind of closure on our relationship.

So, when I picked him up at the South Station, I was full of road rage, I was stressed, just not a happy camper. He called me cold, so I tried cooling my jets some. It was hard. We got moderately lost in the North End and wharfs of Boston trying to find Legal Sea Foods, which we finally did end up finding and eating at, after more than one phone calls to Craig for help.
Of course, with him (as always) the waiters asked us what bottle of wine we wanted to drink. Keep in mind, Boston is SUPER strict on the underage drinking rules, and yours truly is in fact underage. But because he looks his age of 24, and apparently I look far too old for mine, they didn't bother asking for any ID or even questioned our ages. They card my sister still! But no, ever since I started dating that boy, almost every waiter I've ever had with Ido not only ignore carding policies, but almost encourages us to buy their "house wine"s. Do I feel really awesome and sophisticated for being so grown up, or do I feel bad for myself? Who knows.
We had a delicious dinner. He gawked at his chowder and lobster, and I enjoyed my tuna steak.
We walked around Quincy Market & the North End after dinner. He pointed out some nice "first kiss" spots there. We talked about what we've done for the past 7 months, and what might be happening in the nearby future. It started raining, which put a slight damper on our touring of the North End.
Got some Mike's Pastries to feast on later. Drove home, and he quickly crashed to bed.

My dad woke us up with the piano. Welcome to my house. He bonded with my family a little bit, until we offed to find some beaches. Let me explain "find some beaches". I could not, COULD NOT, find myself this entire weekend. 2 hours later in the car, and after turning around on interstates about 3 times, I finally found our way to some place by the ocean that I knew, Newburyport. We hit up a Wendy's for a snack, where he was completely appalled at the idea that I was actually encouraging dunking the french fries into the Frosty. I guess we have our differences, after all. I think he was just being reluctant to adventure.
We walked along Newburyport's beaches, the harbors, the ports, the wharfs, and talked a lot. We talked mostly about education, personal morals, our affinities for math (he was going to be an astrophysicist, too! who knew?!), our family lives, Israel was a big topic, our intelligence (he's a genius, just to let you know. And I'm serious. It took him about 1 hour to admit to me that, too....but he claims I'm very intelligent and that he has a lot of respect for me as a woman, a "girlfriend", a person...), etc.
We ate at Not Your Average Joe's, talked more, walked around Salisbury Beach, drove around Andover and North Andover. Got lost a few more times. I swear I made him car-sick. We got home late to eat leftovers. My mom cornered him in my room and talked to him for 2 hours. The conversation was long, but he was very gracious about it. We watched "The Seven Year Itch" for a while, until we went to bed.

Sunday, I woke him up so we could go to Cambridge. Visited Harvard. He was not very impressed with Harvard Square, or Yard. The weather the whole weekend was TERRIBLE, though. He liked MIT better. We drove around Boston a bit....but I was getting lost a lot again in the city, so I was kind of tweaking/stressing out while driving because I could not get where I wanted to go at all. He noticed me tensing up, so he gave me a neck/head massage while I tried finding how to get back to normalcy, which was very nice.
Then we drove home to celebrate Dad's birthday. We ate dinner with the family, and my parents talked with him, and kind of embarassed me by showing my performances on the TV.
Later on, we decided to go see "Nacho Libre", which he enjoyed but I did not enjoy nearly as much as him. It did not beat "Napoleon Dynamite". Then we parked the car and had an in-depth conversation. And he showed me some of his martial arts.
Since I'm working, and he needs to be in Boston while I'm at work, and my mom has the day off, mom's driving him in for me, so these were my last moments with him.
Getting ready for bed, he came over and gave me a goodbye hug. It was kind of emotional. Went to bed. I wrote him a note. Woke him up in the morning to get pulled into his bed for a last hug and I insisted on a morning kiss goodbye.

I think what I got, in reflection, was better than any fling I was expecting. We're going to keep in touch, still friends. And it's nice to know that we actually had something. We had a legitimate relationship. Too bad we didn't have much time, because I think we would have had some amazing......fun. Never say never, right?