'bury my ashes here' + my beat
I MISS HOME, BAGELS —
my favorite part of home is a bridge with an underpass open to traffic, decorated with a request from my mother: “bury my ashes here, and sprinkle in some coriander, too.”
the small rickety bridge has train tracks home to more discolored weeds than trains. and the underpass is so small that only one car can drive through at a time.
by all means, the bridge is underwhelming. but my mom and i have found a sense of calm in its existence over the years.
more later, including why the arrangement works, but first my words + reads:
my words: i wrote about how over the summer months, greater boston surpasses nyc and sf in average seed stage volume.
etc: right after this story went live, i was chatting with david rosenthal of wave capital (yes, this one) over coffee (the best kind, btw) and he mentioned how different boston would be if y-combinator never left. i’m slightly embarrassed that i didn’t even know YC’s origins were in bean town, but with this new history in mind, i think it makes the seed stage environment in the region even more interesting.
learning lesson: as i cover more trends and find which questions uncover the best stories of underrepresented founders, i’m refining the way i define my beat. here’s my latest description: i cover seed and early stage startups, and the networks that boost them to their first checks.
unorganized tab time:
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anyways,
i partly love that bridge because every time i pass it, without fail, i’m reminded that people have some type of chill.
as i mentioned before, the opening beneath the bridge is so small that only one car can squeeze in at a time. unluckily, the two roads that meet there come from two highly populated areas. and double unluckily, there’s no traffic light.
all this in mind, i’ve never heard a honk or even seen an accident there (my mom agrees). people always take their turn, wait for the other person to go, and then gently sweep themselves through the underpass. it can be 3 a.m., or rush hour.
to me it’s a reliable place to find a silent standard of no-questions-asked politeness. and that calm has grown in importance as i’ve spent the last 4+ years living in cities, where my eyes have grown accustomed to seeing haste.
the second reason i love that bridge is because of the places it’s taken me. on one side of the underpass is my neighborhood, and on the other side is a stretch of parks. me, charmie, and ashay have rebelliously peddled by foot through the underpass (of course, during the handful of times its closed to traffic). it has taken us to fourth of july celebrations, the 4-H fair, and absolutely nowhere in search of a late night walk and a goodbye before college.
as we grew up, it has seen us speed to get to the grocery store for a last minute homecoming cheeseboard, or make circles around it to avoid going home after a night too good to be true.
and for a bridge with more weeds than trains that use it, that’s an impressive amount of memories and importance nestled in the pavement. i’ll be back to see it in a month.
to the big little parts of home,
N
i made my mom go take a picture of this bridge just for this newsletter. thanks mom!