a saturday for listening to the birds

I think, as we grow older, we have to make a choice...
We can become stubbornly rooted in the people we've always imagined ourselves to be, falling back again and again on, "It's just the way I am."
Or, we can continuously redefine ourselves, holding on to the things that we've come to know and love, and letting go of the ones that we eventually recognize as hurtful to ourselves or others.
I hope to be the second kind of person.
And I am happy to have found a life partner who thinks the same way I do. We share a long history of perfectionism, an over-appreciation for structure, a resistance to relaxation. And we both know that those are not pieces of ourselves that we want to hold onto.
So on Saturday morning, we ignored the voices of work and dirty dishes and sensible meals at home, hopped on a train, and instead listened to the voices of Fenway birds on a little hike to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum.

We finally exercised our free pass privileges (yes, you heard right) to the ISG, and spent a couple of hours breathing in the beauty of that old house...its lush courtyard, dark wood rooms, and canvasses from lifetimes ago. It is absolutely the place that everyone has told us it is, and now that we know we can go as often as we'd like for nothing, we might just adopt it as our second home. We spent this first trip just being in all the rooms, but we'll likely grab the audio tour next time so we can actually know what we're looking at.
Saturday was truly the most perfect day for spontaneous adventuring. I can't tell you how happy I was to don boat shoes and my cropped pink pants again, and get a little sun on my whiter-than-porcelain skin.
Our adventures took us past the Harvard med campus and then along Boylston to one of the tastiest places in Boston...

Tasty Burger veggie burgers are my favorite (don't worry, meat lovers...most of the menu is for you). Sometimes I am actually a little disappointed with healthy veggie burgers...they seem to miss the point. But I can assure you, Tasty Burger veggie burgers are decidedly not healthy. Infused with a barbecue flavor and sporting the crackliest grilled edges, they are a vegetarian sinner's delight.
Eaten in the sparkling sun on a bright red picnic table? Even better. So good, it might make you pull a Gollum...

You can bet I'm holding on tight to those sunny memories (my precious) as clouds are now sneaking their way across our sky, enveloping us in a week's worth of rain.
Hope your weekend was as beautiful and spontaneous as ours! This weekend, we let go of our inner voices so we could listen to the birds instead. As you've grown up, what parts of yourself have you let go of for happier things?