I’ve loved putting down roots in one welcoming Cambridge neighborhood —The Boston Globe Magazine
Why my family has lived in one place for so long.
By Morgan Baker
When my daughter Maggie got engaged, I ran into the shops and restaurants on the two-block section of Huron Avenue in my Cambridge neighborhood to share the news with the merchants who had watched her grow up.
When Ellie, my younger daughter, heard from college, she bolted into Full Moon, the restaurant we ate in regularly, to scream “I got into college!”
The shopkeepers and restaurateurs have followed my family since my husband, Matt, and I brought our babies home from Mount Auburn Hospital three blocks away, to the house we still live in 28 years later (with a brief soujourn in Hawaii) around the corner from Huron Ave.
Unlike my girls, I lived in more than eight houses and apartments in New York, London, and Cambridge by the time I was 14. I wanted my kids to have a more solid sense of home. In doing so, I gave myself the permanence I had always wanted. I had a home, a husband, two kids, and dogs. And, I found a neighborhood, too, where I knew people — Sue and Cindy and their daughters, Becki and Sara; the Murrays and their house next door; the Moynihans and their brood on the other side until they moved out and the Belkners moved in; and Charlie, who knows everyone and tells us all “It’s a beautiful day today.”
I knew when I went to the local grocer that I would bump into someone from the kids’ schools, soccer teams, or my cousin from around the corner. There, we would stop and share stories from our daily lives, while Marc, one of the owners, offered to make us coffee.
Judy at J. Miles, a clothing boutique, dressed my mother for years before she got sick and then helped hide the clamshell brace she wore when the tumors in her spine compromised her strength. Now I get most of my clothes there. Ellie and I have even modeled in the store’s fall fashion shows.
The staff at Full Moon Restaurant knew Ellie’s voice when she called for her macaroni and cheese and to hold the fruit and veggies, and owner Sarah gave Maggie her first job post college. John at Marimekko, the Finnish clothing and home goods store, hired Ellie; she worked for them in Cambridge and on Boston’s Newbury Street for years. Marc at Fresh Pond Market handed out $2 bills on birthdays, even when you turned 60, and Crosby, the butcher, always knew what Matt would order for the holidays — the obvious turkey and a tenderloin for our Christmas dinner.
The neighborhood embraced my family, making us all feel like we belonged and were cared for. It celebrated Ellie’s roles in theater productions and Maggie’s new job in LA. There’s something about people knowing your name and history and even hugging you when you enter their place of business. Relationships stretch beyond formality and become friendships.
This fall, however, Fresh Pond Market and Full Moon closed within months of each other, sealing off a part of my children’s childhood and my past. Matt and I ate almost every meal at the restaurant its final week and got the last of its french fries. I wish all the owners only the best on their new journeys, but walking by the gutted market and Full Moon with paper taped on its windows leaves me hollow inside. I know new stores and restaurants will replace them, like when Cumberland Farms became Formaggio Kitchen and The Huron Spa morphed into Henry Bears Park, but the owners won’t know my kids’ names and their favorite foods. They may feed me and fill my bags with food, but I wonder how they’ll nourish my soul.