Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Sam and Alexis invite me out to a vegetarian restaurant, where I have fiddleheads, and to an ice cream parlor, where my dessert is a nut-filled, rosewater-flavored scoop. Karen takes the train up to Boston and we end up at an overpriced Italian spot for supper and, later, a Chinese bakery for cups of tea. Regardless of what I’m eating, it is best done with people I’ve known and loved for so long. It cannot be said enough how much I miss them and how wonderful it is to have them sitting an arm-length away.

2. Opening Day eventually holds a loss for the Mets, but because their opponents were the Nationals, I was able to pull in a staticky radio broadcast for the game at my desk.

3. I head to Boston’s North End in pursuit of a lunch place Sam recommends. Instead, I end up in Modern Pastry Shop, whose overwhelming smell of sugar and almond paste reminds me of Libby’s in New Haven. I buy a cannoli, which they fill on the spot with ricotta and top with powdered sugar. It is the best Italian pastry I have ever had, whether enjoyed outside with sugar blowing all over me or at one of the shop’s handful of tables with my oldest friend.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this wweek?