I stepped off the Acela and Boston’s July air landed on me like steamed spinach: hot, limp, slightly salty. The boarding platform at Back Bay station smelled like diesel fuel stirred with clam chowder, while my sunglasses fogged before I could roll my eyes. I wiped them with my shirt sleeve, already wondering if the spreading sweat patch would look like a Rorschach blot before I made it to dinner.
That night’s mission: whole 2.5 pound lobsters on Boston’s waterfront to kickoff a celebratory weekend for our friend the Graduate, fresh out of his Kellogg EMBA program. Claws snapped, butter pooled like molten gold, and I sheepishly wondered if ordering lamb chops was a regrettable choice. Though being good friends, they passed tender knuckles across the table for grilled lamb the way kids swap baseball cards. Proof, in case anyone doubted, that grown-up friendship still runs on shared mess.
We gathered the next morning at Olde Scotland Links, a public course whose name promises gull cries and crashing waves yet sits beside a commuter road and a 24-hour Dunkin’. The starter handed us scorecards and a lecture on pace of play while a Pepsi machine wheezed behind him. I picked up a grayish (but freshly grilled!) hot dog that tasted faintly of cardboard. Nobody complained because the reunion itself was the condiment.
My own MIT EMBA lecture notes floated somewhere behind my eyes. Organizational Processes says you learn a company’s cultural soul by seeing what it celebrates; Leading Organizations insists a repair job can be simple: carve a moon-shot into snack-size milestones, then throw a party each time one falls. But theory offers little help when you have just topped a four-hybrid fifteen yards and the townie starter is judging you without blinking.
This weekend’s milestone belonged to one of us: the Graduate. A routine steakhouse toast felt thin, so we promoted the idea to a weekend of golf, reliable weather if mother nature allowed, and something off script (tapas anyone?). Boston rewarded us with one of its few perfect Saturdays: seventy-four degrees and sunny without even the slightest drizzle.
The front nine behaved better than expected. Drives stayed in play, six-foot putts listened, polite barbs skimmed the surface without drawing blood. By thirteen my swing vanished, maybe hiding under a goose-pocked fairway, maybe snickering in a group chat, but the collapse was easy enough to laugh off. Watching someone else find rhythm can be its own celebration; my trench work in the rough simply added sound effects.
Sunday morning had us trading irons for deck shoes. We boarded Adirondack, an eighty-foot schooner built for postcards, and let a patient breeze carry us past the skyline. Sun on the mainsail, salt on our lips, gulls brazen as pickpockets. Conversation drifted from AI in half-baked business ideas to whose slice is more likely to send range balls screaming toward Providence (definitely mine). Mostly we sat still, relaxed, and watched the water do its slow glittering work.
Somewhere between the outer harbor and the turn back to the dock, those classroom theories caught my wandering mind’s attention. Marking milestones is scaffolding, not garnish. Companies tell employees what matters when they stop the workday to applaud. Friends do the same when they carve a weekend out of calendars packed tighter than a TSA-approved carry-on. Personal growth, too, needs a band or at least a kazoo. When you skip the celebratory toast, memory can blur, and morale wilts in the corner like a stale box of factory-made donuts.
We eased into the slip, sails flapping themselves quiet. Clubs thudded into trunks, sunscreen odor clung to fabric, and a mild sunburn made an imprint of my sunglasses. We promised another round soon, and returned to the click of keyboards and calendar invites. Two days later, fishing for a charger at the bottom of my carry-on, I found a bright-orange tee, scuffed and bent, proof that it all happened.
Look at your own calendar. A colleague finishes a certification next month; a friend achieves a new personal best at the 5k; maybe you finally ship that side project. Pick a date and gather the people. It need not involve schooners or oversized shellfish. Though both help.