Once I lived in Boston, or rather just south of it, in a lovely New England town called Dedham.

It’s home of the Boston Red Sox management office. I was there because of a relationship–an ill-timed one plagued by ill fortune. I knew better, of course. But that’s not the point here, only the reason I found myself living there in spring of my 40th year, still young enough to be full of hope and promise.

Dedham is so essentially American. I stayed only half a year–spring, summer, fall–living in a white 200-year-old duplex on a street where hundreds, maybe thousands, of cars passed daily on their way from Boston to Norwood and beyond. It was a grand house of two stories and a lovely side porch that caught the sun for a good part of the day. That summer, I grew petunias whose deep purple, white, and pink flowers and deep green vines draped down the window boxes. I often sat out there to enjoy my morning coffee. Washington Street becomes Highway 1 A as it passes through Dedham, a major thoroughfare through Boston and on south. It was a view on the world different from any I had ever experienced.

On the week days, I taught English as a Second Language down in Copley Square. It was charming, quaint, typical Boston–just off the Common, and I loved it all–the bustle of the big city, the daily commute, the foreign students eager to learn. I had classes of students from all over the world, grouped into cultures and languages. We did a lot of laughing and walking the streets of Back Bay and Copley Square.

Though my personal life was crumbling in the background, my teaching life was a delight. I loved walking the streets, having lunch on the green, talking with my students from all the world, hearing about their cultures and their homelands. I learned plenty about culture and about myself. My best lesson was to come. It was my year of hard learning.

One of my classes was a group of Japanese students. I took them on at the end of August and had them until the end of October. They were the most dutiful of any group I taught, called me Teacher as if that were my first name, bowed slightly as they arrived to class, said thank you over and again. They were always prompt and stiffly polite. But they did not laugh at my jokes. None of my best, tried and true, antics evoked laughter or even smiles from them. I began to think I was a failure with that group though they did well enough on quizzes and tests. They were learning English well; perhaps they just did not like me, I thought. I felt a gulf between myself and the class. Finally, the end of the course arrived, and on the last day of class, I promised them a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts on Huntington Boulevard across from Fenway Park, not more than a 15-minute walk.

It was late autumn–one of those raw days where it’s 40 degrees and cold rain–a day that presaged the end of my relationship. I felt dark in my heart that day, numb almost. My students and I made the journey to the MFA on foot, on the rain-swept sidewalks, hiding under our black umbrellas. But soon the great illuminated museum welcomed us. Inside, we walked and chatted happily, enjoying the great Impressionist works most of all. Something wonderful happened to our group dynamic. It was the end of their school term. Now I was just an American friend. We all seemed to be a bit more comfortable. Even my own personal gloom seemed to lift.

It was dark outside when we finished our tour, and the whole group followed me outside to the nearby bus stop where to my utter surprise, those who had been stiff and impersonal for weeks began to weep openly as they said their thank-yous and goodbyes. The wind whistled in gusts between the tall buildings around us. I was soaking wet in the pouring rain as I stepped onto the bus headed to Forest Hills, took my seat, and studied my reflection in the drizzled window glass. Truly, I was dumbfounded. All their emotion had been locked inside, corralled, it seemed, by their respect for schooling and towards teaching. I had been blind to their cultural norms, which kept them respectfully distant in the classroom, but which found expression and permission in a change of place and circumstance.

All the way home, I thought, “how could I have been so blind?” Though we’re different, we are human together. In those last minutes with my Japanese students, I connected with them in a profound way, and I was forever changed. I would not make such cultural assumptions again. In the darkness with the sounds of the bus shifting gears, with passengers faint like ghosts in the dim bus light, I knew my time in Boston was done. I had been schooled by my students, and I came away better.