Like Baby Wallpaper

Off to visit a newborn.  We’ll ride today to visit my new nephew in Boston.  An hour up the New York State Throughway, two and a half hours cross Massachusetts on the Mass Pike.  Manageable.  Before we go, we need material to share with this new fellow.  And the mind returns to the gifts of newborn days.  I can’t remember my own but I know what I got when I had my first and then my second.  Simple, soft blocks, rattles and pacifiers and mobiles that float up over the crib. Come to mind  It’s early days for books and yet books are like baby wallpaper.  They subtly influence the atmosphere.  So I tell my daughters to each pick out a book to share with their new cousin. 

Fortunately my town and the point of our departure has at least three book stores in a three block radius.  We search.  We ask  No Maurice Sendak ??!!  No Gruffalo.  Really?  You don’t have the “Little Red Lighthouse?”  But “The Runaway Bunny” is at hand.  So is “Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel.”  “Hop on Pop” is scooped up as well.  “1971, the Year Rock Exploded” Um . . . no. That’s for me.  Just browsing.  Put it back. 

And after a while, we’re on the road.  I am “really trying “as Marvin Gaye says, not to speed.  After my debacle in France this summer where my license was yanked and (rather swiftly, I must say) mailed back home, I am more vigilant than usual to be conscious of the speed limit.  I have decided that ten miles per hour over the limit is OK but that much beyond that is asking for trouble.

Albany approaches quickly and within an hour its time to turn off and head for Massachusetts.   My dad and step mom are vacationing there in Western Mass and we agree to meet in West Stockbridge, which I used to visit regularly as a kid on weekend ski trips.  There is a Shaker Mill Tavern there, like there always was.  No one believes me when I explain who the Shakers were and how they got their name.  The Six Depot Roastery has some of the best espresso I can recall sipping in a long time.  The young fella who served it described the blend like a sommelier might.  And this sees me through my ride over the Berskshires, past the five colleges and Worcester on down into a sunny late afternoon in Boston.