It's amazing what a trip up the coast can do. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
So, what if I had hundreds of pages of reading, someone else's socks in the hamper, while my overnight bag is surreptitiously stuffed with my own clean ones? (Even if I wished to forgo shoes and socks altogether in favor of tropeziennes which I've yet to pull the trigger on, for reasons other than the weather.)
Oh, but Mom waits for me and my girl with a plate of quartered grilled cheeses on sourdough, salty finger things, and heaping bowls of sliced farmers market fruit. We perch on her leather sofa and sample her spread, trying not to bang our anxious, excited knees on the glass coffee table.
Next, she leads the way to her new neighborhood bakery two doors down. Snuggled in at a table with lattes and hot chocolates, the three of us can only stare at the bakery case: plotting a little too loudly for the flaky croissants tomorrow morning, as we are still too full from a mother's version of elevenses - though technically served at ten-thirty-in-the-AM, a bit of a late start if you consider one detail of family lore in that she has been known to eat leftover Fettuccine Alfredo, with coffee, at 8 AM.
We meander down State Street and make it to Stearn's wharf where I treat them to rainbow sherbet cones, watching them eat with their hearts and feeling a tug in mine as I realize people of all ages eat ice cream the same way.
At the edge of the wharf, a girl with an amped-up ukulele sings nicely and I give her two dollars not because she is great, or even good, but more so because she is not yet like the other tired, dirty street peddlers.
We board the trolley back into town and its automated machine doesn't make change. My mother bristles about losing a quarter, so much that the driver abruptly swings off her seat, her withered hand catching a quarter from the next passenger about to pay. The driver holds it between two fingers and hands it to my mom, who snaps her coin purse closed, insisting loudly, that a quarter still means something in this world.
Sunday morning is warmer and I detect Spring. I'm an optimist but I've had it with winter. I want my toes out, I want those sandals, and I am ready for a change. We watch the turtles at Alice Keck as they slip in and out of the water, sometimes moving only when necessary. They emerge from the water and claw up the side of the bank. I think they're never going to make it but they always do. They find their place in the sun. Sometimes things move so slowly you think it's never going to happen. But it does. Anything worthwhile takes time. And you just have to watch for it.
