Leg Three: Worthington & Northampton

It's very hard to leave my friends after our brunch at the Haymarket...all of us are dragging our feet. But some people need to get to the airport (I'm glad we don't) and it helps a little that we have another reunion to get to--with my friend Pam out in Worthington.

I wrote about Pam in an earlier post because she has recently published her first novel. We met at UMass and I try to visit her whenever I get back to the Pioneer Valley. The last time I saw her was five years ago.

Worthington is way out in the country, but I don't even know where, to be honest. I keep saying it's "off the grid" (which is totally not true.) Let's just say the buffalo could roam there. Pam and her husband Mark have an amazing lifestyle. They mostly work from home--she's an editor and he has a famous ceramics studio and school. They go to artists retreats and have beautiful, sweet children--a girl and a boy.

When we get to the house (I call it "the compound" because it has several buildings and lots of land) Jarrah notes the gang of kids watching a movie in the living room and squishes in between them without need of introduction. Pam and Mark have another family staying with them, and another (neighbors, bearing lasagna) joins us later. Jarrah spends nearly nine hours with six children, ages 8-12, and never once lets on that she is three. Oh, I think they have a fair idea, but no one makes an issue of it. Two of the girls fuss over her, sharing their toys and books and making her their special friend, and we barely see her the whole day. It really is amazing to observe the ways in which Jarrah is both social and independent. I would almost say that she's absolutely trusting of strangers, but only if they are shorter than adults. She craves the company of other children, watching them intently for cues about how to behave and what to care about. I guess I'll have to keep a close eye on her when she's a teenager.

This is what Pam's life is like. After we've been there a little while, chatting and eating popcorn (which Pam makes without the aid of anything but a jar of kernels and a stove) we hear about a gathering down the road (it's dirt, by the way) at "the neighbor's barn." Off we go, to discover a group of local folk gathered in a circle, playing the fiddle and guitar and having your basic hoe-down. Behind them is a big wooden table covered in pies and wheels of cheese that probably originated with a local cow. I wander outside and sit in a gazebo surrounded by fragrant vines and humming bees while the children roll down grassy slopes and shriek. I lay down in a hammock I find right outside the barn and listen to the music. Suddenly, I wake up, and no one has even tried to find me. When I tease Pam about her lifestyle, she smiles sweetly and says "It is pretty idyllic, I guess." That's an understatement.

After dinner, I coax Pam's son Amos, rumored to be a guitar prodigy, to play for us, and this leads to a full-fledged jam with Amos playing and singing (he truly is an 8-year-old wonder), his father on back-up guitar, and a friend on drums. The rest of us grab available drums and tambourines lying around, and when the call goes out for more singers, I timidly volunteer. (How many of you believe that "timidly" part?) It's a real high, especially on Jefferson Airplane's "Go Ask Alice," which I hadn't even realized I knew. Jarrah stands in the middle, at the piano, and I get such a thrill watching her concentrating on the sounds (we are amped and everything) before she presses a key or two in a determined way--she totally gets the idea of the jam, and even though the keys she chooses aren't quite harmonious, she's definitely understanding rhythm.

Suddenly, it's near 11:00, and we haven't even checked into our hotel. And we can't find our car keys. Worthington has no street lights, and outside it's the kind of dark that swallows everything but stars. I am actually circling our car and the yard with a headlamp, which would be even more comical if I wasn't so worried. They invite us to stay, but we still need those keys. Everyone is searching, inside and out, and at one point I actually open our two huge suitcases and pulled everything out, right down to the bottom, before experiencing a wave of absurdist fury with the thought, "What the hell are you doing? The keys are not going to be in the bottom of your suitcase! They'll be someplace totally obvious and you'll kick yourself later!"

And then I find the keys at the bottom of the suitcase. Jarrah is asleep before we turn around in the driveway. The new Hampton Inn in Hadley is sumptuous (the desk gal tells us it's "Number One in the country," and I am impressed, but David says "Number One of what?") Once we get settled, it's a really good sleep in their special white, fluffy beds with mountains of pillows.

Monday morning is our first (only?) day of the trip when we have absolutely nothing planned. It feels a bit odd, especially to Jarrah, who asks when we'll "see friends." "Today is just you, Mommy and Daddy. Does that sound good?" "No," she says. "I want to see friends." I love that toddler honesty!

We drive to South Deerfield to the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory, which is an enclosed garden filled with 5,000 butterflies from all over the world. It's a cozy size (it has to be--South Deerfield is not exactly a metropolis) but clearly a tourist and school destination based on the capaciousness of the gift shop. There is a little museum, kind of cheesy, but containing the most precious little blue frogs you'd ever care to see, and a shop advertising over 20 flavors of soft serve (yummy, but hot in the cafe--Jarrah drops the top of hers within 30 seconds.) Then we pass through a sort of blowing tunnel (designed to remove "hitchhikers") into the atrium, and MAN! David's an amazing photographer, and some of these photos are incredible, but the full experience of standing or walking with dozens of butterflies around you at any given time cannot be photographed. It's so dense with the winged ones I am on the verge of getting skeeved out, but don't quite go there. I think David and I like it slightly more than Jarrah, since it does freak her out a bit to have things flying at her face, but she gets over her skittishness long enough to hold one.

On the way to South Deerfield, we pass two landmarks well-known in my day: the Yankee Candle Factory, which is now so corporate that they have shops in the malls here, and the sign for Bub's BBQ in Sunderland. The Yankee Candle Company seemed closer to a factory store in my day, with some decorations at holiday time, but now it's a full-blown theme park. For the uninitiated, Yankee Candle makes scented candles in about 300 flavors, some so realistic that you have to stop yourself from taking a bite. But I have a feeling Jarrah would not be too excited by me chiding "Don't touch that!" every two seconds, plus in the past the mixture of smells has put me over the edge, so we admire it from the road and keep on going, towards Hog Heaven.

That's kind of how they market Bub's. It's a little tin shack by the side of the road sort of operation, but now they've added summer seating outside (next to the extensive motorcycle parking) and it's just as good as I remember. There's a free juke box and a Southern buffet with each order of meat--lots of salads and beans and potatoes and rice and bread and all you can eat.

We head back down Route 116 and end up in the town of Amherst, which is kind of deserted on Memorial Day. It's nice to be back, though--I used to spend a lot of time there when I went to UMass. I point out the bookstore where I gave a poetry reading, and the green where some guy immolated himself as a protest against the Gulf War. We find a fabulous toy store and settle in for a bit while Jarrah plays. I take a little walk on my own, but it's hot and everything is closed.

After that I ask if we can just drive around--the roads between the Five Colleges form a sort of triangle, and the scenery is lovely, especially if you've grown acclimated to palm trees and cement. When we pass Atkins Farms, Jarrah asks if they have animals. "No, it's a Treat Farm. They grow treats. Want one?" I used to get fresh bread there, and really good fruit--now we get some pie and picnic outside. It's getting windy and looking like rain when we get back in the car. David wants to "try something" with the GPS and next thing we know, we're sort of lost, but not really. I marvel that we find some roads I've never been on. Jarrah falls asleep.

Back at the hotel, Jarrah and I head to the indoor pool. David follows. We have the place to ourselves. Suddenly, it's 7:00. We head back to Amherst to have dinner at Judie's, which is a place I'd loved for their apple butter and popovers bigger than your head. It's nostalgic to be there again, but Jarrah is cranky and restless, and the food doesn't seem as exciting as I remember, though the popovers are still incredible.

Back at the hotel, Jarrah is ready to sleep, and David and curl up in our bed with some Atkins Farms treats and downloaded series finales on the laptop. It's a peaceful evening. Tomorrow we'll head back to Boston.