We're Home ...

I bought a T-shirt a few days ago, a shirt that says this on the front: "I would prefer not to."

Fellow nerds and those who were paying attention in English class (virtually all of you, I'm sure) will recognize that famous line from Melville's celebrated short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street" (1853--a couple of years after Moby-Dick).

I bought the shirt at the gift shop at Arrowhead, the old farmhouse (now museum) in Pittsfield, Mass., the farm where Melville wrote Moby-Dick  (and "Bartleby"). I'd bought another shirt there a few years ago; it says "Call me Ishmael." You know ...

I wear that first shirt about once a week to the health club, where, occasionally, someone will call me Ishmael. I intend to wear the second shirt as a workout top, as well, principally because its message ("I would prefer not to") is so entirely relevant at the health club.

Anyway, we were in Pittsfield (and environs) for a few days because my mom, who lives in nearby Lenox, is turning 98 on September 9, and Labor Day Weekend was a time when my brothers and I could gather to be with Mom as she nears a most remarkable anniversary. (I will write more about her on September 9!)

It's a bit more difficult to get up into the Berkshires now than it used to be. We live more than 500 miles away; health is iffy. But there were years when we thought nothing of driving up there several times a year. I remember one time--at Thanksgiving--leaving for Mass. after I finished teaching school on Wednesday, driving well into the night and early morning. Thinking nothing of it.

And on my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary (1989) we drove up to surprise them at a restaurant (my brothers were there, too, of course), then, after dinner, drove back as far as Syracuse so that I could make it back the next day in time to teach ...

And when my dad was dying in the fall of 1999, I drove back and forth several times to be with him. (He died on Nov. 30; I wasn't there ... a deep, deep regret).

But now? A difficult trip, and in the past few years I have often been simply unable to do it. Medical things. You know ...

But both Joyce and I were feeling fairly stable, so we decided to give it a whirl. So ... off we went, with an overnight stop in Chambersburg, PA, the place where John Brown stayed and stored weapons before Harpers Ferry, the place where he met with Frederick Douglass to try to convince Douglass to join him in the raid. (Douglass declined.) There is a marker near the spot where Brown and Douglass met, and it was something of an adventure, locating that sign. But we did. And Joyce, who has been working on her memoir about Brown for about ten years, got to see the final Brown-related site we had not visited previously. We also toured the old boarding house--now a museum--where Brown stayed in Chambersburg.

And then it was on to see the Dyers in the Berkshires ...


To be continued ...