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Day’s Verse:
Do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given to you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
Matt. 10:19-20
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Life with my people seems to have settled into a rather dull routine: we leave at 7:00 and she gets out at a train station in Southborough. Then he drives the same route to Sudbury, and I wait all day in the hot sun. Sometimes I wish I could just meander over to a nice shady spot, or even just cool my wheels in a puddle, but I’m good. I always stay in the same place until he comes out. We go back to the home parking-lot, but not for long, because he needs me to go back to the train station. Sometimes we have to wait for a while until a horn sounds, heralding her arrival on the enormous grandfather of wheeled vehicles. I feel small and low-horsepowered compared to it, but at least I’m not confined to some boring old tracks with the same route day in and day out. Then again, at times I wonder if I have settled into tracks, doing the same thing each day.

But yesterday we broke the routine. It started normally, because every seventh day we drive half an hour, then I sit in a parking lot outside a white building for an hour and a half, and then we go back to the home lot. But yesterday we didn’t leave the white building for longer than usual, we stopped at Price Chopper and they filled me up with what they call food. Then, after only a couple hours in the home lot, we took off again — she drove, and we wandered on backroads all the way to Chelmsford. Let me see if I can remember all the towns we passed through:

Hudson
Sudbury
Stow
Concord (full of tourists, but cute)
Maynard
Acton (confusing one-way roads)
Chelmsford
Marlborough (of course)

It seems I have missed some towns, but then much of the time my wheels spun by farms — more organic farms than I might have guessed — and small, dot-on-the-map towns. Not until turning around and entering Route 27 did I even have to stop at stoplights. When we arrived back, after much wandering, I waited in the home lot like I always do. As the sun set, I saw them walk by me. Two hours later, in the full dark, they returned. I heard them talking about a long walk, getting lost, and hours of exploring, and I concluded that they had planned a walk (why walk, I wonder, when you have four servicable wheels? Some things I may never understand) but had accidentally gone far afield from their intended course.

I can only hope for more interesting days driving along narrow, tree-shaded lanes past green slopes and quiet farms. I could love that life.