The calm after the storm

Saturday wasn't the best of weather days up here on our dirt road. Just sort of gray and overcast. The calm before the storm. But we had a full afternoon and evening planned. Time to get off the road and do some visiting. Our youngest son and his wife live down in Greenfield, MA and that was the first stop.
I  and my husband both grew up in Western MA. He in Agawam and me in So. Hadley so we are 'newcomers' to VT. Both our sons were born and raised on this dirt road but fate and love had been instrumental in taking one or the other on different roads.
Well we had a short visit with the youngest. I had a gift card to Barnes and Nobles that had been burning a hole in my pocket since Christmas. And the closest one is in Hadley, MA. Found a book
'50 Hikes in Vermont' put out by the Green Mountain Club. Since I started walking a year ago I have wanted to go further afield. And this book contains some walks I think I am capable of doing. So many thanks to my son and his wife for the thoughtful gift.
I love books and hope that they will always be out there in physical form to enjoy. You may have your electronic devices and there is nothing wrong with that. But personally I am old school on some things. Like holding a book, feeling the weight of it and opening it for the first time, smelling the ink and paper as I focus on the first words in the first sentence, in the first paragraph. It is magical.
Anyway, after some time with the son and his wife we headed to So. Hadley. For almost a year now we have met on just about a monthly basis with some friends from my past life as a teenager. There are JoAnn, Nancy and Roy. All high school buddies. And there are also Mike and Lorraine. Mike went to our high school and Lorraine didn't. It will be 40 years this June since I graduate from So. Hadley High School. Hard to imagine that much time has gone by. Some of the memories are as fresh as the recent snow and ice and rest have melted away.
We had dinner at a place called the 'Yardehouse' by the green up in what I considered the 'center' of So. Hadley since Mt. Holyoke College, the post office, some small stores and of course, 'the green' are there. This is not the area of my youth but an area from my youth. Over 30 years ago a fire swept through the small buildings and cubby hole shops across from the campus destroying that part of my past. The buildings and stores now there are unfamiliar. The restaurant has gone through many transformations since I left So. Hadley in the early '70's. It was a store, deli, bakery when growing up. Going to the post office meant running next door to get a cookie at the Chanticleer. That was its name 40 years ago and more. It is all different and all the same. As we sat around the table speaking of our varied childhoods, the parents some now long gone, siblings, friends, escapades. I have discovered it is nice to have a shared time and background with someone. Since my own parents dies there has been no one to remember me as a child or my childhood. I have reconnected with 3 people who knew me in those various stages growing up. From elementary school to high school. We shared time, friends and places.
From paved road in suburbia to a dirt road in VT it has been a wonderful ride which I hope goes on for quite a bit longer. I have that book and some walking to do. And today the sun is shining, the ice and snow will continue to melt. Its the calm after the storm sort of like where my life is now. The calm after growing up, being a parent, a time now to be a wife, friend and to go where ever my hiking boots take me as long as they bring me back to this dirt road.