This morning going through the 20 mile-per-hour zone in front of my town’s grade school I watched the little kids walking along the sidewalk with their enormous backpacks. Little kids, first graders; what on earth is in those bags? And the older kids look like they are setting out on a serious trek, and they are just going to school. Maybe it is full of sports equipment; it can’t all be books. There were a few kids with bikes; besides the packs on their backs there was a bag fixed over their back fender. It looked stuffed too. (It must be sneakers).

A friend recently diagnosed as being allergic to gluten found himself unable to eat the fruitcake he had been sent at Christmas and passed it on to us. It was very big and quite heavy, shiny with cellophane and red ribbons, and wedged tightly in a festive tin. A solid confection, stored away in the freezer, waiting for a party that hadn’t happened.

The routine of an early summer morning goes like this: I come downstairs escorted to the porch door by two expectant cats, who trip up me and themselves in their eagerness. They have to wait while I check the outside temperature and open the skylights (it rained last night), and then we all emerge into the early sunshine. They jostle me and each other gently as to who gets out first (an eager pup would have knocked us all over by now), and we stand a moment at the top of the steps and take a deep breath.

I found an old ferry schedule yesterday, in the drawer of a tall china cabinet in the living room where it had been for years. The faded coral-colored picture of the ferry and the darkened print of this little piece of paper came into focus. It had been living, half visible, under a lot of silver spoons, for the past three decades. The Islands, it said. Late Winter 1978. Inside it read Winter Schedule. Effective Jan. 13, 1978. Well, this was the winter of 2012, when after 33 years I decided to look at this small scrap.

Boy, six more days and I’m outta here . . . back to the real world! I’ve had it, ready to go . . . back to the real world . . . six days!”

“Where are you from?” (Boston? New York? Thailand?)

“Fall River . . . six more days!”

My check-out lady at the Stop and Shop is fast and cheerful, she’s the bagger as well as the checker; a lot of the young people have already left, and she can’t wait to be one of them. It’s goodbye to the Outback. “Thanks. Have a nice day!”

The other day, in Edgartown, I found I had some time to spare — and a parking space. Let me put that another way: I had found a parking space so I took some time. When we see a space, our modus operandi is to take it and go from there. Where we have managed to stash our car is how we will allot our time; can we lug a big bag of books to the Thrift Shop from there? Would there be time to look in on a friend in one of the shops? Parking in a tight spot on Main street (any Main street) with three cars on your heels is triumph enough.