By train.

I've begun thinking about the future, avoiding the long stretches of it during which I will be working and focusing, instead, on the sorts of adventures that Fain and I will have during the summer vacations. After all, the promise of an extended summer vacation is the real reason most teachers keep at it. Let's face it. The light in one child's eyes may be enough to keep me from walking out in the middle of the day, but it's not enough to keep me coming back week after week. Especially when the light flickers and is often replaced with dull apathy. Especially when 89 other pairs of eyes are looking at me with the sort of light that is the reflection of a mob leader's torch gleaming on a well-polished pitchfork.

So, I imagine the trips that Fain and I will take during the halcyon days of July and August. Hot, but halcyon.

First, I think, we'll travel along the Eastern seaboard, stopping in D.C., Boston, New York, and any other great, bustling cities that cluster the culture and excitement of the American story into compact fortresses of stately brownstones and steel skyscrapers. We'll eat pizza at all the Rays' parlors in New York. We'll gape at the airplanes in the Air and Space Museum in D.C. We'll find Franklin's old haunts in the cobblestone ways of Boston.

Then, we'll waylay ourselves in the green meadows of Pennsylvania and watch black-and-white cows munch and loll in the heat of the afternoon. We'll canoe through calm lake waters in Maine, picnic beneath towering evergreens on soft fallen needles. We'll ride bicycles through apple orchards in Vermont perhaps, and we'll watch grimy, graceful fishing boats sail out into pink mornings in Maryland.