"Feeling touristy?" he asked.

She was watching the buildings go by, but also the students, huddled in their winter clothing, marching determinedly in small groups or singly, intent on their mysterious goals, which could as easily have been the next beer or a rendezvous as some scholarly pursuit. Although she'd been a local her entire life, even if from Vermont, just across the river, she'd never had the envious, resentful view of the college so many other "townies" harbored, nor had she delighted in the supposed depiction made of the place in the movie Animal House. She worshipped education, and while her sons had become a police officer and a butcher and hadn't benefited from Dartmouth's offerings, she had made sure they developed an appreciation of music and literature and art, and she'd trained them to be analytical, appreciative, mindful, and kind.

She knew that college students could be self-indulgent, narcissistic, and careless with the gift they'd been offered. Those were the cliches. But as Leo slowly circled the Green, quietly allowing for her meditation, she relished the fantasy she'd held forever, of places like this being the incubators of the mind, where kids learned to think, sometimes despite their best resistance.

"You should've gone here, Ma," Leo finally said.

She turned away from the buildings to look at him. "I came close enough," she said after a thoughtful pause. "I got access to that library and passed along what you and Joe could bear. It would have been fun to actually sit in class, but I can't complain-I've read what a lot of their professors wrote."

Leo laughed again. "And you got to fall asleep in class. We were always taking books off your lap after you dozed off."

She whacked his shoulder. "Once in a blue moon, after spending all day chasing you two around."

"You did good, Ma," he said after a pause.

It was a gentle taunt. He delighted in mangling English around her, since she worked so hard not to do so herself. But this time, instead of correcting him, she chuckled and admitted, "I think I done good, too."