It was a mild afternoon, one of a long string of unseasonably pleasant days. I looked out the window at the December sun, low in the sky, but oddly warming. Our options seemed to stretch before us endlessly. We had all the time in the world, I told myself; winter seemed like it would never come.

On the floor, my companion pulled herself up out of a circle of scattered books, and climbed up on my lap in order to get a view out the window herself. Dry leaves blew across the street like Carnival revelers. "Can we go out dere, Mama?" she asked. I shrugged. Sure we could. We had an hour and a half before we had to be anywhere, and we were out of maple syrup. "Let's go to the farm," I said.

The farm isn't far. It took almost more time to get Miriam into her shoes and coat, belted and buckled, than it did to drive there. A few turns, and we pulled into the gravel lot to begin the process of extracting ourselves from the car. It takes a few minutes; there's always squirming involved, and debates as to the relative merits of getting out of the car versus staying in it, wearing the hat versus not wearing it, being carried versus walking "self." In general Miriam is content to be carried everywhere less familiar to her than a radius extending several feet from her own front yard, but I never quite know when she'll decide that it's the perfect moment to assert her independence with the trilling command, "I walk SELF."

In fact, the farm is all about walking "self." There's no admission fee, no attendant to monitor our visit nor any guide to interpret it. We just get out of our car and wander, like Brownian motion. In warmer weather there is always a small army of toddlers illustrating this principle, making random patterns in the parking lot gravel, sparking little dusty explosions of excitement. I can always count on witnessing some small person melting down somewhere, in an overtired ecstasy of farm animal bliss: Cows! Goats! Chickens! But on this moody afternoon there was no one around but us, and Miriam is not usually much on farm animal bliss. She looked around, raised her eyebrows like a very small Groucho Marx, and made no argument as I carried her from the parking lot into the store.

The farm store is a slightly abandoned looking place. There's a gray cashbox in one corner, unlocked. You write down your purchases on the legal pad next to the cashbox, hope your math is relatively accurate, place your bills in the cashbox, and make your own change if there's any to be had. Usually there isn't -- I've learned to round my purchases up to fit whatever bills I've carried in with me. On this day, there were plenty of choices. There was the maple syrup we'd come for, and organic eggs by the not-quite-dozen in the glass-fronted refrigerator. But there were also bags of organic salad greens, looking particularly alluring simply by not being contaminated California spinach. I pulled a bag from the refrigerator, juggled the maple syrup, the toddler, and my wallet, and determined that there was not enough change in the cashbox for my twenty dollar bill. I shrugged again. It couldn't be helped; I simply had to add a skein of orangey red yarn to our purchases in order to make the math come out right. Miriam needed new mittens anyway, in case winter ever did come, and her brother already had a hat in the same color, from the last time my $20 needed shrinking at the farm store. Miriam noted the new yarn with delight, and cried when I wouldn't let her drag it across the dusty gravel as we dropped our purchases off in the car.

We still had time. "Would you like to go see the animals?" I asked. She wrapped her arms around my neck more tightly and nodded vigorously. We took the path that led through the dark barn, crammed with odd implements and rusty bits of machinery. I pointed out a cat watching us from the edge of a rafter overhead. Exiting the barn, we faced the chicken coop and the penned outdoor enclosure in which the cluttering, cackling feathered masses crowd. Miriam raised her eyebrows again, and commented on the different colors of chickenhood. Then we crossed the muddy, rutted yard to admire the goats and sheep in the field across the way. There were cows a little farther on, and Miriam bravely descended from my arms to press against the wire fence and whisper tentative endearments to them all. She held my hand and picked carefully over the ruts -- more like canyons to her tiny feet -- as we passed an empty pen. She didn't remember that this pen had been the home of turkeys earlier in the year, and I didn't explain the absence of turkeys. Instead there were enormous smelly pigs to blink at, and more excellent muddy ruts to be navigated, this time in a spirit of brave adventure, "self."

We had swept the usual run of farm animals. Someone's dog was running joyfully around the parking lot, and Miriam stopped suddenly, anxious. There were a few minutes left. I'd been deliberately trying to stay out of the way of the only other people to be seen around the farm that day, a young man and a teenager who were doing some sort of construction by the square of rabbit hutches. I supposed they were volunteers at the farm. Everyone who works here is a volunteer, and anyone in the community can volunteer. When we moved to this town, ages ago now, this all-volunteer farm was one of the community's many selling points for us. That, and the walking lands down by the river, and the summer concerts on the town common, where little children dance barefoot. It felt like a real community, this town. It felt like a place that would be easy to put down roots.

I'd harbored vague fantasies of volunteering at the farm myself, though even as I indulged them I had to acknowledge that I don't garden, that I hate waking up early, that large animals and small insects make me faintly anxious. Of course, I never have gotten around to volunteering. Far from it. I don't even come here often. In the warm months the farm is a prime location for playdates, such that whenever I do come here, I always witness the arrival of two or three minivans in rapid succession, followed by the quick disgorgement of squealing preschoolers who greet each other gleefully, and mothers who greet each other with just slightly more restraint. The squealing preschoolers and their accompanying adults remind me reproachfully of my own comparative solitude, except for the few times I am among them, proud to have finally carried off that badge of competent parenthood, the playdate. The rest of the time I can't help but think that there is something a little wrong with me that I fail to move in a pack of minivans, a cloud of toddlers. I tell myself that I don't even want to have these playdates, but the truth is that I'm a little shy, a little hesitant to challenge the boundaries between unknown and known, between friendly acquaintance and friend. In warm weather I wander the farm infrequently, slightly ashamed of my cultivated solitude.

But Miriam didn't seem to notice or care that we were alone on this particular afternoon. She approached the rabbit hutches with determination. Threading her careful way around the two-by-fours on the ground, she stopped in front of the nearest hutch and stared at its inhabitant, a large grey rabbit. For five long minutes, she contemplated this rabbit on the other side of the mesh wall, soaking in the mute companionship of his liquid eyes. "Is dat duh bunny, Mama?" she asked me finally, awed and solemn. "I wuv duh bunny."

"I'm glad you love the bunny," I said, amused. Then I checked my watch. Our time was up; my son needed to be picked up after school. "OK, sweetheart," I said, "say goodbye to the bunny and let's go back to the car-car."

The meltdown was instantaneous. "I don't want to say goodbye to duh bunny!" she howled. "I don't want to go to the car-car! I want to stay with duh bunny!" I had to pick her up and carry her to the car while she kicked at me, leaving furious, dusty footprints on my jacket. She sobbed and tried to squirm her way back to bunnies and freedom while I restrained her with my body and fumbled with the seat buckles. Only after she was fully belted in, and I safely removed to the driver's seat, did she pause in her shrieking long enough for me to try some calming words.

"I know you loved the bunny, Miriam," I said, "and I'm sorry that we had to leave. But we can come back another time. Would you like to come back another time and see the bunnies again?"

"No!" Miriam roared. "I DON'T want to see duh bunnies! I don't EVER want to see duh bunnies! I HATE duh bunnies!"

And that has been her line ever since, whenever the farm is mentioned: "No! I HATE duh bunnies!"

Well, isn't that my line, too? I hate the minivans that disgorge the clumps of best friends, I hate the connections that form through a web of playdates and phone calls, I hate all those things that just might anchor me down -- and then give me that much more to lose.