Chasing windmills

Ethan’s current primary obsession is wind turbines (or  “windmills,” as he calls them). They’ve popped up all over the area recently, with one on Route 93 heading into Boston, one on the new road into Salem, and a gigantic one whirring smack dack in the middle of downtown Newburyport near the train station.

You can’t get Ethan into the car without protests unless you promise to take him to see either a windmill or one of his other current obsessions, such as a tunnel (a.k.a. an overpass), a digger (a.k.a. a backhoe), or a yellow school bus.

Introduce any one these into a car ride, and suddenly it becomes an event worth remembering for days, even weeks, later. Like the time last week when we saw a tunnel, a digger, and a yellow school bus all at the same time on our traditional Thursday morning Starbucks run.

Ethan loves them all, but none more than his windmills. Which is why after we took him to the zoo for the first time on Sunday, all he wanted to talk about afterward were the windmills he’d seen on the way. Was he impressed with the wolves? The bears? The zebu? No. My little Don Quijote was only interested in his windmills.

Well, those and the pink flamingos, which (as he’ll tell anyone who’ll listen to him) were “stinky.”