By the time I get to the junction with I-95, all four lanes are usually occupied, and we often slow to a crawl or a stop. In silent concert with my fellow travelers, I’m sure, I pray that nobody up ahead of us does anything stupid or hyper-aggressive and so much as dents a fender, which will tie up traffic for perhaps hours. In a strange way, this concern seems to create a sort of courtesy. If I need to change lanes, for example, for an approaching exit, I just signal and somebody (not by any means everybody) will let me in.

The last few miles go right through urban Lynn, where traffic lights stop traffic dead, but allow the poor souls entering from side streets to edge in. It’s here that I try to build a balance in my karma account by waving other drivers ahead (possibly infuriating those directly behind). We’re all moving about the same speed now, and there’s little point in elbowing ahead. Besides, I’m almost there and feeling generous.

This past weekend looked like an easy one. We’d dine Friday evening with friends at the Tides, the local sort-of-only-game-in-town restaurant, whose windows look out upon either twinkling waves or glistening mud flats, depending on the state of the tide. Then Saturday we’d drive into Boston for lunch with more friends. Bea’s a seasoned Boston driver, so I pretty much relax when she’s at the wheel. Pretty much.

But surprise! Bea’s car is currently hors de combat, so the visiting country rube would be driving, under her direction, into the city for lunch. Driving his shiny new car, with less than 900 miles on its odometer, into the East Coast’s most treacherous traffic, to an area called Back Bay. Yikes!

I needn’t have worried – so much. We navigated the usual stop-and-go across the bridges and into the city. The streets were lined solidly with parked cars. But mirabile dictu, here was a pair of open spaces. I nosed into one, Bea fed the meter a credit card, and we were off, only a block or so from the friends’ apartment.

You probably know Back Bay; I didn’t. You can’t get more downtown than that. The internet calls it “an affluent section” of Boston, a mixture of upscale restaurants and stores and blocks of solid side-by-side Victorian brownstones with stoeps and security doors. It’s built on landfill over what used to be a tidal basin that caught the effluent of city’s toilets. When a dam blocked the tide, the resulting aroma was too much to bear. So they filled it in. The stoep had a center railing and the building a small elevator. Up we went, and stepped out into an elegant, fifth-floor, open-plan apartment. Kiki was with us. She cautiously sniffed noses with the resident guardian of the premises, and they seemed to agree tacitly not to slaughter each other.

Looking out the window to the street five floors below, I was transported back to my childhood home in Albany, on the top floor (as in most old brownstones, the servants’ quarters). Just as there, nothing green or growing, except the decorative trees heaving the brick sidewalk into hills with their roots (I understand there’s a garden on the roof above the apartment). I almost expected to see a horse-drawn Norman’s Kill Dairy or a Freihofer’s Bakery wagon clopping down the street. But it was just cars and asphalt, as far as I could see, on a gray day damp with a persistent drizzle.

Naturally, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Could I live like this again?” with my car parked in its particular space, every door locked, surrounded by purposeful traffic waiting for the light to change. I know that my immobility isn’t all that far off; I can remember as a child being quite happy with life four storeys up and a few blocks from the park; and I love to greet the tail-wagging retrievers being walked on the sidewalks by friendly people. But how I’d miss the long views of the mountains, the old beaver dam up behind the house, and the smell of new-mown hay in the morning.