There is always a baby asleep in the middle of it all, usually more than one. 

They’re not in a darkened nursery with the blinds closed tight, not in a stroller slowly being pushed back and forth, not nestled in a car seat. 

These babies sleep in the crook of an arm on a tractor driving down the middle of Main Street, Callicoon, while the engine roars beneath them and coughs a cloud of diesel into the June air.

The law of infant sleep says they should be screaming, would be screaming if it were any other machine roaring, any other odor taking over the atmosphere. 

But each year I’ve photographed the Callicoon Tractor Parade, I’ve watched them float by, the babies gone limp against the arm of a parent with one hand wrapped around the steering wheel or nestled tight to the chest of a parent riding shotgun. They’re dead asleep while a hundred-odd horses rumble beneath them, and crowds on either side of the road shout. 

Hand that same baby to a visitor. Burn some toast. Ease your sedan off the highway toward the parking lot and watch what happens the second the engine note changes. As a rule, babies aren’t fans of noise, smells or strangers.

Unless the noise and the diesel and the strangers are the ones they were born into.

What would jolt anyone else awake is, for this child, a lullaby. 

That roar isn’t a roar. It’s the sound the world makes. That diesel isn’t setting off an alarm. It’s the scent of safety. 

I get it. 

No one asked me whether a lawnmower engine or the roar of a chainsaw should mean home. No one explained to me that the heavy scent of grease and machine oil would smell like safety. This understanding came early, before I had the words to describe them. 

We like to say we choose our places, that we plant ourselves somewhere and grow roots on purpose. Some of us do. But these babies aren't choosing anything. They are being written on outside in hayfields and inside garages. 

And some day in the future, they’ll catch a whiff of diesel, hear the roar of a tractor engine, and no matter where they are, they’ll feel a sense of home.