Mrs. Paproth's Barn

October 24th

2011-10-24T05:14:00.000-07:00

Twenty-four years ago the leaves were just turning orange and red all over the Midwest. The Cardinals were in the sixth game of the World Series and I was 25 years old and flirting with the cute guy at the middle of the bar. Luckily the Cardinals were losing or I don’t think he would have spent much time talking to me. That cute guy grew into a handsome man, married me and together we have made this rich life with these other people and animals we couldn’t imagine living without.

We would fall in love in a little hill town called Elsah throughout that first autumn and into the snows of an early winter. I would introduce him to my most important person in a forest of Christmas trees where we would choose the biggest one. He would squirt whipped cream into the mouth of my two and a half year old and they would continue to bond over soccer and music for the rest of their lives. Later he would bring me bread he’d baked with his Slovakian Grandmother and I would know without any crumb of doubt that this was the man I was meant to have. This steady loving funny man was exactly what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

We started together in a hip city neighborhood with Benjamin, his big wheel, two cats and a dog. More kids and animals would follow. We got married in a handfasting ceremony under our Christmas tree in a sweet homage to the forest where our family got its start. We would buy and start businesses and succeed beyond our ability to imagine back when we were two little blue-collar kids from Granite City. We would travel to England for soccer and Italy for love. Those were the fast driving years. We would get on planes to listen to the Blues. We would make some mistakes-both of us. He would go off on his bike wondering how his life got so loud and complicated. I would get on planes and sit in quiet restaurants and think about other lives. But along the way we got better and better at tending one another and as we loved each other better our family flourished. We found the language. We would learn to make long complicated happy meals. We would make some friends who would last and some who would not. We would always live in colorful houses filled with antiques where Ella and Van would be our soulful back-story. We picked up and moved across the country to a little mountain village in Vermont so we could be surrounded by beauty not just on vacation, but all the time. We discovered home schooling and started raising chickens. We nearly lost it all in a bad business decision and then got it pretty well back in a couple of luckier ones.

St Louis to Edwardsville to the sweet round nurturing mountains of New England….We raised Benjamin and made Hannah and Eli. Now we have Pippi and Oscar and Violet in this beautiful old restored farmhouse where we all live. There’s Zoe curled up at night with Eli and a houseful of chickens watched over by Franklin who wakes us up every morning. It’s still plenty loud and colorful but this second half is quieter--easier too. We leave the craziness to the teenagers. We spread out our blanket and watch the leaves twirl around above us. We walk in these old woods with our dogs. We head for the island in the summer to smell the salt and listen to the loons. We hold hands more and dance in the kitchen to some new Swedish band John found on Spotify.

Twenty-four years---a whole life. Happy Anniversary John. I love you more and more and more

Wet

2011-10-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

This has been the season of way more rain than anybody asked for. The hurricane was its own little surprise settling as it did on top of Vermont ….a landlocked small mountain range last time you checked and yes, still. We in Dorset were completely spared. We got rain and wind but it was not near as bad as your typical winter nor’easter. We only lost power around here for about a day. Hardly any tress fell either. It wasn’t until the next day when I realized I couldn’t get anywhere that the reality began to settle in. Roads were washed away and bridges had collapsed. If you had been watching the news and you’d never been to Vermont it must have seemed like we have bridges everywhere since all the news reports were about all the lost bridges. I did not think of this as much of a bridge state. After all we live an hour from the closest highway of which VT only boasts two. What bridges?
Well, along side every little scenic road, which is practically every single road in Vermont, wind little rivers and gorgeous babbling steams. They wind under roads and back several times in any given stretch of miles. And the little rise in the road, with that unimposing guardrail on the side, is what counts as a bridge up here. All those little guard rails and piles of rocks that cause the little rise in the roads…. well those are bridges. And practically all of them washed away.
That was just the beginning. Since then it has rained and rained and rained. We had one little happy stretch of sunny days when my Internet showed a little sun icon for four days in a row and I showed it to everyone I met. It was cause for celebration. That was when the trees finally turned. I actually thought they weren’t going to this year. They were fading and getting crumbly and all seemed lost. And then the sun came out and so did the glorious oranges and reds. But then the rain came right back. We have so much ledge up here that the ground just cannot get dry. Each rain brings the ground water right back up. Everywhere you walk is a soggy mess. Our dogs get clean and then within hours, minutes usually, they are wet and muddy once again. Our floors have a permanent sort of dust from all the drying and shaking going on around here.
We have it all---drizzle and pouring rain. The kind that makes you want to put Ella on the stereo and build a fire maybe make a pot of soup the first few times. Only pretty soon there is nothing romantic about it. You just want it to stop. Please. Now. Right now actually. Look send me a good thunderstorm with wind and lightning and thunder any day. I love the wildness of it. Good storms are like stage sets. There is a sense that something really big, way bigger than me is happening and I am just along for the ride. But this rain has put me in a mood I’ll admit. I feel like I am missing something. Courage. Maybe joy.
Something about gray shaded skies and the steady wet understory and the way the drops run down the windows and splash in the puddles and sure make a person’s eyelids heavy.

The Turning

2011-10-04T06:49:00.000-07:00

I love autumn. There is something about the turning, the sweet and blessed turning. It is a time of memory and reflection. For a few minutes or a few days we are betwixt and between. The long lazier days of summer are in the family album. All those late nights with teenagers , sandy floors after hours at the beach, and board games for rainy days are put on the shelf til next year. The kids are back in school and the holidays are still a ways away. But now we get a present. A little pick me up til the next big thing. The leaves begin to color at the same time the sunshine softens and deepens. There is a golden cast to everything it touches. It pours through our windows like honey and we are all bathed in its light. The mountains around us look rich dressed in orange and red and purple. The air is crisp and we begin to wrap loose capes around our shoulders and to dig out the Frye boots and soft woolen socks. The kitchen too changes its colors. From tomatoes and basil to cinnamon and nutmeg. There are thick stews and chewy cheddar biscuits.

Autumn is a reminder that things come and go. Summers roll into one another from years with little children playing in the hose to young teenagers kicking balls, skateboarding and painting their nails at slumber parties. Then those go by and we get young adults with boyfriends and girlfriends and jobs and dogs of their own. Everybody cooks together and there are plenty of hands to carry the picnic down to the beach. Each season has its own pleasures. Those days with babies were sweet and these with adults who make us laugh are just as nice in a whole new way.

This autumn after a hurricane and masses of rain which dried up a bunch of the leaves in the low boggy spots has a quiet gentle sort of beauty all its own.. You must look up to see the color which is not a bad thing to have to remember. We had a particularly lovely summer with a house on a pond, lots of time in the swing, canoes and plenty of splashing. There were long gentle beachy days where our talk meandered and plans got made. It was quiet somehow too as we each missed Steve in our own way . Now our son is partridge hunting with his Spinone girl Olive. A new autumn pleasure like living in NYC is for Hannah and a new school and a new pack are for Eli.

Life moves inexorably on.

These leaves make me remember other autumns and times past. It is not so much sad as it is a thoughtful tour of time gone by as we walk again in these very old woods. New to our pack this year are Dan, Olive and Violet. Oscar is a veteran with one autumn tucked in already. He takes his job as tour leader of leaf piles quite seriously. Dan is leading his own tour of a NYC autumn with Hannah. She is getting to know about football, apartment life, and the subway and we are all along with her on the ride. My mornings now include a call with my coffee for the walk to the train with an update on the thirty or so things that happened just since yesterday. You can’t go back and since good stuff keeps coming why would you want to? Most of us are still here and so forward we will go together making new memories at the apple orchard, in the woods and next to the fire. I just got a great spicy cinnamon and a really dark cocoa powder. I am thinking braised short ribs in wine and chocolate with an apple crostada for dessert. The turning is here. And gladly, gladly…. so am I.

Enough

2011-06-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

This time last year Eli and I were already on the island. I had work to do there before everyone could go so John and Benjamin came later. But Eli and I were bustling around setting up house. There were big fat puffy linens to dress all the beds in summer white. There were cushions to carry to the wicker furnished porch and tablecloths to dress the table. I covered every open surface with votives and the candlelight on rainy mornings and starry nights made every day feel like a holiday. I got big vases and filled them with island flowers and threw scarves over lampshades to make things richer. But the time the rest of the gang arrived we were well settled and knew all of the shortcuts to the pond. Still when I got home I realized I had missed a bunch of stuff. Things happen to the mountains and here on our smallholding whether I am home or not it seems.

We will be back on island again in a couple of weeks. But this year I am glad to be lapping up a little Vermont June. The lavender is blooming and with the windows open it is practically all you can smell. It seems early this year and fine by me. I fought the bees and grabbed bunches of it filling all the bedrooms this morning with the spicy summery scent. The peonies are also still blooming. I think I could cut them morning and night and still not run out. We moved to Vermont on a sweet sunny June day eight years ago. And so June brings back all of the firsts and reminds us why Vermont in a way no other month ever can.

There are the late lilacs, just now coming around. There are hot sunshiny days and cool evenings when a sweater and leggings are almost enough. The lightning bugs zooming around the woods make me feel silly and happy. We always have a bonfire in June with those long telescopic forks we bought that first year. We tuck the toasted marshmallows in between those little cookies with the chocolate on one side and smores never tasted so good. We planted our lavender hedge that first year too. Vermont looks like Tuscany in the summer only without the Mediterranean heat. And we had all loved the lavender in Tuscany and wondered how it would do here. The hedge is high now and blows in the breeze making the whole place smell sweet and spicy for more than a month. It feels like a celebration of this life we have made in these old mountains. A party guest from the city asked me recently if I would tell her what cleaning supplies I used. She loved the fresh lavender smell everywhere. I pointed out the window. Can I just tell you how happy that made me?

This morning after I filled the vases and before I got back to work I read for a little while to Oscar my Wheaten Terrier. Oscar loves to be read to and looks lovingly up at me while chewing his bone the whole time. He never gets up first. This started off as part of his calming training and quickly became part of mine. What do you do up there people ask. We walk in the woods, watch the turkeys and deer and raccoons who stop by to visit, feed the chickens from our kitchen window, learn about the stars and read to the dogs. And every few months depending on the season we spread a blanket in the upper meadow, stretch out, hold hands and smell the lavender or watch the leaves float down around us. We do run down to the city for work and restaurants and movies. But it is the reverse of our old way. The city bits are the intermissions and the natural bits are what we keep. We live here on purpose. We surely know that it may not always be this way. But for now it is just right----

It's almost here....

2011-05-31T05:59:00.000-07:00

It's not officially summer yet, but it sure feels that way with the heat, the thunder and rain, followed by shiny sparkly sunshine and the halter dresses in full bloom. Every time of year has its glory and summer is the season of sugary novels, comfortable disarray, beach nostalgia, and fun.

Out come the serving trays, blankets and the froofy fruity drinks; along with lotion smelling of coconut and colorful Eliza B flip-flops. We have already barbequed twice. The kids are all onto it. The new college grad is already on a beach with a boy. The gang of teenage boys too have slipped into summer mode and linger outside with iPods turned LOUD. Our oldest son is already fishing and the younger ones are walking around town with skateboards and big happy grins. There's a pile of balls and frisbees by the door, and if you get down on your knees at just the right angle, you can see perfectly smudged footprints from damp, dusty feet on the wood floor in the hallway.

There have been requests for homemade ice cream, lights for the basketball court, campfires, the new giant marshmallows as big as baseballs supposedly available at the store, new high def swim goggles and sunscreen. Someone needs a beach blanket for the quarry, and someone else is thinking about freshly squeezed watermelon popsicles.

After this coming weekend, there are only 8 days of school left including finals. I'm not wasting any time. Summer is near, and there are things to be done. I've added to my list a few good books, those giant marshmallows and some flavored ones I head about too. I am thinking s’mores with those cookies that have dark chocolate already on one side. I just ordered some prickly pear nectar online and am imagining salt -rimmed marguerites on the porch. Yesterday John cleaned out the chicken house and I got the juicer going and made up a batch of watermelon juice. This glass of red frothy goodness is the very definition of the taste of a summer morning. I realized recently that if I live to be 90 I have only 42 summers left. And if I only live to be 85 then I’ve just got 37 left. So I've really got to make every single one of these count.
Since it’s going to be another sultry afternoon I am thinking that after work we should head over to the river with the dogs maybe with a pitcher of those prickly pear margaritas. Who knows what might happen after that?

Happy Easter

2011-04-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

Mud season has just about gone by. We are now deep into the season of cleaning up, patching and putting away. The church tag sale happens every year on the last weekend of April when supposedly the weather is apt to be finer and the town has begun once more to shine. Roof tiles that littered lawns are picked up and the rugged roofers are called. Shutters done in by the long winter and hanging askew have been seemingly winking at us from all over town are finally inexorably put back to rights. Repair, revise, replaster….We recently had a death in our family and there seems to be a special lesson for us in all the spring cleaning this year. April is the month when Dorset Vermont gets ready again, puts on her best aprons and smiles, and sweeps the doorstep one last time. Winter ends. You can only be cold for just so long and then it is time to turn the lights back on.

The church bells play every day at noon. Daylight savings time moves them up for a while to one o’clock until somebody, probably the rector’s secretary, sets them too once more to rights. They are a mournful sound in winter when the echoes seem to bounce off the barren trees and they ring loudly and plaintively among the snow covered mountains. But in spring when the buds and flowers come back they seem to soften and the songs they play even have a quicker happier tempo. I love those church bells. It was one of the reasons we bought this house. Hannah and I were standing out on the balcony the first time we saw the house when an old hymn seem to ring out across our meadow. That was it. It still is. The music goes on ringing year after year.

Now as the woods seem to come back to life and there are a batch of baby cardinals living in the bush beside our front porch the bells are just part of the happy cacophony of spring. The peepers are back too. These teensy little frogs fill the wetlands with a joyful chorus every day at dusk. In some places the sound is so loud you have to raise your voice to be heard above them. We walk through town, grab a cappuccino at the bookstore café and look in the windows of the art galleries to see what all the locals were up to this past winter. We have a fair ration of painters and photographers who hole up in winter and bring forth a bounty just about now. In a few weeks there will be an art show in an old pig barn just up the road. Workers are even now cleaning it up and out and readying it for the hordes of art lovers who will surely visit.

April is perhaps the hardest month up here. It was especially sad this time around. It teases us when we are down and nearly without hope. And then just like that the mountains open up and the green starts its gentle climb back up. Our hearts soar with every bud and every new leaf. Just now my John collected a little bowl of eggs from our nearly 7 year old chickens Mabel and Mildred while Franklin crowed nearby. The eggs tell their own sweet story of resurrection and rebirth. You never know what beauty is just around the next corner they seem to say. Those old ladies just do not give up. And neither will any of us.
Neither will we….

Steve 3

2011-03-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

"Stephen Russell Stimson III, 58, avid naturalist, sportsman and collector, devoted father, and student of the arts and sciences, died of natural causes Friday, March 11, 2011, at his home. He was a lifelong resident of Edwardsville and graduated from SIU-Edwardsville in Urban & Industrial City Planning. He began his financial career at Newhard Cook & Company, retiring from Huntleigh Securities as a senior vice president in public finance. Later in life, Mr. “Steve” Stimson helped small businesses manage complicated tax issues for the State of Illinois.

Steve Stimson skillfully straddled the line between devoted hobbyist and lay scientist. He loved to share his passions for botany, astronomy, optics, and history with all. In addition, he was an enthusiastic food and wine connoisseur.
Part of an extended, blended family, Steve will be especially missed by his friend Kayde Carter; his sister, Mindy Stimson; his Uncle David and Aunt Ruth Stimson, his former wife and her husband, Ellen Stimson and John Rushing; their children Hannah and Eli Rushing; and, most of all, by his son, Benjamin Stephen Stimson.

Services for Steve will be led by our family friend, Steve Mudge, and held on Saturday, March 19, at Weber Funeral home, 304 North Main Street in Edwardsville, Illinois. Friends may call from 10:00 am to 11:30 with the memorial service beginning at 11:30. A luncheon will be held immediately following at one of Steve’s favorite restaurants, Neruda, #4 Club Centre Ct , Edwardsville, IL 62025. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his name to the Metro East Humane Society where he found his longtime companion, Lady."

I love you Dad."

Some things are too big for twitter. But people who write, who tell their stories on paper will eventually get around to telling them all. I have been quiet for a while because I have a story that is hard to tell. My oldest son’s father Stephen Russell Stimson 111 died suddenly and shockingly on March 11.
I have long joked that Steve and I were married for about fifteen minutes one spring 26 years ago. But that joke does not begin to tell the truth of this relationship that for the last quarter century has been one of the most important in my life.
Our marriage was short to be sure and filled with strife and pain. And if it had ended there I wouldn’t have much to say. I might been be glad to see the last of him. Back then I probably would have been.
But like all good true stories this one evolved and meandered along for the next 25 years until it became something quite lovely. Steve was my close friend. His humor, usually in emails almost every week, and sometimes twenty in a day held me up through my own mother’s funeral, the Alamo, formerly known as the quaint country store, and dozens of scrapes and celebrations our boy got up to over the years.
I remarried luckily and well. My marriage to John is one of the best things about me. And Steve, John and I were a parenting team. He came to every soccer game where John coached his son and cheered as loudly for the coach as he did for his son. He jumped and hollered at basketball games and called and said goodnight every day for about thirteen years until a teenager felt too old and told him he could stop. Back when we all lived in Edwardsville he had supper at our house 2 or 3 times every week. He was our babysitter on date night. Truth be told we were all a little bit like an Alan Alda movie.
Steve knew me when I was just barely out of Granite City. I had not yet learned how to make money and couldn’t have imagined dinner with the vice president. Last year when I had that dinner and dozens of others like it that still leave me wide eyed and giddy, Steve proudly told the story to anyone who would listen. In a way he was more like a brother to me than a former husband. Nine years my senior Steve came into our marriage with a whole bucket full of sadness, anxiety and worry. It would take him years of therapy to calm his demons and make peace with the fear that chased him. At 22 I was no picnic either. Way too dramatic and immature I was ill prepared for another complicated personality and I took our baby and ran. Steve understood. He would have run from himself too if he could have. He had the harder job staying behind and finding a way to live more calmly and eventually even happily. Luckily we both improved with age.
And when he died his house was littered with the detritus of that fascinating man who had found peace and a lovely way to live. There were thousands of books and articles covered every surface. He had been researching hunting dogs for Benjamin, a rental in France, reading up on learning Chinese, distilling bourbon, and studying game recipes for cooking the birds Benjamin was learning to hunt.
When he visited Vermont he stayed with us. Our other kids called him Uncle Steve. He taught us all about flora and fauna, the night sky and how just about anything worked. His life had been years in the making and I had a ring side seat for most of it.
I have been crying a little everyday for what we all have lost far too early. He would have been a wonderful grandpa. As it turned out he was the best ex-husband a girl could have.
I miss him.

Tell Your Story

2011-03-08T16:36:00.000-08:00

I am a storyteller. In theory I own a development agency and we raise money for worthy charities and non-profits. That’s the view from outside. But the real thing we do is to help these organizations tell their stories better and to a bigger audience.
I may do it for money but I still think that pretty much everyone is a storyteller. Our stories are our voices and they give color and definition to our histories and they outline, plan and shape our futures. A good story can and has gotten me through practically everything. Stories are the sparkles of our imagination and the warp and weft of our subconscious.
I sure hear a lot of bad ones though.

We had another big storm up here this week. This one was kind of a surprise. We had been in the middle of the big melt. The temperatures had been soaring up into the fifties and ice was sliding off the roof. The giant snowbanks were getting smaller every day. We could see grass down in the meadow. And I thought I could smell spring. Now we knew we were supposed to get a little snow and maybe some freezing rain, but that was all that had been predicted. It’s only the beginning of March so this was not a big surprise. What actually happened was a classic nor’easter complete with very high winds, sleet, ice, and snow. The snow fell fast and hard and blew and swirled in the wind and enveloped all of us once again right smack dab back into winter. The ice rained down and at one point the road and driveway were too slippery to even stand still on.

All these cold temperatures combined with the high cost of fuel have been especially hard for New England. It has been the wintriest winter I have ever known. And now oil is about four bucks a gallon which means lots of people go to school and work to warm up. It has been tough. Then this latest ice storm caused power outages everywhere.

But it did more than that. It also coated all the trees everywhere. Every branch all up and down the mountains looks like icicles. I have never seen anything like it. Since the temps stayed cool at around 22* most of the afternoon none of it melted either. The woods feel like a crystal palace. It is one of the most beautiful things everybody says they have ever seen. You want to go out and walk in it except the ground is unreliably slippery even back in the woods. But still. This is not something you can miss. I mean Vermont is the Green Mountain State so named for all those gazillion green trees and they are all covered head to tippy toe in ice. You simply cannot miss them if you are looking anywhere outside. It is sort of like the Fourth of July and Christmas all rolled up into one. We had googobs of sunshine today too so the whole world actually glowed this afternoon. It is shiny and sparkly and wintry and almost holy. Even though your house is chilly because you are trying to save on oil, and even though your driveway is either like an ice rink or coated in a filthy layer of ugly sand, even though---even though. There is more than one story happening here.

There is a wondrous grace to this last pause before the melting, muddy, slippery mess that will herald spring. We get to take one more slow breath and be reminded that all this beauty has a cost. Living up here has a cost and we all gladly pay it in exchange for the sweet gentle rhythms of this life in this beautiful place. Life is old here and the lessons of that long history are profound. Slow down.
Take whatever gifts the world brings you. Give thanks. Build a fire and watch the show outside your window. Maybe make up a batch of cupcakes. Cheap thrills.
And then tell that story with the happy ending. There almost always is one if you know where to look.

Saint Oscar

2011-02-21T09:08:00.001-08:00

Oscar is the most utterly open and loving creature I have ever met. He looks for the best in everyone he meets and always finds something. Recently Violet, a beautiful baby Bernese Mountain Dog, has come to spend her life with us. Oscar is completely and utterly smitten. He thought maybe we got this puppy just for him. She is small now but not for long and she already gives as good as she gets. Oscar pulls her around by her abundant tail and if she seems tired of the game he runs, gets her bone and puts in her mouth before he starts pulling again.

If he wants a game he grabs half of one of the many dog toys that cover our floors and puts it in her mouth leaving enough for him to grab and then he pulls her by the toy. She loves him too without reserve. She follows him everywhere. If he sits at attention looking out toward the woods at some rabbit he thinks he has spied, she sits right alongside in the exact same pose. She naps too as close as she can get curled up next to him.

I do not believe he has ever once growled or even looked worried over anything. Hannah has a bunny named Lulu and he watches her with a keen interest but does not give chase. He sits and stares, licks her when she lets him and all the while seems mainly just grateful for the chance to be near a bunny of his very own..

Now we also have Pippi Hannah’s Moodle. Pippi is less impressed by all this fribvolity and though she is little too she has a teeth barred cujo stare that might look pretty fierce to a puppy. The other day Violet was trying to get Pippi to play only the Pips was feeling annoyed and superior and began with her theatrical growling maneuvers. Violet looked a little hurt and Oscar ran over and stood between them. This made Pippi even madder and the growling picked up and grew something close to actually menacing. Oscar walked up to the sofa where Pippi was now poised to pounce, growling and showing all of her teeth. Her tail was down and her ears were back. Violet was backing away and looking worried. Oscar reached up and gently laid his paw on Pippi’s shoulder. He looked at her with a calm and steady gaze. It was a gesture or total love and trust. And Pippi stopped. She looked at it and him for a second before settling back down. He’d gentled her with love.
Another dog would have barked. Another dog would have gotten excited.
Not Oscar.
Oscar is the love dog.

He has utter trust and acceptance of other dogs and people. He seems to be free of any of the instinctual fears that most animals have and show from time to time. He loves everyone in the family showing no favorites. He is thrilled to see each of us when we come back from the world or just down from upstairs. He loves the snow. He loves his bones. He is plainly happy with his life here with us and means to show it.

My job it seems is just to try and be the person Oscar thinks I am. It is humbling being one of Oscar’s people. He calls us to be better than we probably any of us are.
Oscar is the most clear and shining example of unconditional love I have ever seen.
How did we get so lucky?

And Around and Around We Go

2011-02-16T06:47:00.000-08:00

It’s not spring. Not even close. Just a couple of days ago I was feeling pretty smug and proud of the way I have weathered this winter. We have had three blizzards and temperatures of minus twenty-six. This has been the most wintry winter I have ever known. But we have gotten several feet of snow, which brightens the landscape in a really beautiful way, and so there have been the twin gifts of light and sparkles and I have somehow managed not to mind the rest of it very much.

Until the day before yesterday. Something happened and now I am done with winter. I want the snow to melt. I am sick of the seven foot plowed snowdrifts that we have to inch our cars beside to see around. I am tired of the silence which deep in December felt snug and now feels oppressive. I want the birds to come back. I am sick to death of salt in the floorboards and dry skin and I am dreading the floods that will surely come when all this snow finally melts. This mud season is shaping up to be a doozy.

You see on the day before yesterday the sun came to Vermont and the temperature was fifty degrees. The ice started sliding off the roof. That was a story in and of itself. We had a giant slab fall and decimate our balcony. It looks like Beirut out there right now with broken railings hanging precariously from the house and slate tiles scattered all over the snow. That is going to be a helluva job this spring and I am not looking forward to the hammering or the bill.
But oh the glorious feeling of that golden light on our faces. We were warm----outside. What happened was we remembered about spring and summer, light and warmth.

It didn’t last of course. It was all a big tease. The temperature was back down to nine yesterday morning and I thought of having a good cry. I didn’t though. What’s the point? I mean look the good news is that spring is coming. It is inevitable now. Yes I know it will be six weeks or so before it really gets going, but the point is something is happening underneath our feet. Ice is beginning to give way down there and pretty soon we will have that loamy smell of dirt and heat crackling on our faces. So instead of crying I packed up the sweater hearts hanging from the mantle for Valentine’s Day. I pulled up the red tablecloths and switched out the candles from red to a quiet dusty purple. Today I think I’ll go to the nursery and get some flowers. Maybe a giant vase of pussy willows for the hall table.

Tomorrow I am going to the city. It is supposed to be in the fifties down there by Friday. So maybe I will wear these new red patent pumps instead of boots. I think I will buy a new bird feeder for the first hardy souls that sneak back out too. Because they know--and I have remembered. Everything sleeps. We slow up and hunker down. We regroup. And then slowly inexorably we come back shiny, full of color and glee at having made it though the dark night.

I came up here to the mountains for lessons I thought only the natural world could teach me. I had gotten what I could from city communities and offices. I wanted to make up my own job and manage my own life. I was weary of corporate problems even when the corporations were mine. I have always relished solving puzzles. I wanted the puzzles to be about living well in an organic and natural way. I was a city girl who wanted to learn from the country. So what I did I learn this winter? I learned that you can have terrible problems one spring and sweet resolution by the very next winter. The seasons mimic the ever changing kalidescopes of our own lives. They always repeat the patterns. Create good ones because you get to return to them again and again. We wrapped our arms around each other in this family and felt grateful this winter just like we had lots of winters before. I remembered about hanging on because everything changes and that includes the bad stuff. You usually get back to your set point. If that set point is happy you can usually count on being happy again pretty soon. We will come out of this winter deeply connected to our new Violet and sweet Oscar. We will have a grown-up son who ended a relationship that didn’t make him happy and a seven sister’s graduate. We have one making movies and another one thinking about immigration policy. And we have a teenager who skateboarded through the house all winter long chipping paint everywhere he went but whose worst crime all winter was throwing snowballs at cars on Friday nights. Not bad. One of us is making kids feel seen and heard in a kindly and loving classroom and the other has plenty of good clients and a new pair of shiny red shoes. The married ones held hands most nights all winter long. That is always the lesson I guess. Holding on....Lucky is what we are up here. Doubly so because spring is coming.
It is coming!

February 14th

2011-02-14T06:54:00.000-08:00

I always feel a little bit sad for the people who spend a run of days in February saying how Valentine’s Day is a made up holiday. These are the same people who call Mother’s Day a Hallmark holiday. Look-- all the holidays are ‘made up”. I mean some exuberant personality thought up Thanksgiving and all the others.
And I am one of those people who is grateful and glad. I love all of them. How can a reason to celebrate love or moms or dads or the harvest be bad? Celebrating starts at good and just gets better.
I know the argument that Valentine’s Day is sad for people who are alone. I don’t completely get that either. I mean surely it is sad if you have just lost a love, but the whole point is to celebrate giving love. When the kids were little we made goofy valentines out of lace and bits of ribbon, wrapping paper and foil. Those were some of my favorite Valentine’s Days ever. We would make them for neighbors and everybody we knew. It was a carryover from when I was a little girl and I would make Valentines for the old people at church. It is always about giving love which anybody single or not can do. You can always feel sad or discouraged about something that is missing. But the reverse is also true. You can always be grateful for what you have.

It is easy for me to feel grateful. I have a lot. I have had the same Valentine now for twenty-three years. This year we ran over to NY and saw two movies in the same day, ate well at a cool wine bar with good local foods, and spent the night in a little boutique hotel with chocolate covered strawberries as a midnight treat. Over the course of 23 years we have had a couple bumpy February 14ths. But not for many many years now. We learned how to be married and happy a long time ago and once we got the lessons they stuck. I know this makes me one of the lucky ones. I have a man who makes me laugh every single day and who goes along with practically every wild scheme I dream up. He opens every door and warms up my car and cleans off my windshield. He has a woman who adores him, cooks his favorite foods, plans holiday trips she knows he will love and wakes up every day thinking of ways she can make him happy. It is a good deal.

And this Valentine’s Day we will take a lemon tree to a lady who needs some spring, make outrageous cupcakes for Eli and all his pals, and walk in the woods with these animals we love and who love us back. Ours is not a life without any problems. We make up messes just like everybody else. But also like everybody else we are surrounded by little spots of beauty and love and this is a day to remember and celebrate what there is. There is plenty of love to go around. Go spread some. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone

January

2011-01-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

January seems to really mean it this time. We have had two blizzards already this year and when I woke up this morning the thermometer said -8. This is getting serious. We keep setting records. It is the kind of cold that seems to change the atmosphere a bit. The wind has been so sharp that it hurts to breathe.

A blizzard is defined by snow combined with winds of at least thirty-five miles per hour. Accumulation is not supposed to be a factor, but still we have had about five feet of snow since the beginning of the year and these Nor’easters have brought big winds that make the chicken house out back just a blurry white outline so I am pretty sure we qualify.

The difference between the winter storms up here, besides the obvious differences of size and quantity, and the ones we used to get back home is mainly in the reporting. In St Louis the warnings were everywhere. Storm Center: in big red letters across an ominous black screen warned “Don’t drive” “Dress warm” Announcers told us to leave our houses only if absolutely necessary. A trip to the grocery store in the hours leading up to the storm during the height of the reporting would be disappointing. Bread shelves would often be bare. If you wanted a gallon of milk you had to settle for lots of those little unsatisfying cartons. I was never disappointed though since a storm might mean a snow day and that meant baking so I was usually headed to the baking aisle for more chocolate chips, maybe some bags of sugar and flour and a couple extra pounds of butter.

Up here though people barely take notice. The plow guys get ready. The farmers put their animals in the barn, but that’s really about it. The wood was all chopped and stacked months ago. The boiler gets topped up regularly this time of year. I was at our local dairy for milk just before the last storm hit. I mentioned to the farmer there that the snow had started and I’d read on my Internet newsfeed that it was going to be a big one. She answered that yeah it was January.

I have come to love January. There is something about all this snow. We aren’t totally sick of it yet and the blue skies and cold sunshine make the landscape pop. It is gorgeous. The sun gets piercingly bright and the sky achingly blue. The tops of the mountains are clearly outlined without the puff and clutter of all those leaves we are so famous for. Right now the bones of the mountains are distinct with occasional stands of piney woods for deep green color and of course plenty of white.

I have lived here long enough to appreciate it all, okay excepting maybe April, well and late February is no picnic either. By the end of next month we are sick to death of grainy floors, dirty boots, mismatched gloves and all the rest. March warms up and we all get dewy eyed and hopeful only to be shattered by April which never manages to answer the promise of those first warm days in March. There are no leaves for most of April and it rains unendingly. It is the kind of cold that tricks you into thinking it will be warmer than it is and so you choose the wrong clothes and go about chilled for days on end even though the temperatures may even be in the forties which in January would have had you wearing shorts. But in January you expect it to be cold and so when the sun shines and it hits 20 you feel warm and jolly. Actually anything above ten or fifteen feels plenty warm when your expectations got set at 1 or 2. After 15 you can take off your coat and be plenty warm in a vest, your ubiquitous scarf and some good gloves. Truly. By January one has adjusted.

January means soups and stews and homemade bread. Last week I made potato bread from some leftover mashed potatoes and wonderful salt form the Mediterranean Sea. You can really taste salt when the air outside shimmers with the cold. Everything is brighter and more urgent somehow.

Right now we have sweet little meandering flurries. I have had a big run of pressing work which has meant lots of long early morning drives before sunrise and twice during some pretty hefty snowfalls. So this afternoon I am holding tight to my mug of hot tea. The honey at the bottom of my cup comes from bees who live just up the road. It runs a lovely summery gold and is thick and sweet. I am grateful in some almost profound way for the light and sweetness of this honey.

January is a time when these small pleasures seem bigger. They wouldn’t get much notice amid the lushness of a summer afternoon set next to a crashing surf. But up here when life gets bared down to the essentials of heat and food the beauty of a gentle snowfall and sweet honey is amplified.
It’s January and I’m glad.

Resolutions: Try to Drive Closer to the Speed Limit

2011-01-03T17:24:00.001-08:00

There's an exquisite blue-white glaze on the pond. Even after the little thaw it is still rock solid. There was a tractor making a hockey rink out there yesterday. It is a sparkly patch of beauty in a whole winter quilt full of them.

I love this time of year when the novelty of the snow has not worn thin and the glittering icy branches in the woods make everyone think of sleigh rides, fireside suppers and roasted marshmallows. Christmas in Vermont is a sweet time. It has all the warm smells and shiny woods and jingly bells that you may imagine was what they must have been thinking about when they invented the whole Christmas vibe. It is one of the good reasons to be alive I think. Christmas. And we get the first rate designer version up here.

I have only had five or six really exciting or memorable Christmases in my life. Most of them sort of run together in a happy blur of lobster potpies, shimmering trees, and plates and plates of gooey chocolate things. Every once in while though you get one of those memorable ones. Sometimes it is a darker memory like a family flu which can leave some definitive messy memories, or the death of someone well loved and close. But more often it has been the birth of a new baby, or a much loved Christmas puppy, a wedding, or even a new love. Once it happened on Christmas Eve on the drive home from Grandma's house. We saw a small herd of deer in a swirling snowstorm and our kids were little enough to be sure we were racing home just ahead of Santa and his reindeer. One year it was a long walk in the snowy woods with all the animals and the people I love best and there was a run of moments that afternoon of serenity and grace. We were sitting on a log in an apple orchard filled with snow. The dogs running joyfully and exploring, and the little creek was running fast, making a wonderful watery symphony that was the only sound besides the snow crunching underneath the dog's paws. It is one of those times when there was nothing more that needed to be done or it was too late to do whatever still needed doing anyway and I got a quick jolt of real peace. I was flooded with calm. I remember it because that gentle calm feeling is not one I have very often. I moved to Vermont I think in part in search of it. John and I wanted to live closer to the natural world. And we do. It's rhythms define our lives up here in a way that makes us feel connected and grounded. But the calm, the "peace that passeth understanding", is still a rare treat. That Christmas walk is a memory that lasts.

You can't really plan for the exciting bits or the memorable moments. They sneak up on you and your job is just to stop whatever else you may be doing and be present. Every year I make a whole passel of new year's resolutions. These are really just the backstory of my annual plans. I have been doing them for years. I always like to see which things hit the lists year after year. Those are either the things I really don't want to do, or the ones I cannot fathom how to do. Like the one that showed up for a few years about reducing all the swearing. The thing is, I like to swear.
Those pledges are not part of my real life.

But the others, the trips and plans for my things I want to do as my kid's mom or as John's wife, those things are part of the real narrative of our lives. Just before I make my new list I always write a review of the one from the year before. Sometimes I have skipped big chunks of the list because something else comes along and takes precedence ever every single other thing. But mostly I accomplish the things on my lists. That's how we had Eli, got to Vermont, and went to Italy with all the kids.

So this year I intend to make room for the quiet moments, the ones you remember...to happen. While I think it is true that you really can't plan for that sweet moment when all of your kids are sitting in the living room with you on Christmas Day in front of the fire and you and your husband realize at the same moment that you should put down your books and enjoy this accidental coming together. It is one of those moments when the conversation is about where and when you would live if you could choose anyplace in any time period. The conversation meanders and ebbs and flows for a while and then pretty soon everyone is headed back to their own lives where they will carry that afternoon and those moments with them like a warm blanket. These things happen of their own volition, but I think you can do the prep work that makes them more probable. You can schedule quiet walks up Mt Tom, or invite everybody for supper when you are still kneading the bread, or maybe build a giant bonfire and call everyone after it is roaring at ten o'clock on a Sunday night. Surprise. Come over. Like that.

I am going to schedule in days when the only thing on the calendar is to get the quilt out to the yard and then see what happens. And I am going to keep them duty free. Those are always the days of my life when the best stuff happens. And Instead of running around like a squirrel doing a load of laundry while the water boils and making a call while I fold it, and then answering a few emails on my iPhone while I wait for the prescriptions to get filled I am going to plan some empty spots and just see what happens.
Resolution number one: schedule at least one empty day per month and see what happens.....
Who knows maybe I will even see those reindeer again.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T19:58:00.000-08:00

I love Thanksgiving. I love the idea of a holiday centered around being thankful. I love cooking old foods that we have cooked a hundred times before. I love making the tacky dessert my mom used to make and I love making the more sophisticated crostadas I make all year long. I love my stuffing. It's mine. I invented it because I always hated stuffing and this stuffing is the stuff of holiday dreams. Everybody loves it. There is never any left. I love that I invented it and that everyone always eats it all. The secret is real dark maple syrup soaking the sage and apples and pecans. It smells divine and tastes as good as it smells. It is practically a perfect food.

I like the idea of turkey. I like how it looks on the platter all golden and pretty for the five minutes before it is carved. I don't like it very much at the table but I love it in turkey salad a couple of hours later. I love that turkey salad so much that this year we made an extra turkey today, the day before, so the boys could have sandwiches and I could start this holiday with a little turkey salad on white bread with iceberg lettuce. That sandwich is enough to be thankful for all by itself.

Every year we have company. The friends around our table change around every once in a while. They are the same friends we always have only some years this one comes and some years it is some others But this year through a variety of circumstances our daughter is in Vail and it will be only us and our boys and one girlfriend.
But just the same we will do what we always do. We will cook. The boys will throw and kick balls. We will walk in the woods with our dogs and we will watch our old happy standby-- Home for the Holidays. The sweet girlfriend is bringing her Grandmother's cranberry relish so we will have one of her traditions at the table. Breakfast will start with John's Grandmother's nutroll so his Slovak roots will be on display. And my mom's tacky dessert actually kicked it all off tonight. I made it early and when Eli asked if he and Timmy could have some I said sure. Why not? We have only ourselves to please. This made him unreasonably happy and prompted the extra turkey and these heavenly turkey salad sandwiches. Why not indeed? There is gratitude in abundance around here tonight.

And when we sit at the table, ( the one with all that great stuffing), we will say our sweet little thankfuls out loud. Some years I cry. Some years my husband makes us laugh until I worry that we will choke. This is my very favorite moment every single time. I love hearing what mattered to these people I love and who love me back. Some years we are all thankful for the same things like the year we sold the store or the year we moved to Vermont. But more often there are little surprises, reminders of things that happened throughout the year. Hannah always has a lovely long run-on rant sort of Jack Kerouac style. Maybe she can call hers in tomorrow. Eli will be thankful for Timmy and some thing they did and for which they did not get into trouble. We will all be thankful for the short time we had dearest Gracie and the long life we shared with Stu. I may be thankful that the last of the leaves got cleaned up if they do and that concert the other night, another of the sublime moments I get to share with this man I married. There are friends who won't be at the table with us but without whom our lives would not be the same. Benjamin might be thankful for this whole new hunting thing. We will all be thankful we got through that dangerous spring and that we are here still on the other side. And every time I look at this robust teenage boy of ours I am deeply grateful to have had good medical care and gotten him back safe and sound after a harrowing illness last summer.

There is always so much to remember and savor. There are always hot spots in every life too. We have all had moments we didn't think we could get through and they have come and gone and will undoubtedly come back around again. I think the trick is to remember, even in the depths of any misery, about swirling falling leaves, chocolate, and the sweet comfort of a good dog walking beside you on a sunny beach. There are always more books to read, more baths to take and more desserts to eat with hungry boys. There are purple manicures and Doris Day movies and Harrison Ford is still alive which is a whole reason to be thankful all by itself.
I am lucky and I know it. And tomorrow they made a whole holiday just to celebrate feeling grateful and glad. That it comes with turkey salad and this amazing stuffing deserves a prayer of thanks all by itself.....

Happy Birthday Eli

2010-11-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

When he was a baby he would hold his palm against my cheek. I’d never had a baby hold my face before. By the time he was two he would notice my nail polish when I came home from a manicure. “Pretty Mommy”, he would say touching my French nails. Like all of our kids he slept in the big bed with us. He would roll over in the night when he was three or four and lift his sleepy head, eyes still closed, kiss my arm, roll over, snuggle in and go gently back to sleep.

Last week, November fourth, he turned fifteen. How does this happen? How do these sweet little babies grow up so fast when we the adults in the room are not getting any older?

We spent his kindergarten and early school years in a coffee shop before school every morning. He’d have a chai latte alongside my coffee and together we would munch on a croissant and play endless games of chess next to a cheery little fireplace. His funny running commentary would make me laugh every single morning. In retrospect it was the most natural thing in the world to homeschool and by the third grade that’s just what we were doing. We’d trek down to the pond every couple of days to mark the changes there. We studied pirates and Daniel Boone, cowboys and Davy Crockett. We followed his interests and worried only about the learning as opposed to the content. We read Treasure Island together in the fourth grade. Turns out Long John Silver was meant for little boys. So was all the early American History rich as it was with swashbucklers and thieves, soldiers and heroes. We had a blast and I learned all that stuff I missed in my own elementary years. History was never brighter than when we were wandering around Salem imagining the Witch Trials or curled up on the couch in front of a fire reading about our buddy Davy. The explorers were fun too. Eli worried that now that we’d discovered all the important places that all of the really good jobs were gone. What could you be when you grew up if you couldn’t discover a new land or find gold or fight some Indians? The homeschooling days were some of the favorites of my life. They were the big surprise so far of these middle years. When he was twelve he went back to school. The days surrounded by kids were like a party. That was the same year he saved up his money and surprised the family with a group gift for Christmas. He bought us a ping pong table...tournament sized. The thing is huge. The only room it fits in is our bedroom. So now every winter we drag this enormous thing out and the whish and thwack of balls and paddles are the steady beat behind our winter weekends. This year, his high school freshman year, he has his dad for English so they are getting another go together, They both love it which was a relief for everybody John is Eli's favorite teacher. It is another gentle satisfying spot that will hold us all in good stead.

These days I bake unending supplies of mocha cupcakes and homemade pizza, stromboli, and steak with balsamic thinly sliced into giant piles that he and his best friend Timmy seem to inhale like air. We cheer him on in soccer matches, and watch his feet fly and turn and trick his opponents. Even his feet seem to have a sense of humor. And afterward we take his gang of four to scary movies, and haunted houses. “Are you the kind of mom that minds when kids run up the down escalator”, asks a new friend. Nah. And they are off tearing through the mall, the ever present skateboards under their arms, loud, laughing, and cologne soaked. But when we get to the exit there is my boy, the one holding the door open for me and whomever else happens by. Only once has he ever gotten into any trouble and it was so out of character none of us knew quite what to do. So we turned it into a funny story and each of us has a version. Now even Eli wonders what must he have been thinking that day.

Mothering Eli, who looks so like my husband and has an exact replica of his sense of humor, has been the sweetest pleasure. Happy Birthday kiddo. So far so good……

The Hunter

2010-10-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

We have a hunter in the family. These are not words I ever expected to say. And then come these. I am thrilled we have a hunter in the family. Take that Ellen, you knee jerk, fancy meat eating, anti gun liberal.

Now I have always understood the right to bear arms. I get the rights of hunters. After all I moved to a rural state where there is a huge dichotomy between the monied class and the working class. Here plenty of folks hunt for the meat they eat. They put up deer and it sustains their families over the long winters when work is scarce. I buy my meat from hippie organic farmers. We are essentially the same those hunters and I. Our methods may be different but our result is similar.

But still I never really expected to have a gun owner in the family much less one who killed things with it.

And then my oldest son discovered fly fishing. He spends hours every day standing in the rivers just behind his house taking a few quick casts. Lunch break and a quick side trip to the river. Like that. He didn't catch anything for twenty or so times and then one day he got it. Now he catches them all the time. It is apparently about learning how to watch the river. It is a time for being still and watchful. It is a time to experience the natural world close up. It is a time of beauty and skill and ever watchfulness.

So it was a short hop when someone suggested grouse hunting. Now this kid loves animals. He cannot imagine killing a deer or a bear even though he too is a carnivore. But birds? Birds seem a lot like fish. And the idea of traipsing through the mountains, forging streams, going into deep brush and mastering a new skill appealed. We have a friend who is sort of a gentleman hunter. By that I mean that he has a weekend place up here and every year hires some guides and puts on all his fancy Orvis gear and becomes a woodsman for a day or two. He invited our son.

So Benjamin too spent weeks haunting Orvis for all the right gear. He was warned that shooting grouse who dart and soar and dip and curve is not like shooting skeet which he tried for practice.

"Now son you probably won't get a bird on your first time out, so try and take in the whole experience" There were warnings too. "Look it gets pretty exciting out there. The birds may fly up practically in your face, or right behind you. It really gets your adrenaline going. I have seen experienced skeet hunters fire wildly when the birds are scattering. They do not fly in a line like skeet. And you cannot shoot unless you know where everyone else and the dogs are. Always be ready to stand down. Because look, in ten years you might not remember whether or not you got a bird, but you will remember, every day for the rest of your life, if you accidentally shot one of the dogs or a person. So be vigilant. Pay constant and thoughtful attention"

Attention. My wildly ADHD adult kid with a gun. Supposedly paying constant attention. I don't really get to have an opinion. He's twenty-five. But I'm a mom. I do get to worry. And so I did.

And they were off deep into the woods, high up in the mountains where the snow was already about eight inches on the ground. They left practically at dawn. They'd hired two guides and took two dogs. And four rifles. They trekked into the woods and fanned out in a parallel line. It wasn't long before the dogs startled a tiny hidden flock and the call went out.

Birds!

He startled, scanned, and then shouldered the rifle and fired.

He got the grouse with the first hunting shot he ever took.

The guides went nuts. This almost never happens. "You can't really compare because you have nothing to compare with, but really this is amazing kid" Our friend added, "This is a story son to tell your grand kids."

It was the only grouse anybody got all day. He felt good. Proud. He knew it hadn't been a fluke. He got it. Pretty soon he added a woodcock to his sack. He is apparently made for this. The hunter gatherer instinct is alive and well. Darwin probably would have predicted it. ADHD, always scanning, always moving. He is hard wired for this.
Now he is planning a Vermont surf and turf dinner with Mettowee Rainbow Trout and Killington Mountain Grouse on the menu.

And you can just guess what's on his Christmas list.....

Taste the Color

2010-09-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

Outside….I go there over and over all day long with Oscar our puppy. Oscar is just the excuse. I love all the color wrapping around our smallholding. We are surrounded by sugar maples and they are strutting their stuff in a snazzy parade of red and orange. This was supposed to be a bad year for foliage after the long hot dry summer. We weren’t supposed to tell the tourists. There were even newspaper articles telling us essentially how to spin fall so that the first tourists would tell their friends who would come and then go home and tell their friends in a long cycle of welcome to Vermont you can smell the log fires, feel the dry crackling leaves and get in the mood to spend some money on a fly rod or a lovely handmade cape. There were dire warnings too about the negative effects of revealing that we’d had a hot summer or that the color was supposed to be weaker this year.
Well, tell the trees. We had a rainy September so maybe that saved it. I don’t know, but right now it’s like all of nature is in on it. You go to the farmer’s market and you can see the colors deepening even in the food. There are dark purply potatoes, wine red beets and deep orange squash and golden butternut in the fields set out on tables ten feet from the bottom of the big red mountain.
Today is the color of champagne. It is sparkly and golden and the sun is acting all showoffy and glittering like there will never be another day so beautiful. We had our first fall supper last night with onions in a Jack Daniel’s balsamic reduction atop fat local pork chops next to a butternut squash Vermont cheddar scramble. The whole thing was topped with maple syrup laced pecans. Tonight there will be little local game hens with sweet potatoes in a lime cumin yogurt.
I love the bounty of summer foods. Fact is we are still getting raspberries and blackberries off the bushes in our yards. There is nothing quite like fresh orange juice and strawberries on a hot July morning. But there is something especially wonderful about nutmeg and squash on a plate that exactly mirrors the color outside the windows too. Apparently I like to cook in color. If the colors go together so usually does the taste. And the colors right now taste like maple and apple to me. It must be getting close to time for pumpkin soup.

Orangery is a Real Color

2010-09-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

Van Morrison is blasting out of the speakers. It is cold and drizzling outside. The winds have picked up and the sky is darkening but all the candles are lit and the fire is burning bright in here. Autumn came this weekend. The mountains are ablaze in red and orange and there are purple wildflowers next to all the roads. The rivers are running and the sunflowers are dipping their heads at last. Every porch is festooned with pumpkins and corn stalks. Ours are laced with fading pink dry hydrangeas and bittersweet tucked in and amongst. And of course we have every kind of pumpkin. There are those fairytale Cinderella reddish orange ones next to fat ones clearly destined for the mantle and jack-o-lantern status. There are tall ones and green gourds with long necks next to white ones with big rough stems. This is Vermont at her bawdy best. Our trees are all so orange that there is a pervasive orangery light in the library where they are coloring all the light that comes through the windows.

I love autumn best of all here in the mountains. Summers are sweet when all the tourists race up here to get out of the city heat. Winter brings the skiers and spring, long about May is one of the sweetest things I have ever known. Christmas with hot cocoa and sleigh rides is pure magic.
Winter is long though and by about February we have all had it. So February March and April are no good. But summers where we used to live felt just as dismal with temperatures in the 90s you couldn't eat outside anyway. So in our eighth winter here we will try and plan better for months two three and four.

And in the meantime this early fall color has me thinking squash casserole and an apple crostada. Maybe pork chops with a caramelized onion and Jack Daniels reduction. We'll get out the autumn china with brown borders and creamy flowers next to purple napkins and soak up these first cheery fires and all this glorious color. It's here. I have to get my husband out on that quilt so we can let the maple leaves flutter and float down on us. I love this part.....

Cheer Up

2010-09-13T06:07:00.000-07:00

That crisp, clean, dry smell of autumn is in the air, so stunning and surprising every year, a smell forever connected to bright color, fresh apples and the eagerness of children, pencils and notebooks in hand. This has always seemed more like the beginning of the new year to me than Jan 1st ever has. There is a sense of possibility that is the main component of cheerfulness, and which is the first secret of the good life.

Cheerfulness isn't the same as happiness. You can't always be happy. Or satisfied. But a cheerful outlook is always possible. We do not get to decide whether the economy will recover faster or slower. We do not get to pick who gets sick and who stays well. But we do get to decide to build a cheery little fire, throw the stick for the puppy, or whether to rush through a shower or take a long hot bath. Most of us don’t get to make too many of the really big decisions, but it’s the little ones we can control which wind up mattering most of all.

Last spring we shared a difficult time with our kids, then this summer our youngest got dreadfully scarily sick, followed closely by the loss of our puppy Gracie and now the death of our old friend Stu. It has been a hard year someone close enough to know recently said to me. And when I look back on this messy year, in fact my whole loud messy life with a few wrong turns and days I wish I could rewrite, and then I think of the three kids we made and I cannot possibly regret anything in the chain of events that led to their existence and to this time we get to share with them… messes and all. Because in between the clutter there are those days with quilts on the grass and orangery leaves floating down. There are manicures and soccer games and first parties in new apartments. There are photographs that show me how my girl sees the world and homework done in my bed under the covers and a young man who caught his first fish in the river behind his new house. So I’ll keep holding hands with my sweet husband and stick to what we’ve got.

Emerson said, "Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm ... this is the one remedy for all ills, the panacea of nature. We must be lovers and at once the impossible becomes possible."

So now comes a new puppy named Oscar. He is full of boundless grins. It is impossible to be sad for long with Oscar around. He is relentlessly cheerful. Then yesterday I found a woman up north with some baby chicks and another outing is planned. Plus the apple orchards are bursting and I am thinking warm pie. These autumn days are so golden, if there was a whole month of them, your mailman would start acting like the star of a Broadway musical leading his own parade downtown and your preacher would stop choosing those hymns no one ever knows in favor of some zippy show tunes from Godspell.

Lighten up. Leave the morose grumbling to the tea partiers. Yes they will likely take back the House. Well let them. We haven’t done much with it. The world will not end. It didn’t when Bush was president and it won’t now either. Forget about the guy with the bonfire in Florida. Pay him no attention. Send a cheery bouquet to your local mosque instead. As Emerson said, "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. ... Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

In other words, cheer up.

Stuart

2010-09-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

Stuart and Eli were babies together. We used to call them our little scruffy littermates. Stuart, or Grandpa Stu as we have been calling him in recent years, was our fifteen-year-old Cairn Terrier. He was the last of the animals who lived with us in our very first home in Edwardsville. He made the trek to St Louis with us for our city life and now spent these last seven years with us in the mountains of Vermont. What a wonderful life we all had together.

Let me tell you the story of how we got him.

Hannah and I were at the mall picking up her new glasses. This was fifteen years ago so she would have been six years old at the time. We hung out in the pet store while we waited for the glasses. Their UPS delivery was late so we had an hour or so. We saw this adorable little Cairn Terrier sitting in his food dish looking rather forlorn. She wanted him. So did I. But of course we only ever used reputable breeders. Who knew where this little guy had come from? I explained about breeders and pet stores and she wondered then why we had gone in. Well yes indeed why had we?

Eventually we made our way out of the mall and the conversation about responsible pet breeding continued. As did our recollections of that funny little reddish puppy in his food dish. Hannah uncharacteristically let it go. But I could not get that puppy out of my mind. For days I kept mentioning him to John. He assured me that we’d done the right thing of course and if we wanted another dog we should do some research, choose a breed and well you know, the regular drill.

Then two weeks later I had the dream. I dreamt our house was on fire and that little dog from the pet store had run around through the house barking and waking all of us up. He saved our lives.

Well that was that. I was supposed to have that little dog.

I told John who reminded me that two weeks had passed. I called the store. Yep. They still had him.

So after John got off work that day we headed for the mall. They had a little room where you could take your potential pup and play a bit and get to know one another.
Let me tell you this little recently and too long caged terrier was wild. He was nipping and darting and jumping. I could barely hold him in my arms. Johns said, in that deadpan way he always has of summing everything up, “honey I don’t think this is a love connection.’

But you know.......there had been the dream.

And so soon we were off with a wild puppy, a book on Cairn Terriers and a leash. The leash was completely useless. This guy was wild.

But he was funny too and so for the next few months we chased him as he darted out every open door. He and Eli, both scruffy wild little boys played endlessly. I have a book we made with pictures of the two of them. And then Eli started barking and STuart started talking. It was like they were learning a language together. Stuart "talked" to us his whole life. When one of us would come home we would get the Stuart style greeting which included a quiet rolling series of ruh ruh ruhs. It was not barking, although he did plenty of that too. It could only be described as a dog speaking. We were delighted.

Stuart went through the biting years when every repairman in our city house had to jerk his pants leg out of Stu’s mouth. The city, and our house renovations, made him nervous. Then we got Eloise, the calm lady who steadied him. He taught her to bark and then he took a vacation from his vigilantism against the repairmen/would-be terrorists. In fact in our next life he met Rick, the VT contractor who became one of his favorite friends.

Stuart spent his early years here in Vermont climbing endless mountains with John, the two of them leading our pack, John, Benjamin, Hannah, Eli, me Zoe the cat, Eloise who meandered at a more elegant pace, and eventually Pippi who waited daintily while Stu cleared the way. Stu ran ahead scouting out danger. He was brave and loyal and always needed work. Protecting us and later especially the chickens was his job. He would scout the perimeter, watch the chickens and bark at the foxes and raccoons who dared not come when Stu was on the job. He was the terrier with heart.

Our house never did catch fire and yet there was the obvious metaphor when the Peltier’s business disaster happened. We were failing miserably and publicly in a small town where we were everyone’s cocktail party chatter. It was hard to face. But every day Stu and John would head out into the woods. Eloise and I would come along sometimes and what I saw slowly seeped through.

You see Stu had an accident right after we moved here. He’d had eleven broken bones. It took an orthopedic vet flown in from NY to put him back together. There were pins and metal rods and a recuperation that required a crate and a sling we lifted him into when he walked that held up his hindquarters. But in just a few weeks he was back on that mountain. It was like a miracle sure enough. He had a goofy gait after the accident but he never stopped. He led our family on our annual long walks every Thanksgiving teaching Zoe the cat by his example how to stay with the pack. This was the little dog that could. He never gave up. He was my teacher when things got hard. So in a way I guess he had pulled me right out of a fire after all.

Stuart was our friend. And in these last couple of years when blindness came he faced that with the same aplomb that he had everything else. He adjusted and created his own path out the door and around our smallholding. He still came out and mingled at parties. He met Oscar and even dodged and faked a few plays with him in the living room seemingly giving him and us his blessing.
Yesterday he let him share his bed for an afternoon nap.

Stu we sure are glad we got to have all this time. We all loved you very much. We will miss you.

September

2010-09-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

When you live somewhere with your windows open for six months out of the year, weather is more urgent, more a part of the natural rhythms of your life. We moved to Vermont to get closer to the natural world and weather has been a big part of that. Our son just moved up the road a few miles to Pawlet, which is where we would probably live if we had the big Vermont move to do over. It is a hippy dippy community full of artists and writers where the mountains rise up all around you, close, just behind the cornfields. Benjamin has a view of big fat round mountains out every window and a few steps from his porch is a vast cornfield. This area is known by locals as the Pawlet Flats because there are wide sweet farm fields surrounded by these nurturing mountains. The run off in the spring is full of nutrients and the land is lush and fertile as a result. When they cut the corn, (Benjamin’s corn field is cattle feed that will get cut now in a couple of weeks), the empty fields will fill with herds of deer foraging and eating all the left over corn. When we first moved up here we would take a drive every evening after they cut the corn and watch the deer. Now we can go and sit on Benjamin’s porch and do it from there. But even better we can watch the weather roll in. He has the best spot for storm watching I have ever seen short of a gray stormy beach with cliffs and crashing waves.

Watching a storm come in over the mountains is exciting. You can see the rain up high often even when you have blue skies and sun over your own head. The clouds get trapped in the mountains and you can watch them toss and tumble and work their way down to wherever you are. It is a big dark and broody show that reminds me of the Italian olds master paintings with boats tossed on a stormy sea. The clouds around a good mountain in a big storm look exactly like that. Those renaissance painters must not have had mountains out their windows or they surely would have painted some stormy pictures of them.

Lately we’ve been having a bit of a heat wave up here. This gets your attention when you live in a place known as the naturally air conditioned state where no one, maybe excepting the hospitals, but not even the schools have air conditioning. It was hitting ninety here every day for nearly a week. Luckily it got back down into the fifties at night so we could all sleep with our attic fans on and the houses stayed relatively cool through the day as a result. But the hurricane blew over New England and left behind a more regular September with mornings in the forties and days in the 60s or maybe even 70. September is a glorious time to live in Vermont. It is warm enough to go out even very early with a sweatshirt and the soccer practices in the late afternoon are sunshiny and warm. You can watch the tippy tops of the mountains begin to lighten and the golds start before the real show comes in October. The apple trees are full of fruit and you can take off on any Tuesday and beat the tourist hordes to the orchards for a little apple picking, some cider doughnuts and coffee early in the morning. Everybody loves everybody in September.

September is a busy time for our business but mostly on the weekends when all our school clients are opening. Really it is probably no busier only I have to be away from home on the weekends for all those back to school meetings and fundraisers. During the week though I work on the materials for the next one coming up and there is plenty of time for coffee with the chickens and puppy training, cooking and homework. September comes right after my birthday and that always gets me thinking about where I am. You know those big questions we are supposed to ask ourselves every once in a while. Who am I ? Where do I live? What do I do? They seem simple enough. But I have noticed over the years that my answers change. And I guess I think they should.

Right now I am still deep into mothering. So I am a mother. I hope I will always be with this sweet man I married, so my marriage remains defining. My friends have sustained me and continue to bring us love and joy and aggravation, more family than the originals, so they and not the people we spent our formative years with are an intimate part of my story. And I live in the mountains close to nature and my animals for pleasure. I kept the mascara, stripey hair, and lipstick form my city life and dress like a gypsy here among all these LL Bean women so that too is surely a part of who I am. We cook and read and I make some money so we get to do it all here in this old and beautiful place. And in September amidst all this slow lead up to the big show in October I am grateful and glad. I live here with these people I love in this gentle and slow place. How about you? Where do you really live?

What I Learned On My Summer vacation

2010-08-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a long stretch of days without much sun, and the rain came down sideways for a while, hard and cold. The winds were fierce. Now it is just dreary and drizzly. It's that time of year again when summer gives way to autumn and everything takes a step forward. The world here is still deeply green but you can feel summer ebbing away bit by bit. The animals are all in on it. You can watch the squirrels running around collecting things and ducking into the holes in the trees building their winter homes. The deer are fattening up and the geese are all huddled on the pond taking little flights together every afternoon…. getting ready. It’s all about the getting ready. It won’t be long now. Pretty soon we will be gathering pumpkins and corn stalks and decorating the house with oranges and reds and purples. The time is near for stacking the wood and filling the boiler. And that’s what I am looking forward to, the first chilly weather and everything that comes with it…..the colors and pumpkins, bonfires, sweaters and cheery little wood fires.

I have been thinking about mindfulness lately. I know it's healthy and all to live in the moment, and I do, for the most part. I hold hands with my husband while we share our stories, cook real food slowly, and then eat it at the table talking politics with my family. I look up at the stars and drink my coffee as an activity in and of itself maybe on the porch with the morning songbirds and our dogs for company. I have a lucky life and I spend time in gratitude for it. But I've always believed it’s important to have something to look forward to. It gives you something to think about if you're waiting at the doctor appt or sitting in traffic, and a nice string of all those good things kind of carries you through your life. A hard day is somehow made nicer when you have a weekend carnival to look forward to.

I have a business that requires my scheduling events and travel in advance, but I also schedule in plenty of us. This weekend I am skipping an event, or one night of it anyway, so that our family can go to the Washington County Fair. We go every year. It is the end of summer ritual. We eat bad food, watch the cow wash and ride the Ferris Wheel. I wouldn’t miss it. Eli and his best friend Timmy go through dollar bills like they are going out of style playing all games in the Midway. I love it when we have some huge purple giraffe that we have to carry around all night. This thing offers the best of something to look forward to and then living in the moment when we are there both.

I learned about the importance of mindful living in my early thirties when a serious illness focused my priorities for life. But sometimes you just have to intentionally remember again. Like how I learned something really huge in my 48th summer. It might not sound exceptional when I tell you what it was, but believe me, it was. And I simply cannot believe it took me 48 years to get.

I learned from my sweet sexy husband how to lie on a blanket on the beach and be deeply happy for a long time.

That’s it.

I know I know.

But years ago I had to sit in my special shady spot on a particular beach that we went to year after year. It had a chair and a few palm trees and shade and an uninterrupted view of the gulf. My family clustered around me.

Then we migrated to other beaches. We started going to the Cape and the Vineyard and there were dozens of beaches, some where you could take the dogs and almost all with long meandering paths, sometimes among gorgeous beachy woods, or alongside cliffs. There were no little huts though with creamy cold drinks and certainly no chairs positioned to catch palm shade and watery views.

So I lugged beach chairs sometimes on half mile or even mile long treks over beautiful but bumpy terrain. (I may be just a teeny little bit change resistant). I brought books and magazines and food and towels and came looking like maybe I was moving in. And truth be told half the time it took everyone I was related to to carry all the stuff…(okay maybe I am more than a teensy little bit change resistant)

Finally this year, hot and tired from a long week working and tending a really sick kid who was finally on the mend, a little wobbly from a cantankerous spring and a messy summer, and wanting to have a little beach I decided not to drag the infernal chair or ask my husband to either.
No one said anything. I just finally didn’t want to lug it anymore. And my John was always happy on a blanket. Happier than I was with all that stuff I insisted on carrying around…(yes metaphors abound)

So we spread a blanket and carried one bag with water and chocolate. Then we did it again. Just the two of us. We played scrabble one day like that and just held hands and watched the sea and gull channel on another.

What happened was that I remembered about living in one moment instead of twenty. I am already imagining us on that same blanket looking at orangery leaves instead of waves. This moment and another one somewhere down the line…. I think there is a reason we get to have both. Right this minute I am imagining a hot bath and a thick cup of coffee. Turns out I like looking forward to it almost as much as having it….

Summer 2010

2010-08-16T09:10:00.001-07:00

Not much summer left and this one was a doozy. Some things we planned didn’t happen and a bunch of things we wished would never happen did anyway. We were on island for a bunch of weeks in a row. Mornings were spent with Pippi and Gracie at the doggie beach and the joy I felt watching Gracie run ahead and wait for us at the top of the dunes is something I will remember always.

Then Eli got sick. Sick for real. There were lots of scares and tests before the Lyme’s and Babasiosis were diagnosed. There was some hospital and hotel with AC for the worst of the fevers and a long recuperation. But along the way we read an Al Capone novel together, drank buckets of iced chai and discovered a spy show that brought us hours of fun in bed and pretty soon back on the porch of that hotel. He’s fourteen. More out on his own in a pack of kids on bikes and at movies than spending time with us. So this little interlude will hold us in good stead for the teenage stuff that is surely coming. Scary. Didn’t want it, but made the best of it.

And then Gracie got sick. The timing just after Eli seemed unlikely to be a coincidence. But it was. She died in just three weeks of a virulent juvenile Lymphoma. Gracie Goo and Pippi too had been our refrain. Now we take Pippi everywhere to keep her busy and to distract us from the fast sadness that swept through here.

Stuart is fifteen. We’d figured he would be next after Eloise. No one could have predicted this pain. It was so wrong. Horrible.
And yet there were those sweet weeks on the doggie beach. She’d loved the Vineyard as a puppy and got to love it one more time. She and John were close in the special way we get with animals every once in a while. We choose them and then they choose us and she and John were a pair. The bond between humans and their animals is ancient and profound and to lose it suddenly like this was a deep cut.

This family had already had a rough spring. In June with our college girl working on island, our oldest son working at his first job and getting ready to move out, and a new client on the Vineyard the island became neutral territory for us this summer. It was a space where we could come back together across the divide of hurt and trouble we’d shared last spring. We watched fireworks all together with champagne and crab in July and the awkwardness began to shift over to make room for the new memories we were making together. Then Eli got sick and everyone pulled in the same direction for him and then Gracie and so just like always this family came together with love and tenderness.

This past weekend we had a house full of friends family and a big summer BBQ. This was to be our annual drive-in party where we hang a king sized white sheet on the side of the house and watch an old silly summer blockbuster with a concession stand of Dots and Snow Caps on the porch. This year in honor of our island summer it was going to be Jaws. The whole thing was planned before we lost Gracie, but of course we went ahead. You don’t celebrate a life by stopping yours. Friends from NY and the island filled the bedrooms and by nine o’clock on Saturday night the yard was a picture of quilts and lawn chairs and you could hear the classic sound of the shark music way down in the village. It was a grand celebration with the people we love and who love us back.

We had moped and been sad, and we will undoubtedly do more of that. But the breeder told us that Graice had been guaranteed for three years and so here was a list of breeders from whom we could choose a puppy whenever we were ready.
Another Berner?
We’d spent months looking for this one with her Swiss lines and lovely genetic history of good health. Should we try again? Could we?
Eloise had been the dog of my heart and she’d had a full and happy life with us. Now Gracie had barely gotten out of her puppyhood, but she and John formed a bond that he will cherish always and we all so loved her rascally sense of humor and those happy treks on the doggie beach. Berners are so smart, so soulful. None of us can imagine life without one it turns out. And so we have begun looking at cute puppies all over again. There is a breeder in Canada with all European lines who lives with eight, yes eight Berners in her house. We will go visit and maybe in October….

I think you have to step in front of the fear to get to the joy.

This summer had doggie beaches and a ride on a carousel. It had a scary sick kid and a couple of clients who weren’t paying me but who still say they will in September. They better or there will be lots more to worry about.
There were movies in bed and a drive-in in our yard. There were breathtaking sunsets and a couple of days on a beach with my husband that I know I will still be thinking about when I turn 80. There was a kid who moved out and another one who found a summer love. There were sweet sugary peaches with juice running down my chin and googobs of tomatoes.
There were friends I missed when I was away and for whom I will always be grateful when I am here.
We lost Gracie. We had her and we lost her. We loved her big and hard and we are losing her the same way. But the thing is we did get to have her.
So this was not a perfect summer. Far from it. It was not the one I planned. But it was the one I got.
But look winter will be here a long time. And meanwhile there are still two weeks left of this summer. If we hurry I’ll bet we can probably get up to a little more….

From Sea to Shining Sea

2010-07-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the village streets were filled with little girls wearing red white and blue flowery dresses and boys in their good khakis and linen shirts carrying cotton candy and light up necklaces and swords. The streets were filled with people strolling from the ice cream place to the church lawn for lobster rolls. The parade was at 5 and then there was meandering til the fireworks started at 9.

We watched the parade from a wide porch filled with rockers and happy little kids on the lawn chasing balls. Then we all had dinner at a place where you jockeyed for a table on a first come first served porch with a whole bunch of hot hungry entitled folks who were hoping for a table with food and a view of the fireworks later on. The maitre d was practically hiding out rather than referee.

I was carrying my own bag of expectations to that porch. We were all together kids, girlfriend, and parents for the first time since the troubles of last spring. A summer porch with some good seafood, maybe some champagne, (like my friend who keenly understands how to manage large groups always has on hand), and fireworks seemed like a noisy distracted enough place to manage the feelings and watch ourselves have a little fun. But first we had to get a table big enough. After losing one, splitting up the group, giving some of us a table, and almost arguing over another I saw the possibilities in several tables who were finishing up. I negotiated with some other women standing in line who grabbed one while we grabbed another. Then there was only one more couple needing to finish. I promised the people behind us that they could have the one our kids were using, the women would give us one of theirs keeping the one off by itself and, and we would then move to the ones about to be vacated. It was a complicated dance with some staff and people in line who seemed confused and almost querulous. I explained to the waiter that he was going to get four full tables if he could stand the wait while we held tables and gobbled up bread. There was the nervousness of being eyed warily by others who were hoping to nab tables and at least a little embarrassment by a couple in our group who didn’t want any of this attention. But in the end there were four friendly tables toasting one another amid the camaraderie of shared success.

Look I knew I couldn’t control whether these people I am related to were nice to one another or enjoyed themselves or not. I have been working this year on finding deeper ways of letting go. Control is an illusion. I know it. But by God I could control this table dance and at least set the stage.

And you know what? It mostly worked. We drank champagne and ate crab and the fireworks over the harbor were practically right outside our open-air windows. It seemed almost as if the whole enterprise had been created just for us. Someone, not me, toasted and everyone including me joined in.

I came here to work and be closer to one kid while toting another one and his pals along. Then the rest of them showed up and now we seem to be stringing together a new story. There are still the other stories too. This new version won’t replace those, but it can sit alongside them until eventually that other harder bit is just a piece…not the whole thing … but just one narrative in a series of the long history that is a family’s life. Now that history includes working together with a whole bunch of strangers on a steamy night next to a harbor sky filled with the sparkly lights of a 4th of July. One of the kids poked fun of one of those parent things I always say practically every July…This is America. And in America we get up in the mornings, we go to work and we solve our problems.
Well…maybe just maybe.
Happy happy 4th of July.

82 Days of Summer Vacation

2010-06-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

School’s out. Graduation is over and another sweet summer stretches before us. They all run together unless you have a few modest goals to keep them sharp one from another in your mind. Like good new year’s resolutions they make us feel useful in the world and color the season with green memories that will keep us warm well into the deep winter.

I have always been a big believer in lists and resolutions both. Hardly anybody knows this. I cultivate a spontaneous whimsical persona that makes things like moving to Vermont seem almost like a whim. In reality it was something we longed for and planned loosely around for years in the form of resolutions and quiet but steady listmaking. And I also believe in the power of summer to make us feel deeply contented and remind just what this whole business is supposed to be about. When I think of summers past I can feel the scratchy grass on my legs and see the clouds that looked like dragons or teachers dressed up as fish. We always went on summer vacations and that was where I learned about the world outside of Granite City and that there were people who had big thoughts and wrote books filled with them. Summer was when I could take out as many books from the library as I could carry home on my bike. It was when I got spending money for vacation with which I could buy books for my own bookcase, and when I could see matinees, double features at the Washington theater for two dollars. Summer had its own smell too. It smelled like freshly mown grass and hot asphalt, lake water and fireworks, rotting logs, and charcoal. Summer was when I saw Jaws and will see it again this year on the side of our house on a big white sheet tacked up just for the occasion. Because a drive in yard party is on my list.

So are walks on the doggie beach before work in the mornings. And I am going to make a list of books I have been meaning to get to all my life and read just three of them this summer. In between I will read some big gooey thrillers like Daniel Silva’s latest and maybe I will reread all of my Ellen Gilchrist because she always makes me happy. People will be telling their travel tales before long. Someone will undoubtedly go to Universal and ride the new Harry Potter ride. I want to do that sometime too. And lots of people will go to Italy and see the David and maybe go on an insider’s tour of the Vatican. I like those stories. But the stories I like best are the ones where someone tells me they watched a lightening storm over the ocean, or walked through a cranberry bog, or picked wild blackberries when it was almost 100 degrees and then ate them from the back of the car by the side of the road.

So also on my list are at least three pullovers. Maybe we’ll see an eagle or it might be an early morning auction. Whatever we see we must pull over at least three times and experience that unplanned for thing.

I am going to cook whatever is at the farmstand since I skipped the garden this year. But I will make sure to have to staples on hand just in case. There will be good balsamics for the watermelon salad, good bacon and lemon flavored mayonnaise for the basil tomato bacon sandwiches that are surely coming. I’ll keep some seltzer on hand for the egg creams when it gets hot and a jar of grits for when the mornings are stormy.

I am going to go to the movies with Eli and maybe get him to ride some go-carts with me. Hannah and I will spend at least one day in the sun reading trashy magazines and eating only fruit and maybe end the day with a Doris Day movie or something close. I want to have coffees with Benjamin and plenty of porch pinochle. John and I are going to need a blanket for stargazing and he will join me in the early mornings on that doggie beach. Meanwhile I am going to try and get all these people I am related to make a list of their own so we can make sure everybody has a summer worth remembering. We have 82 days to spend. It is time to get going….

Summertime!

2010-06-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

School’s out. For one fourteen year old who just graduated from the eighth grade those are the two prettiest words in the English language right now. Yesterday he put on a coat and tie and sat on stage looking grown up and serious. Now today he is planning in great detail a summer filled with bikes and skateboards. When I mentioned music lessons he looked at me like I’d grown two heads.

Now this is a kid who loves guitar and piano. But he did not love his music teacher this year and he has lost some ground. I figured that the chance to study with someone cool, somebody with wild hair who could play a little reggae might be just the thing to get him cooking again. Or how about deep-sea fishing? You can learn how to do that on the island. And we really should choose some great books for all those rainy days and bored hours in between the thrilling bits I told him. This suddenly became a one-way conversation. He just could not speak. Was I crazy his face seemed to say? Finally he was able to make his point. “It’s summer. You never know how many summers you will get……..”
At only fourteen I think he’s got a few to go. But I take his point.

This is his hero’s journey not mine. He is called to the adventure of the end of his childhood. There are kids crossing over all round him. They are dating and getting summer jobs and saving up for cars. Two weeks ago we had dinner in what turned into a wild dance club after ten and he and his buddy snuck in, or rather hid out and stayed in, and wound up in the center of a bunch of twenty something year old women dancing and being filmed for UTube notoriety. Each had a dance partner with way more parts than any of the girls in their grade who thought they were like little adorable puppies, as they danced and cooed and petted them like mad. So my boy is not totally immune to the charms of this whole growing up thing. Only he seems to have a firm grasp on the notion that racing his bike around with Timmy and learning to skateboard might be less available in some near future and he wants to soak it all up while there is time.

So I may still talk about the summer reading list. It occurs to me that he is ready for Sherlock Holmes. And I may even continue to lobby for an art class of some guitar lessons. But the truth is that I am secretly rooting for him. I am happy to have him looking up skateboards on the Internet as opposed to cars. I am thrilled that he wants me to bake a bunch of new kinds of cupcakes this summer seeing as he and Timmy have recently encountered modern cupcakes made out of blueberry lemon basil, red velvet, and Oreo. These are not the cupcakes of long ago classroom parties with hard icing and boring centers. So he’d like me to make all the different kinds there are please. He got a gift certificate for graduation so he can build his own skateboard and that is on the agenda for today.

I have a small client on the island this summer that I don’t really have time for but I took it mostly cause it comes with a house for six weeks. I can work from anywhere and I can fly from there as well as here and this way there will be plenty of sandy feet and dog walks on the beach and boys riding the waves just before the storm. Then back in Vermont we are planning our very own drive-in showing Jaws on a white sheet on the side of the house and he and Timmy and Will get to pick the candy for the concession stand on the front porch. Summer is here. It is really and truly here and if Eli has anything to say about it we are going to soak it all up….

The Big Ones

2010-06-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday one of my children asked me how you figure out how to get what you want. This is a kid who was worrying about finals and grades and getting into college and what kind of career he would have if he couldn’t learn to take tests. At fourteen and about to graduate from the eighth grade he is still more boy than man but when he gets off the bike and stops bouncing the ball it turns out there are some worries in there. I started out by telling him that I don’t always get what I want. No one does. But then I realized that was an old tape that really doesn’t belong to me anymore. Because as it turns out I think most of us make the choices and do pretty much wind up getting what we want. This may not be true if you are born in a poor country with starvation and survival on the menu every day. But in America most of us start out lucky and go from there. Oh we might not get the shiny thing we want in any particular moment, but overall I think our choices, our deepest desires are met by our intentions. When I hear someone say she missed having children I generally think she wanted other things more. We are all the sum of our choices. Life happens too. People we love get sick and die, friends and husbands can leave, (they get to make choices too), children make mistakes and disappoint us, and businesses flounder. But none of that changes the central point. There are always choices to make and we get to make them for ourselves. And so I told him about falling in love, getting crushes and following them.

When I was about thirteen years old I loved Jesus and David Cassidy in about equal measure. I was raised in a good solid Methodist home and Jesus of Nazareth, with his piercing blue eyes and made for TV long flowing hippy hair was a young teenage girl’s dream. I imagined myself married to him and on alternating days, especially Fridays when the Partridge Family was on, David Cassidy. They both had great hair. For the one I tried to be good and for the other I tried to be something else.

Then somewhere along the way I gave up Mr. Cassidy and Tiger Beat magazine in favor of the Beatles and the Grateful Dead. This led to a lifelong era of politics mingled with culture. Not long after my relevant spell began I gave up on Jesus too, or at least on his followers. (He and I would get friendly again a few years later) There was a Wiccan phase and an Ethical Society stretch, followed by a long relationship with the Unitarians. Then there was therapy and for a while that too became my religion.

I have always been someone who liked thinking big meandering thoughts. And when you are looking at the questions it is also nice to listen to others who have thought about it all before. I had a crush on Rilke and then Thomas Merton for a time too. I wanted to live a valuable life. Later as my feminism emerged it was Grace Paley, Noddings and MacKinnon whose writings informed my thinking. I didn’t fantasize about marrying them so much as being them. It was during that time in my life that I began to realize I got to shape the story I was living. That I got to pick what kind of life I had was a radical concept. I had grown up hearing that life was hard, and you did the best you could and relied on God. Only I had relied on God when I was living in a dirty little racist steel town, with a bitter mother and a whole bunch of opinions that like my Gypsy clothes did not fit in. God was pretty quiet on the whole subject.
So unlike the Methodists who relied on prayer to solve things I turned to books. Psychology was a revelation and after that so was the notion of a simple and good marriage. I was sitting in my therapists’ office looking out the open window and listening to the birds when she reminded me that the simplest questions are usually the most profound. Who am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? (Ask yourself these from time to time and watch the answers change).

From that moment I began to live with intention. I was going to be happily married to the man I was with, surround myself with clever authors, beautiful music, and live closer to the beauty and rhythms of the natural world. I was going to be the kind of mother I wished I’d had. Our kids would go to good schools that would expand their minds beyond our doors. There would be animals of course and since I loved to travel I would make money in a way that required visiting new places. I just started picking. There have been lots of errors. I bought a silly business badly and then promptly ran it into the ground besides. I made friends with people I didn’t much like and lost a couple I will always miss. But it is the trail and error that got us to Vermont. I am married to a man I am crazy about, have a couple of friends I would swim in shark infested waters for, and I am the kind of mother I intended to be. I wish that I’d had more kids, but you know I wanted to do other stuff too.

There is a lot to fit in and not a lot of time to do it I told him. So start picking early. Chocolate or vanilla or mango. Keep your eyes open and pick. When you don’t like one flavor spit it out and try another. And don’t let inattention make your decisions for you. Own them and make them. If you want to live in a city go to one for college. If you want to live on a beach get a job near one and try it out in your teens. Most of the choices won’t matter much on their own but they will begin to make a pile that will add up. And some of them matter right away. If you marry and who are big ones. So is whether or not to have kids and whether you will raise them or give them over to someone else during the day while you do other stuff. These are the serious ones with real ramifications.
So start picking kid. Take piano lessons or skip school. Spend all your money on a ticket to Louisiana so you can see the wetlands while we still have them or save up for a car. Ride your bike with Timmy or go on a date with a girl. It all adds up and one of these days you will be glad you did that instead of the other and the whole picture will start to emerge. Start picking. I mean it.
Wanna barbeque tonight and play some cards on the porch?

On the Road

2010-05-22T20:08:00.001-07:00

What a week. We got several perfect days in a row up here and I got to be home for them. It was fresh and sweet in the morning, balmy in the afternoon and cool again in the evening which turned into long suppers on the terrace where we talked about Jack Kerouac and how he was a year older than my mother who died a couple of years back at 85. Jack Kerouac was apparently old and cool before cool had even come to the Midwest where we grew up. He died in 1969 at the age of 47, the same age I am now. He lived a whole life in the time it has taken me to get here and here is hopefully nowhere near the end. I love this bit. I wonder if he did.
In Vermont we eagerly look forward to soft summer nights come late spring or early summer. No matter. They are what keep us going from February til May, the thought of eating supper outside in slow meandering conversation and bare feet with a deck of cards, and maybe a sweater for after dark. If this were southern California where paradise was normal, we would dread its interruption. Instead we accept our allotment of perfection and look forward to it and bask in the bliss. It’s fabulous. We can’t get over it.
We finally got the grill back where it belongs and there are flowers in all the pots and lightbulbs in the old lamp on the terrace. We linger over supper and pretty soon the candles come out, coffee gets made and no one feels the urge to go inside and let it end. I can’t remember a spring I have loved as much as this one.
This week also had its share of horribillia…a woman with a sensate deficit should not have to endure health insurance companies, forms, printers without ink, cars without gas, and accountants who want records lost in the shuffle of moves and inattention. These things make her forget to put the flour in the strawberry rhubarb mix and then have to pull of the pretty lattice top, fix the filling and piece the top back together. Then the poor tired addle brained woman mailed a stack of client papers to the wrong accountant, left half of her groceries in the cart, and there was more but you probably get the gist.
But in that same week, a nice woman at a Vermont company explained the insurance morass, a friend printed junk on her printer, an accountant said well okay how much did you pay for it let’s just use whatever you remember, and another friend had a gas can. So in the choice category I pick being grateful for the friends and the nice lady and the accountant.
Because it got up to 80 degrees today, our fourteen year old had his first slow dance, and right this minute there are about a million stars twinkling above my house. Winter will inevitably come back, kids will break your heart every once in a while and we are all gonna be dead a long time. In the meantime I plan to string together a bunch more of these sugary pie soaked days and be grateful for the bits of bliss along the way. Bliss after all is fleeting.
Come to think of it, it’s not even midnight yet. I think I may just go back outside…..

Slow Down

2010-05-20T07:01:00.003-07:00

It has been the best spring ever…lush and green with sweet smelling lilacs, and white blossoms floating around in the air. The baby robins are chattering in their nests and spotted fawns are jumping in my meadow. It has been a glorious awakening. This morning we woke up to forty something degrees and we are looking at eighty by midday. These big thirty and forty degree swings create a happy expectancy. You add layers in the morning planning for how you will look later without them. Everybody dons sunglasses and flowery dresses underneath all the fleece. Pink toes and spring break tans are in full bloom. Bring on the sun. Bring on the big blowsy thunderstorms. I won’t even mind the mayflies. I promise.

Springtime will do this to a person. It takes you back to a time filled with wide-eyed belief in all that possibility. You close your eyes and breathe in lilacs and Bam you are back in your yard blowing bubbles, playing hide and seek in the billowing sheets on the clothesline, and making dandelion chains. You are watching Bewitched or My Favorite Martian on the black and white TV in an icy blast of air conditioning when you come in for lunch. You remember being on the banana seat bicycle and riding over to your best friend’s house. You can smell the creosote rising up in waves off the newly blacktopped streets. And before long you are reading Nancy Drew and thinking about jalopies and crimesolving.

I don’t want my youth back. Believe me. I love my life now. I am grateful for its lessons and the increased ability to pay attention to the moments. But it’s lovely the way a good spring can bring it all back for a little while. There was a time when I didn’t know about taxes or mammograms. No one important had died, and all the movie stars were older than me. I didn’t know what a calorie was and so I didn’t have to count them before putting on my jeans. The boundaries were simpler too. I could ride from Edwards Street to Mrs Mayfield’s and over to the Prokopich’s before turning back around. Along the way I would pick up feathers and rocks for the jar beside my bed.

Now our youngest Eli is fourteen. This may be his last summer before girls and cars and bank accounts start to fill his mind, He has a new bike. He and his best friend Timmy race through the village, steal jumps on stranger’s trampolines. They… ummmm… “borrow” boats and cross the pond catching tadpoles along the way. They light firecrackers in front of the village store horrifying the old people, sneak into neighbor’s pools, and swim in freezing rivers right before they come home, turn the furnace on high, and build a fire which they promptly leave behind as soon as the goosebumps fade away.

One day on the beach last summer he told me he wanted to slow down the growing up. Well me too sweetie. Me too….

Warm Pie

2010-05-19T10:14:00.001-07:00

I love it when the rhubarb shows up in the markets. It reminds of long ago late springs when my Gram and I would make strawberry rhubarb jam, rhubarb pie, crostatas, and all manner of red treats. Yummy sugary fruity smells filled the backyard air just outside her summer kitchen. I never thought I would like rhubarb when she first cut it in the garden. It looked like celery albeit with a little more color. And it had the horrible healthy look that all children fear. But then we would start mixing it with nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar and before long it didn’t seem like a vegetable after all.

Our garden was destroyed by the lambs last year and we have yet to replace it. So I set off for the farmstand with high hopes. And surely there were baskets and baskets overflowing with bright red stalks. I grabbed a few handfuls and next thing you knew our kitchen smelled just like Gram’s did. It was all warm and fruity. In the intervening years I have added old balsamics and cardamom to my Gram’s recipes. These pies are darker and earthier. They seem like heirlooms even when they have just come out of the oven. The window looks steamy and when John and the boys get home they may want pie before supper. When you think of an open kitchen window with a wide windowsill don’t you immediately imagine a pie cooling there? You may never have even seen that growing up and yet the image is so linked into our collective consciousness with fairy tales and old movies that windowsills and pie just seem to go together. I am going to keep putting mine right on that sill. And pie before supper. Fine by me.

Celebrating What Is

2010-05-10T05:45:00.000-07:00

Mother’s day has always been kind of a big deal around here. It is one of my favorite days. It comes at a beautiful time... spring in Vermont, when the lush greens have taken hold of the world again and the lilacs are blooming so everything feels hopeful and new.

Plus, of course, being a mom is one of the truest things about me. I am a mom, a wife, a reader, a friend and a feminist. That’s it and about in that order. So my mothering is central to who I am. When there is something wrong with one of my kids it is the greatest pain. When they succeed I am buoyant beyond reason. When there is trouble in one of the relationships, as there is now, there is a deep well of sadness. But yesterday was Mother’s Day and that is a day to be glad and to celebrate what there is. And there is plenty…always.

I woke up to old Van Morrison music lost to time on an old tape my husband had made me back when we were dating. It was blaring on the wireless speaker in our bedroom when I woke up. There was coffee with swirling heavy cream and before long we were off to brunch with our boys. That was a glorious affair of things not on the diet like Eggs Benedict and blueberry pancakes. Then there were presents, indulgent magazines and pictures of chickens and old roses. We went to see the new baby fuzzy cows and our sheep and wound up the day giggling with Chinese food and Larry David.

I have three kids. One is a music man who lives outside with his pals wilding through the village on bikes with long hair flying, another has the thrill of business and conquest stirring in his veins who loves openly and with fanfare, and one is making her way into adulthood with a premier education and animals she loves and who may lead the feminists places we never imagined going. She is fierce and powerful, the big one is generous and larger than life and the last one is hilarious and still sweet even as a new teenager.

Like all people their stories are both deeply richer and seriously more complicated than that.

But these kids we made and whom I mother have fed my creativity, challenged my beliefs, shaken my foundations and brought me the greatest joys I have ever known. I love them. And that part is not complex at all. These are my people and Mother’s Day is a day for celebration.

Hanging Out to Dry

2010-05-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

The humble dandelion is a pretty dramatic thing. Just Tuesday our meadow was ablaze with their yellow heads bopping in the breeze. Then a cold wind blew in with a big thunderstorm and now home a day early I see that they are all cottony, giving themselves up and scattering their seeds for the next generation. The dandelion understands that to change is to let go of fear. Letting go of fear means letting go of control. It is fear that drives this silly need to control the universe, which as I said before, if there is a God is surely her work not mine.

So this Mother’s Day might be a little sad. If it is it will be the first sad one I have ever had. But I am doing new work now. I am learning about letting go…letting go of my defensiveness. I did a good job by my own standards and I have to be content with that. Mine were the only standards I had along the way. Judging by results alone these last couple of months my standards may not have been good enough. But one cannot judge by a three-month window. The beginning of the movie is not the end. We have to wait and see how the picture turns out. And that may be a while in coming. We had some positive steps forward and now we have had some setbacks. That will likely be the storyline for a while yet. But in the meantime I am learning to simply be present.

And while I am waiting I have decided that I want a clothesline like the one my Gram had. It hung between two trees beside a lavender hedge and boasted flowery sheets and long white nightgowns that smelled like the sun when I nestled close to her at night. I remember her carrying her basket and pins and clothes out to the line. At the time it looked like hard work. When electric dryers made their debut we got her one, but she never stopped using the line in summer. Why use dryer sheets with names like fresh scent when the fresh scent outside is real and free she wondered. She was an environmentalist before her time. And now I wonder too about the nature of that work. This was a woman who raised a sad difficult daughter and an alcoholic son. Her third son married a woman who didn’t seem to like her much. She was a modern woman and my Gram’s summer kitchen with all that canning embarrassed her I think. Gram lost a son, a grandchild, and her husband all before she finished her forties. Along the way she got the love of her sad daughter’s daughter and a whole bunch of other grandkids besides. She taught us all about the googobs of flowers she grew in her garden, the names and calls of the birds, and sent me home with coffee cans full of frogs to play with in my own yard. She made me Divinity candy and filled glass jugs with flowers from her garden. And every Friday all summer long she hung out her clothes with a red transistor radio playing Cardinal baseball games in her ear. This was a woman who knew stuff. She taught me to look for the beauty. Really she taught me how to be happy.
And looking back and remembering how she spent all that time with us grandkids, after her own kids must have disappointed her, seems like a minor miracle of hope over experience.
But what I think now was that Gram must have understood about taking the long view.

The critical daughter in law eventually came around and these days makes Gram’s Divinity for her own grandkids. The alcoholic son helped raise me after my dad died and called me sugar and is surely one of the reasons I married this sweet man. And her sad daughter was a complicated woman who fought racism and lobbied for literacy and taught me how to parent by being an example of how I would not.

I wonder if Gram was always able to hold all those contrasts or if she learned how by standing in the sun with a clothespin in her mouth while she stood on tippy toe trying to pin that sheet up high enough to catch the breeze. This mother’s day I will drink orange juice and coffee with the ones who are here. One of them may come just to fight. I will not fight or defend our lives. Instead I am going to hang some clothes on the line and tuck us all in under sheets that smell like the sun…….

Plenty

2010-05-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Funny week. It snowed up here last Wednesday. I mean come on, really Vermont? It was April 27th. At first it was sort of charming. I mean snow on jonquils amidst all that green had a certain appeal. But then it kept coming. No way was it gonna stick, only then it started to, kind of. Pretty soon it was not so quaint. But then the next day the sun came back as it inevitably does. And of course therein lies the lesson.
This weekend it was up around 80 with clear blue skies and luscious warm breezes. We drove over to the dairy barn for fresh milk and met Jellybean, one of the new calves. His mom was very protective. I watched her nose him around her backside so we could only see his tail. I thought a lot about those early years of fierce protection and about the ones that come after….. the letting go and especially the deep breathing of recent weeks around here. We don’t get to pick what happens after they are strong enough to come out on their own. They get to pick. This is my mantra.
I always said we were giving them roots so they could grow wings. Only what if the wings take them places we cannot abide? What then? Surely not my well-loved brood I thought. Someone once said we plan and God laughs.
So I spent this sunny weekend amongst friends saying outrageous things that I maybe don’t even believe. I used a whole bunch of dirty words and people in the restaurant whispered. The next night I had a robust political discussion without rules. Turns out I needed those rules. I really should not be let out into polite society right now. I am out of sorts. Not myself. Some might say I am regressing….all that Grateful Dead might be a sign I suppose.
But I am starting to get it. I am. I looked at that little calf yesterday, sitting next to his mom in an organic field filled with dandelions. (Dandelions are what happen in a May without pesticides. Vermont is filled with a riot of their yellow heads right now and I am plenty grateful) I petted that Mama cow and admired her little guy Jellybean and realized that I have actually learned some stuff. Because what has been happening for a couple of weeks now is that I have been remembering to be happy. Seeing the people I love, petting cows, planting flowers and trending chickens feeds me. Holding hands with my husband and necking on a blanket in the yard can solve just about anything it turns out.
I have re-learned that the worst anxiety comes from thinking we can control the way the world moves. It’s a silly lot to take on. If there is a God, that is surely her work, not mine.
The battle against fear, which is of course at the root of that teensy little, itty bitty actually, hardly worth mentioning really, need of mine to control, does not ever end.
It ebbs and flows, rises and falls, and then takes new and different shapes and forms. It is tricky. I have to pay attention and remember that fear is a geography we must cross.
This is where I love to think of Winston Churchill. I am not big on war or on military analogies in general, but there are points in life when you have to put your feet on the ground, take a deep breath, look into yourself and say, I will simply not be brought down by this. I will not succumb. So instead you take lots of small steps. Every day. Failure and defeat really are like the man said, simply not options.
I wish Jellybean and his mama all the joy they can find for as long as they can find it. Because today after all is all we ever get. And today there are lilacs blooming and sweet heavy cream from the dairy in a pitcher next to the coffeepot. I have people I love and who love me back. It is enough.
It absolutely is.

April

2010-04-23T08:16:00.001-07:00

Two years ago we had some trees come down. We chopped them up and had the tree guy put them through the chipper and make mulch. This year we are using this seasoned mulch in the garden. There is nothing better than the fresh spring smell of mulch in the garden. We live in the woods and it is easy to think of our smallholding and the gardens as an extension of those woods. But it looked sloppy and overgrown last year and so this year, during this hard spring, we are mulching and cutting in those little Connecticut style ditches around all the beds. I stood outside this morning with a cup of coffee and a long breeze and smelled mulch for ten minutes.
We have a bunch of sad stuff happening in and around our family right now. But of course pain is an inevitable part of every life. I think that suffering is optional. I am sad, but I also intend to keep smelling mulch and feeling the joy of this season.

Keeping Spring

2010-04-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid and an ambulance pulled into one of the driveways on the street everybody called everybody else and pretty soon the casserole patrol was lining up food for the family until the crisis passed. The word neighbor had a friendly connotation back then. And for the really bad stuff there were the church ladies. These gals had hair that had been sprayed into place with high-powered aerosol from a hard pink tall can. They went to the beauty shop on Saturday morning, drank coffee, chewed Dentyne, traded stories under the dryer, and when they came back they were outfitted and ready for whatever battle the world threw at them. Those helmets of curls and waves could withstand any storm. They’d sent their husbands and sons to war, gone to work to keep the country running, and by God they could handle a little thing like a wayward teenager or a death in the family with one hand tied behind their backs. Those women were a force. And I miss them

What you do now if your life goes to pieces is call up a therapist who you probably found on the Internet and then you drive to their office and tell them your hard stories. They nod sympathetically, and offer a thoughtful forum where your own thoughts and ideas can bloom, and then you pay them and go back to the mess that you probably mostly made yourself, and that now you have to solve without out that comforting noodle bake from the church ladies.

We have had a hard spring. Couple of years ago we went pretty well bust from a crummy business decision, (when you buy and sell and start businesses and have had more than your fair share of success, you start to think your luck will hold, only then it doesn’t, because of course luck always goes both ways, and that’s a real wake up call is all I can tell you) and life had just about returned to normal financially after a couple of good business decisions and a lot of hard work and digging out. Only now there is a new kind of trouble. There is a sadness in our house without an immediate or obvious solution. And this morning after a dark night with lots of teary phone calls and recriminations, mixed with threats and hard words all around, I keep thinking about that beauty shop, old fashioned neighbors and those infallible church ladies. I have a friend who says she channels me when she has to be exuberant or put on a sales face. I get that. Coming as I do from a long line of over reactors I channel her when I have to be rational and calm. And now I am channeling a 1970s strip mall beauty shop and those gum cracking, wise women who knew that the key to almost any problem lay in their kitchens and over their back fences. I am roasting rhubarb with real vanilla beans and filling a vase with some tulips and before it is all over I may even make myself a noodle bake. Because the real wisdom of those ladies will not be found in a psychology text book or on a therapist’s couch. What they knew way back then, and what they are reminding me of now, is that sometimes things just must be endured. And while they are happening you fill your kitchen with good smells, you get your hair fixed, put on some lipstick and wait for the worst of the storm to pass. It will of course. Hard as it is to predict a favorable outcome right now, what I know for sure is that in a year or two it will have already come and gone. It may be better or it may get worse, but this moment will have passed. And with it this spring, and these trees with their little hopeful buds and the singing robins who are making nests filled with twigs , birch bark, our dryer fuzz, and promise. Plenty of promise, as they simply and steadily go on about the business of making spring happen one more time.

You never know how many springs you will get so it pays to keep the ones you have. And so I will keep even this hard one. I intend to keep it with rhubarb and tulips and maybe some baby chicks, and for sure a whole bunch of deviled eggs from the grown up girls out back. It may be hard but the sun is coming closer and the ground has gotten soft. We have roosters crowing in the back yard and pretty soon there will be lilacs. Lilacs demand gratitude. It’s spring. Time to pay some attention…..

Purple Promises

2010-03-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

Tonight we sat by a cheery fire with our friends and ate cheese and bread and soup after a cold gloomy day. Spring is such a tease. She brings you a run of warmth and green buds appear on trees and everyone sighs and smiles and then Bam!, back comes a day with a high of 29 degrees and the green buds seem to turn gray and suck in their cheeks and hold their breath. Dreary.
But we cannot be fooled. We have tasted the sun’s warmth and we know that it is coming as surely as the grill on the terrace and the lilacs all over town.

This spring has been hard in other ways besides just the wind and cold and rain. But I keep remembering that somewhere there is a woman waiting outside a restaurant for a man. She is looking at the shapes of the men passing by waiting for the one she loves. He is running late because he spilled his aftershave in the sink and all over his shirt. He had to change only then he realized he smelled like a twelve year old using cologne for the first time, so he decided on another quick shower, new shirt, then new aftershave since all the first one got washed off. He hurries. He can’t wait to see her. Meanwhile back on the street she shifts her weight and keeps watching for him. In twenty years they will be married, raising kids, and the smell of that aftershave will take them both back to that day.

People have been falling in love through war and in spite of poverty and hard dismal times forever. Spring is a reminder that hope will keep the whole complicated business moving inexorably forward. The dogwoods and the lilacs are just beginning to bud. Right now they are tight little green dots…spots of hope in a cold gray landscape. The first to explode will be the crabapple bushes by the front porch. I am going to sit our there on that porch and wait for them. Van Morrison will be pouring out the front door and I will watch the pink and white color fill up the air. Later the petals will fall like snow in the warm breezes of April and May all over the yard. I crave those warm breezes. They dry up the mud and spread tiny seeds around for the bees and the birds. Hard times have been here and they will undoubtedly come again. But I am going to listen to Van and maybe some Lighnin’ Hopkins and wait for the lilac beside the driveway to burst into color. Those old bushes are all over the village and pretty soon the whole town will smell of them. Ours is huge and ancient and it will be like a purple Mardi Gras parade right next to the house. I am going to fill vases with its flowers and watch them bloom, first the old ones with their deep dark heavy fragrance and then the younger lighter ones that are more pink even barely blue, than purple. I look at them and think of walking in Elsah with my husband imagining how our lives might unfold that first year when we had love and cheap champagne amid a steady backdrop of Van and Lighnin’ and all the boys. A vase full of lilacs reminds me of those Elsah days and Saturday afternoons at the Oyster Bar and that somewhere a woman is waiting for a man she loves. Spring can do that for you…. even a hard one.

Breathe

2010-03-24T13:52:00.003-07:00

We have been having a run of trouble. There is an old Uncle Remus quote that I love. “You can’t run from trouble…ain’t nowhere that far”
It’s true. Living your life with intention does not protect you from trouble showing up at your door. It should provide a map though for how to navigate it. There is no way to avoid trouble or pain either one but I have always believed that suffering is optional. Sometimes in the middle of the struggle that’s hard to remember.

Yesterday I got to feeling sorry for myself as my Gram used to say. We have a problem without an obvious solution that could affect our family for years to come. Oh we keep taking swipes at it. Nobody is giving up, but there is the truth that the solutions may only be band-aids and that healing and forgiveness are different from mending. They take a long time and people want them in different quantities and often at different times.

I may have to retool my definition of family. We may have to find new ways of being together and new family groupings that are less inclusive but possibly more enjoyable. I an having to reconsider what family means. And the things we have all enjoyed in the past may be different from the things we will enjoy in the future. My notions of togetherness may not work for everyone. My ideas of big gatherings and group travel may actually only be fun in theory now. So will I be forever disappointed or will I learn how to be glad for what we have instead of what we don’t?

And does thinking about all of this help me create a life as oppose to react to one? Or does it instead make the current dilemmas just harder to solve for worrying about what might happen next? I am a big believer in accepting what is and making the best of it. I believe that and then I still go and sulk in the corner over what isn’t or isn’t anymore, or anyway isn’t right now.

We have some trouble. Spring is barely here and I am needing the sun. Dreary wind and rain and snow make it harder to be cheerful in the face of difficult problems. Maybe we will take a little band of us off to somewhere sunny and glom onto what we still have. Making adjustments…..making adjustments.

Finally!

2010-03-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like spring after a long winter. Winter is always long when you live in Vermont. Along about November the leaves have all fallen and the days get gray and blustery. We lose the light in November. It is that loss of light more than anything else that signals winter to me. It feels worrying somehow. November is dark and hard. Then Thanksgiving perks up the scene, for a few days anyway, and Christmas brings a light all its own. The snow in January brightens the whole world and makes winter seem sparkly and fun. We sled and ski with enthusiasm and feel smug and proud of our shiny winter selves. And then comes February and everyone is pretty well sick of the whole mess. March is still snowy and blustery and spring seems like a distant promise.

And then it happens. The sun comes out and you poke around the yard where some of the snow has melted and start picking up the winter debris. There are sticks everywhere and how did those pine trees produce thousands of cones in just one windstorm you wonder. Then the sun climbs a little higher and you feel a spot of its warmth on your cheek. You turn your head up to catch more of it and when you look down because your neck feels stretched and sore you see the little shoots of crocus and some green where eventually there will be daylilies in July. Spring has sprung. It sneaks up on me every year. Suddenly energy abounds. Who cares that we don’t have blooming pear trees or green grass? And as the sun shines the snows melt and the mud begins to move. It is time foe wellies again and kitchen floors with mud stuck in between the planks, and thank God for it. The sun is back and we have survived winter. The thrill is tangible. The post office is alive with promise and expectation. The old people come back out. They grin and greet and you can just imagine the bears up in woods doing the same. A trip to the general store begins with chicken feed and ends with tulips. The wonderful sense of spring fills you up and makes you glad. Sixty degrees won’t last. That’s for sure. There will undoubtedly be more snow. But spring has been here and so you can be sure it will come back. The sun has begun to tip our way and pretty soon we will be in the magic season with lilacs and the riot of Vermont summer color that can only have been planted by people who live with snowdrifts and howling winds for half of the year. It will be a short growing season and so you might also expect a tepid one. But it is rather just the opposite. People plant with ridiculous abandon up here. All of that famous New England reserve goes out the window during planting season. It won’t last and so by God we better over-do seems to go the thinking. There are flowers here that would make the rain forest proud. Stone walls surround gardens with wonderful columns and graceful birdhouses nestled between flowers and vegetables that will feed body and soul for glorious weeks on end.

This morning Frank our rooster was crowing and the chickadees were answering him. He heard their reply and not to be outdone answered them back. This went on for a while with the sounds of birds and chickens filling the air. It is finally spring and everybody is in on it.

Glory

2010-02-02T06:01:00.001-08:00

Oh my glory. I have a friend who says this when she is amazed or appalled. She says it the way we in our family toss off the oh my Gods. Says it casually both with and without emphasis on the glory depending on how significant is the surprise in the emotion.

I like the sound of the word glory. I like how it conjures up an older world than the one I live in. I know it is a kindly substitute for the word God and likely originated from an impulse not take the Lord’s name in vain. There was a time when this courtly attention to that particular detail would have annoyed me. But no more. The older I get the happier I am that people have these little quirks and traditions that reflect the beliefs that they carry with them throughout their lives. I have plenty of my own, mostly unexamined, that are part of how I speak, how the world sees me, as reflective of who I am just as surely as the color of my hair or my preference for chocolate.

We moved to Vermont to have lives closer to the natural world. Surely there was more spirituality in the woods beside a mountain stream than in a mall looking at one more pair of shoes. The Christianity that we grew up with didn’t really work for us anymore. I loved the warmth and idea of belonging I had growing up in my church family but Christianity and I could never really work it out. I have tasted lots of other religions over the years flirting with several and going steady with the Unitarians. I miss that old sense of community and when my friend says oh my glory it all comes flooding back. I can see the sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows and hear the organ and feel myself ready to rise and sing the doxology.

But more often God and I get together around a perfectly silent snowfall. The temperatures dip and sway, and our lives are colored by them in ways both big and small. At minus ten all of your decisions seem to have something to do with the cold. Then the fat snowflakes come floating down in silent beauty and I am in awe of all that the world offers me. A crushing snow, like the ones we had early last month, blanket the world and silence the wind and take my breath away with their power and ability to transform not just what I see but what I think about too. I go to the waterfall and the rush and roar of the water fills up my senses and I feel lucky and blessed to live in this beautiful old place filled with wild turkeys and deer and bears who have lived here a lot longer than we have. They may not have a little piece of paper titling them to this land or that house but their claim is deeper and more solid and cannot be threatened by the vagaries of something as flimsy as an economy.

I love the life we have made up here. I notice how it does slip quickly by, and how much of it I have already wasted worrying about things that are not really important, and that will not matter much come summer and maybe not even come spring. One takes a longer view when one s surrounded by nature more than by the next season’s retail offerings. The old signals I used for marking seasons were the Halloween or Christmas decorations in the stores. Spring had come when the tulips were blooming in all the grocery stores long before the first crocus had poked up her head. Now in this place it is as subtle as the way the light lengthens in the afternoon over the mountains or the sun lingers on a melting patch of snow. Our days are filled with the little signs of time passing and the gentle grace and inevitability of the next season. Time passes more slowly up here and I can hear my breath coming and going.

I left this space to write a book last year. And I have done a lot of writing about stories that happened a long time ago. Now I want to write about what’s happening here and now and worry about the editing later. I want to pay attention to the return of the squirrels and make sure I see the first robin. It’s still winter sure, but a warmer phase of the one we have is coming. There will be more snow but more sun too. I want to be awake for all of it. I want to bask in these old glories. I want to tell the story of now….

A Country Minute

2009-05-18T12:22:00.003-07:00

Graduation was lovely. It started at good with the diploma and then just kept getting better with friends and family and jolly toasts and warm funny stories. The weather was sunny and cool and as we stood amid lambs and kids, under a canopy of old maple trees I thought how different we are as a family than when Benjamin first began his college journey. Then we had just moved to Vermont and had no idea who our friends would be, or that we would buy America’s oldest country store and run town Easter Egg Hunts for hundreds. I didn’t know that I would start and sell a couple more companies or expand this development business that would fulfill me in new and deep and unexpected ways. We didn’t know that we would be raising chickens much less lambs. I had never imagined herbs in the windowsill nevermind a whole way of eating and feeding ourselves with juicy tomatoes grown under the sun next to dandelions and ancient maples. Home schooling wasn’t even an idea back then. Before a year had passed it was a passion that transformed our lives for a while. Our kids had barely given up malls and we hadn’t yet found badminton, the river over on Peace Street, the waterfall or movies on the side of the house. Living in the country was still about the views and not so much yet about the life.

Along the way we have said goodbye to Sophie the eighteen-year-old Tabby cat who shared our lives from that first sweet little house in Edwardsville to the grand old Victorian along the city streets of St Louis to this old restored farmhouse in the mountains of Vermont. We have said hello to new friends whose own lives and rhythms now help us define ours. We didn’t know Karen and Jack or Ellen and Roger when Benjamin began college. Now we have been to Italy with two of them and shared a business venture with the others. We have all experienced great pain and joy together and I can no longer imagine our lives without them in it. We said goodbye to our dear Eloise who helped us write this whole story. She was a guide for almost every part of it that is real and that lasts.

And much of it has all been written and told here on the pages of this blog. Sometimes I almost feel like a thing hasn’t happened if I don’t write about it here. It has been interactive too. I have relished the relationships and the kindness and support of folks who email and comment and make me think about my life in new and welcome ways.

The time has come now for me to take a break from this space. I have long wanted to pull together a book about this move and our decisions to live closer to the natural world. I have tracked the seasons and felt the power of the wind, the weight of the snow, and the sheer unadulterated joy when the leaves come back. We have lived our lives in ways that have brought us new pleasures and great satisfaction. I seldom know very far in advance what the next new passion will be and only recently have I known about a sadness long enough in advance to adjust and accommodate it into the mix. I think one of the great reasons to be alive is not knowing what might be just around the next corner. Italy might be in the future or so might a city spin. Our kids are talking a little bit about a California life. Maybe it will be time to give someone else the reins and follow their dreams to the beach or along side a west coast mountain. We don’t know what’s coming, but I want to take some real time this summer to write about what has already happened. I am grieving Eloise and want to do this book in her honor. Her life was short, but as meaningful to me as any other has ever been. In ten years we packed a whole lifetime and a bunch of adventure besides. From her I learned about patience and a calm steadiness born of practice and love. I want to take those gifts and put down our story in one long narrative. And for that I need space from these essays and from the urge to mark the quotidian experiences. I have experienced enough of Vermont to know what is coming and how to plan for winter. I know about ordering the hay in May so as to have plenty in January. Same for the wood and a stockpile of cash for the oil. I know to get ready in the sunshine and how to keep warm in the deepest winter. I think this is a story I can tell.

Thank you for coming by and for sharing your stories and your kindnesses with me. I may pop back in from time to time, but for now at least I want to give myself time and space to remember. I want to write about about this slow sweet country life and the transformation we found in this high sweet valley under these old mountains where the stories have a gentle rhythm and the music is as familiar as warm pie……

Graduation!

2009-05-14T06:24:00.001-07:00

The crab apple trees are blooming. They are about the only thing since lambs are eating everything else. The hydrangeas are long desperate looking sticks. The geraniums look forlorn without blossoms and the pansies all gave up without even bothering to flower. It looks like a commercial for a vacation on a desolate stretch of desert. The lambs are eager tasters. Luckily the crab apples are just too darn tall. There’s a lesson in that I think. Stand up; rise above the worry, the pain, even the heartbreak. Reach for the sun, soak it up and forget about the mess on the ground.

Benjamin is graduating. It has been a long road for him to get here filled with false starts, disappointments, and the struggle of a wildly ADHD 6 foot 4 inch mancub trying to survive amidst the orderly hall of academia. The business office called this week to notify us of $73 worth of miscellaneous charges that needed to be paid so the kid could walk. There were lost keys, lost books, and a lockout entry fee mixed into the fee. Locked out and lost were apt descriptions of the college adventure.

And yet at every turn, he persevered. He called campus security and sheepishly asked to be let back in when he lost the keys for the twentieth time, he ordered two sets of books, sometimes three, and he pounded on the door and just kept getting back in there.

I am enormously proud of this brave young man who is our son. It is an equally sad and joyous week and by God we are going to CELEBRATE with this kid who deserves trumpets. It’s spring and the sun is shining. We are damned well going to look up!

Our Eloise

2009-05-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

Eloise had a sweet peaceful death with all of us holding her and telling her how much we loved her. We sat our on the porch and the vet sat with us for a little while. Everyone cried and petted and hugged her one last time.

The whole day was lovely actually. She and I sat out in the yard for a couple of hours yesterday morning and watched a robin couple fly back and forth from the meadow to their next in our front yard feeding their little babies. A hummingbird came by and so did a Baltimore Oriel couple. The lambs were baaing and the sun was shining in her honor. We talked about the robins and I sang a few songs and tried not to sob and worry her. She had scrambled eggs for breakfast and fettuccine carbonara for lunch with ice cream for dessert. Her jaw had been compromised and hard dog food was no longer an option for her.

The decision seems clearer in retrospect. Her life had been reduced to a couple of trips outside that took forever to accomplish and an occasional room change during the day. She was ready even if we weren't.

She elegantly gave the vet her paw for the shot and I held her in my arms as she died. Our vet had brought an assistant and the two of them wrapped her in a lovely old quilt. We kissed her one more time and they carried her solemnly like the best most gentle pallbearers to the back seat of their car. We will have her ashes in a few days.

Eloise was a big part of this family. She sat vigil with every one of us at one time or another though some flu or illness. She was calm and steady no matter what. If one of the kids yelled or wrestled too hard with another she would correct them with one bark and a gentle restraining Berner bump. She insisted on good manners. Her quiet elegance was a model for this loud rambunctious unruly group of ours. She was like having a sweet maiden auntie from another era around to remind us all to behave.

And she celebrated with us. Every holiday was more joyous because of her. She loved the festivity of the holidays, and Christmas, with all those cheese rinds and big fat bones, was her favorite. A walk in the snow after unwrapping a bunch of presents was her idea of heaven. Then she would settle down for a long chew and maybe a nap before the next round of partying began.

She had the biggest vocabulary of any dog I have ever known. She was brainy and beautiful, and everyone who met her was always smitten. She exuded a soulful gentle love that calmed and gentled colicky babies and grumpy adults alike.

We all loved her deeply and will miss her enormously but we are ever grateful to have had the time.

Eloise Rushing Stimson
December 10 1998-May 12 2009

Tuesday

2009-05-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Eloise has had it. We have upped the pain meds and are giving her all we can. She is droopy and her tail is wagging less and less. Last night she didn’t want cheese for the first time maybe ever. Our sweet vet, Rob, who has been there in the middle of the night for a colicky lamb, pumped Pippi’s stomach when she got the cheese laced with Eloise’s narcotics, made room in his tiny office for all five of us when we said goodbye to Sophie our eighteen year old tabby cat amid tears and funny stories, will come to our house at 2 o’ clock on Tuesday. Hannah will be home from college and Eli will come home early from school. The pain in Eloise’s leg would make getting into the car an ordeal and she has never liked going to the vet anyway. So instead he will come here and she will have scrambled eggs for breakfast and cheese and smoked turkey for lunch.

We have a houseful of company coming for Benjamin’s graduation beginning on Thursday. And there is no way she should have to endure that chaos. She doesn’t feel good. And all that company can make an old girl a little grumpy even when she feels just fine.

The question of when is the right time has been consuming us. We don’t want to wait until one of her fragile bones breaks and she faces intolerable pain for even a little while before we can get her to the vet. But neither do we want to shortchange her or ourselves of any of this last precious time. This question is just really hard. Waiting too long because it is better or easier for us would be wrong. How do you know? We have wondered this again and again. Making this decision for a beloved friend who cannot tell you her own thoughts on the matter is an awesome and painful responsibility. And her mind is perfectly clear. She communicates with ease just as she always has. I wish I could ask her about her thoughts on euthanasia, or whether she is ready. But of course I can’t. We must rely on our own values and beliefs and so must Eloise.

Last night when she didn’t want the cheese and then this morning when going outside took several minutes to accomplish the answer began to seem clear. A little while later she rallied when Eli came home from an overnight party. She limped to the door to greet him and then mooched some of his lunch just like old times. But now she is asleep in a heap, sighing heavily. She is counting on us to do this hard thing......

May

2009-05-02T05:41:00.000-07:00

The trees are covered with tiny leaves. The Maples are revealing their mapley selves with these miniature perfectly shaped leaves. They are almost transparent at this stage. The greens are fresh and lacy and they are climbing back up the mountains. In the autumn the color washes down over the valley in waves and then in the spring it gently climbs back up starting low in the valley and by middle May reaching high up the sides of the mountains. The last of the snow up there has finally disappeared this week and the joy of the greening has begun in earnest.

I love spring. It is chilly in the mornings when we go out and give the lambs their bottles around 6. John and I carry our mugs of coffee, their bottles, and blankets to cover the wet chairs. It rains about every night now at least for a little while. The chairs on the terrace are cold and damp. But by the time we come back in an hour or so later the sun is glowing through the trees streaming down in fat yellow drops. There are puddles of it all over the garden. John's rock walls have little bright pools glistening on top them, and inside their are bits of it all over the furniture and floors. Under an old quilt inside the cold house we drink more hot thick coffee and watch the lambs from the windows. It is an ancient looking landscape; sheep grazing amidst sun and spring lavender on a hilly smallholding.

Life is old here. There is a slow and dependable rhythm to our days. The seasons are more real somehow when you are living this close to the land. Farmer's markets are where we get most of our food for six months out of the year from people who make their living from this land. Our milk comes from a dairy up the road and often is still warm when we pick up our jars. And even the cheese in the refrigerator comes from local goat farmers who are trying to make a difference in their tiny part of the world.

Things close early up here. There is one movie theater with two screens. The restaurants wrap up by 9 because there just are not enough people up here to justify staying open any later. Even the newspapers don't get to Vermont before 8 or 9. This is not a state big enough to print its own and so we must wait for NY to print theirs and deliver us ours. You must like the people you live with a lot and you must know how to entertain yourself to feel happy. You walk in the woods because there are no art museums and you go to the waterfall for coffee instead of the cafe across from the park. We were always seriously big readers, but now books sustain us even more deeply than before. Some of us write and some of us draw. There is even knitting on the coldest nights. The pleasures are the same ones that our ancestors probably enjoyed. We cook elaborate meals and we care for and play with our animals many hours every day. They give us the daily responsibilities that keep us moving when it is 10 below. We do our work out in the world every day and then we come back here where the views and the slow moving time remind us to pay attention and remember why we chose this new life in this old place.
And on days like today when the lambs are munching in the meadow with these pools of sunshine all around I can hear God is whispering in my ear......

One Last Spring

2009-04-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

I think I have always used animals as a reliably cheerful distraction from whatever was ailing me. There has never been anything much wrong with me that a few hours in the company of one good dog couldn't fix. I have turned to them also in celebration and so the joy I have shared with them has been a constant in my life. Charlie and Santi are proof that we have done it again.

Eloise is dying. I have never felt closer to a dog than I have to Eloise my spectacularly beautiful and incredibly smart Bernese Mountain Dog. "Beauty and brains", a vet once said about her. And he was right. She is my soul dog. She has taught me many gentle lessons about quiet pleasure and calm steady watchfulness. She is an old soul and I could use another lifetime with her to get the lessons.

Her illness brought enormous sadness and pain. And so before long we found ourselves fostering some little lambs. Watching them run and jump has been entertaining for Eloise too, especially now that they are out of her kitchen. The gate that barred them in kept her out, and had to be moved completely so she could walk gingerly in. But now, in this northeastern heat wave, she lounges in the grass and watches their silly antics. We have nicknamed them her Hospice lambs. We never meant to become shepherds. I have never even had a passing fantasy about owning sheep. A cow, yes. I loved imagining milking in the mornings and then scraping the cream off the top for our coffee. As a child who missed out on a particular brand of mothering I have long had recurring dreams and fantasies about sleeping with a cow. But sheep, never.

And yet it was sheep who dropped into our lives. Sheep whose lambs my husband took us to see to welcome spring. Lambs who Hannah and Eli held and bottle fed, and whom we agreed to foster for one quick spring because we have always aimed to be yes parents and to live our own lives filled with the answer yes. And now sheep who love us and who are bonded to us think we are their family. Small sheep, but sheep just the same, who run to meet us when the car pulls up, and baaa at the window when they want a scratch. Sheep whom we watch and laugh with, coo and aww over like kids with a basket full of kittens. Sheep who are spending the day at the vet getting shots, and wormed, and neutered and in general made fit for a family smallholding. These little sheep won't go to market. Instead they will live lives in only a flock of two unless you count us, their adopted relatives. But live they will surrounded by people and dogs, chickens and cat. The have a little lamb cottage with fresh hay and sweet grain to munch and chew. They have humans with bottle instead of mamas with milk. They get snuggles and when they nuzzle us the maaa sounds they make are a sheep's version of a purr.

Sometimes the universe gives us exactly what we need. This little distraction has reminded us that life moves inexorably on. Eloise intends that we remember to get on with it in love and joy and gratitude for this life in these high old green hills among the people and animals we love so much. Eloise sees cancer as a reason for cheese. All of her pills come wrapped inside her favorite cheese and so as she thumps and wags her tail, smiling up at us these last times, she reminds us that even in cancer she finds reason to celebrate. It is no picnic. Her leg is atrophying and when she is annoyed at Pippi she has to bark now instead of chase. But so long as she takes pleasure in us and in the cheese, wagging her tail and getting big belly rubs we will tend her and love her and feel lucky for these days. Our closest friends have been coming round to say goodbye. The vet says we might have two months left at the outside with the rate we are ramping up the meds to keep her comfortable. Two months. By then Charlie and Santi will be jumping fences and driving us some new kind of crazy. There are lessons here. And once again Eloise is my teacher....

Shepherds

2009-04-27T04:00:00.001-07:00

We have a barn! Or anyway a little lamb cottage. It came on a big truck with one sweet Vermonter delivering it. He had a hydraulic system to lower it into place and then he used sort of a hydraulic jack to move it around just so. It is small and cute with a green roof and a little window in front beside the door. Of course it weighs two thousand pounds so once in it sure isn't going anywhere. Allen the delivery guy had all kinds of sayings as he lifted and pushed, grunted and pulled. At one point he was trying to lean it over just enough to get some concrete shims underneath and I heard him, with his shoulder heaving mightily into its side, his breath becoming ragged, and the jack tipping the whole thing precariously into the yard..."I wonder how much tip this rascal will take"

A classic Vermonter....

The lambs knew immediately that it was for them. They climbed right in and began munching hay. And so...Ta..da.. da.. da the lambs are living OUTSIDE! We go out early in the mornings with bottles and throughout the day we pet and nuzzle and add hay or grain topped off by a bottle at night. Then we tuck them in and not a baa is heard until morning. They sleep tucked over on one side where we still put their kitchen blankets atop the straw. The saw those blankets and headed right for them the first night. "Oh yeah we are sleepy. This spot looks good"

There have been a slew of stories in between, but after days of no sleep, bottling in the night, and trips to the vet, I am too sleepy and muddled to tell them. Suffice it to say that bottle lambs are exponentially harder than chickens ever were. But they are cute and when I come home they run across the yard to greet me and baa and maa for a nuzzle and cuddle. They have settled in, and after chopping down our practically ancient rhododendrons, (poison), and removing ten thousand holly berries, ( same), walking unendingly one night to relieve bloat, and building a fence......so are we.

No Big Deal

2009-04-21T08:16:00.001-07:00

Hannah came home and together we went to meet the new lamb. We talked to ourselves all the way there. We don’t have to take him. We’d already compromised on a girl when we found this little guy who sounded so perfect. We had called shepherds all over Vermont. This one was originally from Australia. She doesn’t dock their tails because she believes in all natural farming. The lambs are raised on goat’s milk and organic grains that she grows herself. She sounded like a well-educated yuppie hippie who had actually done it, dropped out and become a self-sustaining farmer. She sounded perfect and so her lamb must be too. But just in case we wanted to be ready and able to say no.

Have you ever seen a lamb with a natural tail? They are very long and droopy and sort of ugly. I immediately felt guilty for not liking his tail. After all I don’t believe in circumcision and wasn’t this sort of the same thing? He was riding in her truck inside a crate munching happily on some hay. He had been a rejected twin and this shepherd had him in her kitchen for a few weeks. At about 8 weeks old he is three weeks older than Charlie and about three times his size. He looked more like a baby cow than a lamb. His tummy must weigh forty pounds all by it’s sloshing rolling wooly self. But he was sweet. He licked our faces and snuggled right into our arms. And Charlie will grow. You can’t reject a lamb just because it is no longer tiny adorable spring lamb size. Can you? Well we couldn’t. Being a little bigger should be no big deal. He drinks goat’s milk from her goats and she brought some along. She said he can transition to milk replacer but it won’t be as good for him and will cause some stomach upset. Okedoke. So we’ll call goat farmers until we find a source. That shouldn’t be a big deal either.

He snuggled without a peep all the way home on Hannah’s lap. What a sweetie. He is really just a big baby. He nuzzled our necks and ears. He seemed perfectly content. And then we got home.

We introduced him to Charlie outside and they seemed perfectly fine. And then Vermont decided to have a little spring snow. It has been 70 degrees up here but yesterday afternoon we got sleet and snow. So we hauled them back into the kitchen where our new pal proceeded to poop and poop and poop. He was nervous I guess. But he’s bigger and so the poop is bigger too. We ran out of newspapers and cucumber scented organic cleaner in the first hour. And he eats constantly so he poops constantly. And he is not paper-trained. And he can only sleep if we are sitting with our hands on him because he misses his pals. I could say the word and about a hundred more times and not begin to cover last night. We put tarps down in the screened porch and took turns sitting with the crying lamb. Charlie likes having a buddy, slept with his head on the lamb, but seemed appalled by the baaaing. He would walk over to his bed and look on imperiously as if he’d never seen such an unmanly display. The new lamb is clever and can open doors. When we left them for a moment or two he would open the door and when you came out there they would be baaaing on the couch. That may sound cuter than it actually was. Remember the poop.

Now they are eating hay together. Charlie has discovered the joys of social hay. And the lamb is quiet. That’s because one of my brood is outside with him. We did not solve Charlie’s lonely problem. Instead of having one lonely crying lamb in the kitchen we have two. Or in the yard. It was all too much and Charlie began sympathy baaaing about 4 this morning. This started out as a fun spring fostering activity I keep reminding myself. How did we get here? We are out of goat’s milk and calling every goat farmer around. Still no luck. The lambs are very happy together….well,.so long as one of us is with them.

Still no name. He’s too much a baby for many of the names we’d liked. My husband unaccountably keeps trying on Spanish names. I am sticking to the old farm names. Eli like rocker names and Hannah and Benjamin have offered an eclectic mix. We are an opinionated crew and this could take some time.

The new pre-assembled cottage barn is being delivered tomorrow morning. Because we have sheep. We are practically shepherds now and so, by God, we need a barn...fast.

Decisions

2009-04-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

The decision has been made. Few will be surprised. We are keeping Charlie. We had sort of acclimated ourselves to this idea of fostering. But after calls to several area shepherds we knew that Charlie would be ostracized from the flock for at least a week, maybe more. Mama sheep would kick him away when their babies nursed. The farmer and his crew would ignore his pleas to help him more quickly be accepted into the flock. Without his buddy Daisy he would surely be bereft. His health might suffer and his weight would drop. That’s if everything worked out. Then in mid to late summer he would go to market. Somehow we had agreed we could avoid thinking about that and consider instead only the lovely childhood he and Daisy would have with us. We wouldn’t interfere in the next phase. He came from an ethical farm and we would not judge the outcome. But, now without Daisy there would be this sad interim bit. We couldn’t do it.

But neither could we keep him as a single lamb. He is lonely and sad. These are flock animals He is back in our kitchen because we cannot bear for him to sleep outside alone. One night Hannah slept next to him in her sleeping bag. One night I brought him up to our bedroom. Another night John dragged Stuart’s therapy bed, (It was supposed to be for Eloise. She rejected it. But it is huge. Stuart takes up one tiny corner like a king terrier), and a blanket and slept on the floor. Charlie sleeps soundly so long as anyone is near. Last night it was Eloise. The night before it was Pippi. Everyone is taking a turn.

So John and I drove to Montreal and talked about the ethical implications of the fostering of this now single lamb. Do we have an obligation to consider what the lamb would want if he had a vote? Recently I was reading a book by a fellow whose dog had unaccountably fallen for the breeding ram who was there to mate with his ewes. They had seemingly become best friends, but he wouldn’t consider for a moment letting Darryl the ram live on his farm, no matter that he and Rose had created a rare cross species relationship. I wondered when I read that whether humans have any moral obligation to recognize the preferences of our animals. Now here was the question right in front of us.

We never really wanted sheep. And we are clearly not cut out for fostering. We don’t have a real barn. Our yuppie chicken house doesn’t count. But we do sort of relish the idea of sheep munching in the yard next to the chickens while the dogs nap in the sun and the humans play a little badminton or while away a few hours on the porch. There was that mile long walk in the woods with Stuart and Pippi, Zoe and Charlie. He stayed right with the group like he had been doing it all his life. But what about the garden? Charlie is a high jumping Cheviot. I’ve been told there is no fence that would keep a North Country Cheviot out of a garden. Well, we only really loved the basil and tomatoes. Maybe we could just do a container garden up on the balcony. We have been walking Charlie all around our smallholding every day. He seems to be learning where he can go and where he cannot. Will we be able to train these sheep to stay with us like the dogs do?

Sheep. Two lambs and you can start saying sheep. And that is what we decided….to find another bottle baby. It will be hard in the short run to start this whole baby nursing thing again, getting up at night, and cleaning up the inevitable messes. But bottle-feeding should ensure cheery domesticity. We have spent the last two days calling shepherds all over Vermont. Do you have any bottle babies.? A ewe would be nice. So long as we have to start over a little chocolate or black one would be cute. We aren’t going to breed them, Charlie cannot stay a ram anyway, so mixing breeds won’t matter.

Tomorrow morning we are headed to Rutland to meet a shepherd from Middlebury halfway. She has a little black Dorset ram. Nobody had a ewe that was either A a bottle baby or B more than a week old. Starting over is one thing. Starting way back there was another.
We are going to have sheep. The whole family is considering names. I like Clarence and Edgar. Franklin is being considered and Louie was in there for a while. Somebody likes Harry and someone else likes Ruben.

Sheep. We are going to have sheep. I think that means we are going to be shepherds….oh my.

A Walk in the Woods

2009-04-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Seventy degrees. Those are two beautiful words. It’s only 27F here right now, but turning on the computer this morning the promise of 70F is blinking out at me.
Spring in Vermont is complicated. Forty-degree swings like this one are common. For every sunshiny afternoon there are a half dozen blustery mornings that will break your heart when you climb out of bed.
Yesterday was gorgeous too. Two in a row feels like some kind of April miracle. Pippi went to the hairdresser yesterday, so Charlie had his first full day without Daisy or Pippi either one. Eloise is in no shape to play with a growing ram and Stuart at 12 is not amused with all the head butting, charging, jumping glee either. But he is always game for a walk in the woods. So when John saw the fox at our fence and decided to follow her, Stu, and Charlie followed right along side. Now we take our dogs on woodsy walks off leash all the time. Zoe the cat comes along more often than not. She sticks to the tree line, hopping from fallen log to fallen log, running and jumping and climbing but never more than 8 or 10 feet away. She is part of the pack. These animals of ours have formed a family system of their own and they travel and act as any pack of same species long bonded critters would.
And yesterday Charlie was permitted into the group. He followed along at a slower pace, stopping to chew every other branch and much on any clump of grass in his way. Stuart ran ahead leading the little group, then John, with Zoe off to one side or the other and Charlie pulling up the rear. A man, his dog, their cat, and a lamb. What a parade they made marching a mile or so into the woods. John said the lamb never let them get too far ahead and if more than 15 or 20 feet separated them he would run and jump to catch up turning sideways in mid air showing off his emerging ram skills. When I got home they were all piled up in a sunny spot of grass enjoying the last rays. I sat down next to them and soaked up a little of that glorious warm sun with a lamb by my side getting his belly rubbed.
It’s spring. The days are full of blustery disappointment and sunny thrills.
We had a sad morning this week and a happy afternoon yesterday. It’s a life….

A Sad Morning

2009-04-15T04:59:00.001-07:00

We are not cut out for farming.

We woke up to a dead baby lamb. We went to bed after bottles and cuddles with both of them in front of reruns of In Treatment. They like a long snuggle after their bottles. Especially Daisy.

Daisy never had a mom and she has been glad to let us substitute. She would sit with legs curled under in your lap for an hour or longer if Charlie wasn't baaaing and jumping and begging her to play. She would reluctantly look up for one last cheek rub from John's beard, or one more ear scratch from me and climb down and let Charlie chase her and play the head butt game. She loved having a bath.

She must not have gotten any colostrum. She has had all manner of little infections. She had a joint infection from a compromised umbilical cord. She had a mouth infection that forced us to encourage her to the bottle for two of these four weeks. She was never as robust or as fully a leaping playful lamb as Charlie. She was paper trained. He chews up the paper.

And last night some little bug that any other lamb would just have fought off got her. Maybe it was bloat. This can happen when the fat in the milk replacer mixes in a hot tummy and causes a gas that cannot be expelled. She had hiccups and then she died. It was as simple and as devastating as that.

We called the farmer for whom we are fostering and he was quite philosophical. He said this little lamb almost died two or three times in her first week. She just wasn't meant to make it. Happens. Thanks for calling.

John is burying her and just came in with a tear stained face.

I am holding a lonely and confused Charlie. Going back to the flock will be an even tougher adjustment for him now. Those sheep are wild. The dogs are guards and not playmates. The farm humans are barely interested. He will be bereft. Maybe fostering these lambs was wrong from the beginning. The farmer reminded me that he'd had too many bottle babies, but that this is always tricky.

Then he asked me how many bottles they are still getting. He told me to make sure Charlie is getting them now at room temperature. He reminded me that they...he.... will nurse for a year allowed, but that will make his return to the flock even harder. He matter of factly suggested cutting a bottle today and another by Saturday so he's down to one per day. More hay, more food, less attention. The loss will be easier if we begin it gradually. Of course he's right. He runs an ethical farm with much success. He has the oldest flock in Vermont. There is a lot to be learned form this strong kind man.
But Charlie is bonded to the dogs and without Daisy his affection will only increase.

Shit...I am not cut out for this

Another Easter Saga

2009-04-13T06:00:00.001-07:00

There is something about Easter…. One year we were having a bunch of people over for brunch. I was up late cooking the night before when the door fell off the dishwasher. I had a little single sink back then and the dishwasher was an indispensable part of life. Now I am not married to a handy guy and he is not married to a handy girl. So we called Dave West who was the handyman that we kept on retainer at the time…(Some people have lawyers on retainer. We have always, as far back as anyone remembers, had a handyman. We live in century old houses and we cannot fix stuff. Enough said.)
Dave was planning on going to Sunrise Service the next morning, but coming as I do from a long line of over reactors, I am not calm in a household crisis and so this made us particularly good customers, so it was easier for him to come that Saturday night. He ambled over about nine o’ clock in his jeans and cowboy boots. He said we needed a part, but he thought he could get the door back on and get us through a few wash cycles if we turned this screw every time, held this button in, and closed it real gentle like.

We did and it made it until the part came on Wednesday.

Another year our living room ceiling collapsed. There was a leak behind the jacuzzi wall, which was had been silent and unseen, but dripping steadily until BAM, on Easter morning the cleaning gave way. It was raining in the living room over a new sofa covered with wet moldy plaster with about 15 people on their way after church for brunch. I was barely one skip ahead of a fit. We had just moved into our house in St Louis and didn’t even know where the water turn off was. Eventually we found it and a plumber who was glad to come out on Easter Sunday at double time…(over time was time and a half, plus another half for holiday)

He futzed around for a couple of hours until he isolated the problem, solved it and wished us well in finding a plaster guy to repair the ceiling. He was there so long, that he helped himself to some Easter brunch in the middle and we all laughed, (I have had lots of practice at dramatically recounting our misadventures), and everybody sat in the other end of what was thankfully a big room. The dining room got a lot more use for r a few days too.

This year it was the toilet or the tulips depending on how you tell the story. Our toilet was stopped up…with tulips.

I can explain.

We were having another one of those ill-fated brunches and I was cooking lots of food ahead the day before. While cooking I was also puttering and picking up various parts of the house. The cleaning lady had been the day before, but some things you have to do yourself. There were books, half read and discarded in every room, which needed to be repatriated to the shelves. So I was carrying an armful of books toward the library and I grabbed some new soap from the linen closet to put in the guest bath along the way. I passed my desk and noticed that some of the tulips were a little droopy, so I shifted the books to my other arm and pulled out the errant stems. I got the books back on the shelves into the right spots and headed for the guest bath with the soap and the tulips. Now I had custard on the stove and not much time so I decided to have a pee while I was in the bathroom anyway, but I still had all those damn droopy tulips. I didn’t want to throw them in the guest trash. As John always says “oh no we can’t look like we live here when company comes, we better clean out the trash cans”
Of course he says this with a little dripping sarcasm, but I don’t care. Nobody likes to look at your trash. So, worrying about the custard that I may have left too long, I tossed the tulips into the toilet with a passing thought that ‘oh what the hell they were bio degradable,’ Well weren’t they?

Only apparently they got caught round the pipes and the thing wouldn’t flush and so begins this year’s the saga of the Easter toilet.

John sweetly offered to go and rent an electric snake making no mean comments along the way about the tulips. There aren’t a lot of people up here and getting a plumber the day before Easter wasn’t going to be easy. We have a handyman, Rick, but he also has a grass cutting business, and so Saturdays in the spring he is swamped with spring clean-up. With Easter coming the next day he would be running hard. And of course, John was being very thoughtful. He could see the wild look in my eyes that I get when the holiday begins to go pear shaped. I knew that operating an electric snake might not be quite within his unhandy grasp, but he’d been so very sweet about the tulips, and our options were limited. He rented one for the bargain price of $25, read the directions, and got down to business. The directions had said to wear leather gloves, but John, figuring gloves were gloves, grabbed a rubber one our of the utility closet, which promptly got caught in the rotor, sliced open three of his fingers, (he only has one hand), and that was the end of the electric snake.

Next we called Irma. She is our cleaning lady and her husband Ron is a handy type who looks after houses for the second homeowners. I explained our predicament and he came right over where for only $50 he explained that John had gotten an industrial snake too big for the pipes. He also sluiced a little vinegar and baking soda down the drain and left us with a still overflowing toilet and muttering that what we really needed was an auger.
John is nothing if not game. He went to the hardware store, bought an auger for only $40 and came home feeling a triumphant anticipation that he after all was going to solve the damn problem.

After several minutes of hope when he actually got the auger in the toilet, we were left with a flooded guest hall, and these horrible black scratches all over the inside of the toilet when I finally started calling plumbers. We found one who was in the bathroom for about a minute and a half when he came back out and said “all fixed, that’ll be $150 ma’am”. I told him that for $150 he really should go back in and stand around and at least pretend that it was a little bit hard. He laughed and called out Happy Easter as he climbed back into his truck. Happy Easter indeed….

Springtime

2009-04-06T04:42:00.000-07:00

We got a little snow up here this weekend, but it was all gone by afternoon. It wasn't even enough to make us crabby, because we have blooming crocuses and daffodils who are right behind. There is still some snow up on the mountains but there is green down below, hallelujah. We are all drinking from the magical cup of photosynthesis. The days are young and sweet and we feel lighter and ready for the change.
The financial markets are still careening out of control, but all these little bubs buried in dark earth on a cold autumn day by someone who planned with sweet expectation gives that feeling of hope to all the rest of us. I am grateful to all the bulb planters everywhere.
Where I used to live in St Louis there was a long highway called I40 that crisscrossed the whole city. One year a Mayor decided to beautify the city by planting daffodils all along the sides of the highway. There were kids in orange vests out there for a few weeks in October digging little holes and sticking their bulbs into the ground. Everyone teased the Mayor about using the out of work teenagers and said there would probably be no flowers come up, or if there were they'd come up all in a clump where the kids had ceremoniously dumped their sacks before running off to hide behind a billboard and grab a smoke. It was the stuff of newspaper jokes all fall. Come the next twenty something springs though this was one of the happiest sights in the whole world. This dirty dingy highway littered with ugly billboards, and in places bumper to bumper traffic, was reborn every spring by one man with a little vision of a few flowers. When we left for Vermont the flowers were beginning to get sparse. I wonder if some new Mayor will have the same forethought to add a few more flowers more and keep the happiness coming. It only lasts a couple of weeks, but a couple of weeks of cheerful people smiling when they get to the office is some kind of miracle in any city, especially one plagued with failing schools, ugly highways, high crime, and rising unemployment. But bring on the daffodils and things seems possible again.
For a few weeks Americans are all in this together. Pretty soon San Francisco will get is chilly summer fog, Florida will get the Disney vacationers buying those little fans atop their water bottles, Phoenix will begin to bake, and Vermont will get the hot New Yorkers and folks from Connecticut who want to share our mountain breezes. But for a few weeks we are all sampling the tulips, looking at the new shoots and being glad for the Easter story of renewal and rebirth.
That's what spring does. It reminds us that job or no job, 401k or not, some things can always be relied upon. It says hang on, things will get better. The sun comes back. The pear trees bloom anew and there is hope out there in the sweet simplicity of the repetition.

Charlie and Daisy

2009-03-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

We do not live on a farm. We live in a high end little picturesque village in Vermont filled with people who moved here from somewhere else. Most of them came from Manhattan and more than half live here only part time. But we live off a little lane up a hill from the historic village center, backed and wrapped by a forested and protected knoll, and so our chickens and critters are more of a hidden secret. But these lambs have brought up some questions because you see, we are not farmers. Most of what I know about farming comes from the See and Say I had when I was about one. I know what sounds the animals make and I know roughly what they produce, sheep-wool, cows-milk, like that.

But I don’t know what it means when a lamb coughs. I don’t know the diseases of sheep and how to treat them. I do not know how to mend a fence, or to keep the lambs from eating the little irises that are just pushing their sweet little green heads up out of the cold dark earth. When my friends Karen and Jack brought their little dog Madeleine for supper the other night and she decided to chase the chickens, I knew that chasing her would only excite her more. I knew that and still I chased her and screamed. Stories with dogs chasing livestock, especially older animals like our chickens, often have very bad endings. The chickens were clucking and scared out of their wits, Madeleine was agitated and couldn’t hear her name let alone respond to a lie down command, and I was running and yelling like a fish wife, sweating and coughing, being chased by two frightened baaa-ing baby lambs, and finally running smack into my friend Jack who looked like he might have a heart attack at any minute. Eventually somebody nabbed the dog, and the chickens flew into their house, and the lambs got bottles and rocked, and all was again right with our little world. None of this was the dog’s fault. It was the fault of the non-farmers who should have never let a strange dog into the yard where it might be enticed to molest the livestock.

And so, should we really be considering keeping these little lambs? We don’t even have a barn. We have a fancy chicken house that looks like something some silly yuppies who wanted blue eggs would build. There is a coop out back where we could expand and add a place for the sheep. But it will cost a bundle to heat and side and insulate etc. And there is a fence around part of the smallholding but it too is mostly just for show. It will need shoring up. And we’ll have to fence in the garden. Sure the lambs are only fifty bucks apiece, but the rest will be well into the thousands. And we like that our dogs and cat and chickens hang out with us in the yard. Will the sheep? Because at the rate they are downing these bottles that is what they surely will be, probably sooner than later. Charlie can jump three feet straight into the air. It is like watching the Christmas Rudolph cartoon, only the live stage show version. He runs sideways kicking up his heels behind him and twisting and turning in the air like a little circus lamb. He is the epitome of a spring baby animal feeling fresh. He is joy in a wool suit. He runs circles around Daisy as if to say Look at me, I am a RAM! He may only weight five pounds, but he is destined for 300 and he wants you to know that he knows it.

For once I am trying not to control the decision. I am trying to just be with these little creatures and let the group decide or maybe even the lambs. I have long coveted a cow. But are we ready to abandon the idea of the Vineyard for a big hunk of the summer? What do I know about cows after all either? Everybody has the right to begin and to learn something new of course. Is that what I am aiming at? Have I secretly decided I want to be a farmer, even boutique sized? Do we want to have to hire a caretaker with the expertise of a shepherd or a dairy farmer when we travel? Will these little guys come when we call them? Charlie already follows me around just like the Mother Goose rhyme promised he would, but will he when he weighs a hundred pounds? How about when he gets to three? Who will trim their hooves? Do they have books for this sort of thing? Who will shear them in the summer? Is this really what we want to be doing in our middle years? And what about that year in Italy.....the questions are piling up.

These baby lambs were a surprise. It had been a while since we got a big surprise in this family. It was welcome and sweet, and we responded and are happy and glad. But now the next bits cannot be a surprise. We must decide and plan or it will surely come to a rough end. Last night when they were curled up in front of a spring fire, after being given their bottles and a little warm bath, they looked like an old oil painting come to life. Their black noses were outlined against all that white wool and their eyes were heavy with a milky sleepiness. The curled around one another and baaed and cooed quietly to sleep. The beauty of the moment took my breath. I will always remember these little lambs and this wonderful spring. But soon some decisions are going to have to be made….

March Madness

2009-03-25T14:46:00.003-07:00

Today I sat in sixty-degree sunshine and watched my baby lambs race across the yard with Pippi, our herding Moodle fast at their heels. Charlie and Daisy galloped in big circles on the grass and played dodge and catch with us when it was time to come inside. But as soon as we nabbed them they chewed on our chins and earlobes and fell asleep in our arms before we got back to the kitchen where they lay still, next to the leftover warmth of the radiator, each with one of the others ears in their mouth.
I have headed back out here to the porch to catch the last of this sweet spring sunshine. I am almost too sleepy to enjoy it. We were up at 2 AM giving bottles since Daisy was too sleepy to eat properly before bed and at just four and six days a missed feeding with no easy mama access can spell disaster. Then we were all up again at five when we heard the hysterical bleating from the kitchen. I raced down wondering what had happened and found Charlie screaming “Baaa baaa meeeh meeh…which translated roughly into, “OHMYGOD I am bleeding to death”
He has a docked tail and he had scuffed it with his hoof and the little wound had reopened and scared him out of his little lambie wits. It didn’t hurt though when I dabbed and cleaned it and coated it with Neosporin, so he is just a run of the mill overreactor like everybody else around here. He will fit in nicely with this bunch.
The night before I woke up hearing the clip clopping sounds of little hooves in the library. Benjamin came home late and neglected to reattach the little gate at the kitchen. So the kids went exploring. I found them in the library chewing up a purple candle, (their mouths are still smeared with a kind of fading pink), and looking pretty delighted with the results.
Then later this morning when I got to my business appointment I kept noticing the stale sickly scent of old milk. It was apparently on my shoulder or maybe in my hair.
We go a little crazy up here in the winter. I have never wanted sheep. I still don’t want sheep exactly. But these two sweet lambs are not sheep. They are our little lambs. And we delight in the little wooly curls showing up on their spindly legs every morning. When you come into the room they greet you with a sweet little baaa and when you give them a bottle they look up at you with milk drunk eyes and their body sort of snuffles and purrs and I start imagining that we better get some fencing out there pretty soon. Benjamin asked today what is so special about lamb anyway that makes people think they need to eat these dear little creatures. He said this as Charlie nuzzled his chin and fell asleep with his cheek buried at he base of Benjamin’s throat. Benjamin, I might add, has always loved lamb.
An hour ago we were chasing the little wildcats out from under the porch where they had discovered the special delicacy that is apparently the Satellite cable. In that moment Benjamin said we need a book about livestock. And I mentioned that this would be good practice for the cow. And Eli wondered if the cow could please have a calf. And I said of course how else will we get the milk to make the cheese?
Fostering sounded good….And of course it really isn’t my fault. The winters are enough to drive you crazy up here.

Oh My!

2009-03-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

John planned our Sunday. He had an inspiration. He called Peter and Ame, parents of Eli's pal Will. They have a sheep farm with 80 newborn lambs. Hannah was here for the weekend and she loves baby lambs. Who doesn't?
We pulled on our boots and headed for Pawlett where the oldest flock of sheep in Vermont live on the sweetest little hillside in the whole state. Many times we have pulled over and admired those sheep grazing up there in the wide green grass just above the mighty Mettowee River. It is one of Vermont's prettiest spots.
We pulled up their long drive and climbed out of the car to a racket of ba ba baaing. There were still about twenty pregnant ewes on the hillside and a couple of proud rams looking like they could run the world. Inside the barn were sixty or so mamas and all their adorable little lambs. A couple of mommies had mastitis, and couldn't nurse. One had given birth to triplets and was snuggling them all but relieved when the bottles came and gave her a break. Two mommies had died during child birth and all told there were about fifteen bottle babies waiting for fresh bottle recruits. There is no finer way to spend a spring day in Vermont than feeding a newborn lamb its bottle.
Can you imagine how this idyllic story turns out? We were in the car with our seat belts on when Eli quietly said ,"Will said I could have a lamb to raise"
We all looked at each other.
After all it is spring and spring makes us a little bit silly up here.
And we do have a heated chicken house.
Plus Eloise could probably use a little Hospice lamb. There wasn't even any discussion. We turned right instead of left and headed up to their house. When we got out of the car Peter asked us if we'd forgotten a lamb. Before long he persuaded us to take two. When we bring them back the flock will likely not accept them immediately, but with a buddy they won't care and will fit back in quicker.
We are fostering a little girl and a little boy, now named Daisy and Charlie. Charlie was born yesterday and is a little wobbly and very very tiny. His mom was old and died in childbirth. Same as Dasiy's did, only she is much more mature at four days.
As we drove away talking about the heated chicken house, Amy suggested that if we brought them in at night, (not that there was any reason to do bring them in, no no of course not), we might want to give them a bath.
They went into the tub first thing where a little Shea butter soap made them as good as new. They were whiter than we'd imagined. And oh my how adorable.
They played with Pippi, she chased them and then brave Daisy would do this little head bent down head butt and baaa and Pippi would back up and lay on her back and wriggle. Charlie would sniff her tummy and then the whole thing would begin again. We laughed and watched for an hour. It wasn't long til Pippi was mimicking the head butt and we were all dying of joy. Eloise curled up and indulgently let them sidle up to her warm fur. Even old Grandpa Stuart grabbed a toy and started running around like a youngster. There is nothing like a little lamb to celebrate a fine spring day.
We did put them in the chicken house after their bottles.
We did.
For about an hour.
Then John and I went out to check on them and they looked forlorn and lost, not sleeping, but wandering around the edges. In silent agreement we each bent down, picked one up, and aimed straight for the kitchen. Hannah and Eli were watching from the windows. They are now curled up in the kitchen. Maybe we'll let them watch Big Love with us.
I just reminded John that this was the outing he planned.
Uh-huh...baaaaa It's spring. Hooray!

The Fifth Season

2009-03-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

Schools got cancelled last week for mud. Half of Vermont lives on a dirt road and the buses just couldn't get through after three long days of pounding rain. The snow runs off the sides of the mountains and since most of the people live in the high sweet valleys we get buried under mud. Up here in Vermont, in America's north country, spring comes in the form of rain, rain on top of snow, softening the snow and ice, so that as you walk across it, the snow opens up to hard bare ground with every step. You know that something is happening down below. There's stuff happening up top too, but you can hear the water underneath. Before long there are the squishy sounds your boots make as they ease across the yard, but there is the constant sound of water running down below too, Just beneath the world you see is this other one that you can hear and sometimes even touch with the soles of your shoes. The earth is waking up and even the birds are coming back.

Spring is early this year. March is usually a month filled with snow and since that first week when we got two colossal snow storms it has been quiet up here. We have had fifty degree days. It's looking like this year we might have an Easter egg hunt in the cold leftover grass instead of the white snow. The US Snowboarding Open is this weekend and the kids are racing in just their jeans.

Through it all, the deer are still walking the same trails they've been making all winter long, The mash the snow into hard-packed rough ice covered muddy clumps that will remain long after the softer snow has melted away. Their footprints are the icy understory in the forest now. We throw hay and salt down in the meadow for them as winter ends and they have already gotten all the low bark off of our trees. They are looking skinny and the coyotes take more of them in the late night hours. It sounds like a horror movie out there some nights and when we can stand it no more we begin to throw the hay. We are chastised for this by the locals. The Vermonters let nature take its course. I try. I really do, but by March I feel like everybody needs a little Disney break and I cave every single year. I fatten up a few deer and the coyotes move on to somebody elses's woods.

Our small holding backs up to a protected forest trail. So we have wild woods that begin just at the edge of our land. Our chickens don't lay well when the coyotes are hunting in our meadow. The sounds that interrupt our sleep seem to unsettle them too. And we don't need wild animals molesting our livestock, so we fatten up the Kent Hill deer and they are faster and stronger and the coyotes move on.

The sleepy season is almost over. There was a winter's farmer's market yesterday in Brattleboro. It was filled with cute little girls in dresses and boots and their Vermont mama's selling a winter's worth of pottery with their long braids tied back with flowery ribbons. They was Thai food and musicians with guitars and harmonicas. All the farmers had little pots of veggies and flowers for your house and piles of seeds filled with hope and promise. God we've missed each other and this sunny Saturday was cause for celebration. We came right home and ordered our new baby chicks.

Because the geese are coming back too. The first ones have just started coming. They head down to the pond and hang out around the edges grabbing the fish who are swimming up toward the sun. These geese are huge. It is as if the Canadian flocks send out the strongest sentries first. These are the ones whose job it is to declare that winter is over. They make a bog racket when they come back and like trumpets they sound the spring. Welcome back guys. Watch out for the mud.

Meet Olivia

2009-03-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

I love spring. It is like the early morning of summer. Everything seems possible. We are at the tippy tippy beginning up here. There will surely be at least a little more snow, but a whole slew of days in the 40 and 50s brought everyone to the post office in our flip-flops. We rush the season up here. Yes it is muddy. Yes it is really more the time for muck boots. And okay, yes, the ground is still frozen solid plenty of places. I’ll admit some of those sticks I tried to pick up when I was clearing up the yards were frozen to the ground. But the sun was out. The skies were a cheery pale yellow and cool blue and the swagger of the possible was in the air.
The pussy willows are just starting to bud. The first little fur is visible and there are little purple leafy things sticking their heads up all over the ground. The jonquils have pushed through and their green shoots climb a little taller every morning now.
The land around here is a blank slate. I resolve to make the most of our garden this spring. I am going to dig a bigger patch and grow flowers next to the vegetables so the thing will be an artsy display that sustains us all summer long. This is the year I am going to get it right. It will not be in the shape of an embarrassing swastika with puny little walkways and ghastly overgrown weeds that hide zucchini two feet long. This will be a proper kitchen garden. It will not float uselessly untethered to the land, sitting out in the middle of nowhere where the sun just happened to seem bright one day. This one will have mature borders and tall elegant boundaries of something like Cypress or anyway some New Englandy version with tall elegant lines that will balance the ordered rows of rhubarb and old-fashioned tomatoes.
This will be the year we will take complete advantage of every warm day. We will eat suppers of vine-ripened tomatoes over freshly made mozzarella drenched in balsamic and dusted with basil out on the terrace with the company of our chickens. We are going to raise some new baby chicks this spring and some of us are even considering a cow....(more later) Plenty of Augusts from my old life found us huddled in flannel pajamas in the air conditioning eating cheese curls and watching old reruns of Seinfeld. But we live closer to the land now and by golly we are going to make the most of whatever it throws at us.
We are going to make time for coffee up at the waterfall and feed our croissant crumbs to the chickens in the mornings. We are going to soak up the sun until it simply lives inside us. We will not waste August watching House.
I have a pile of gardening catalogs and seeds growing in every window. I am going to lie on the balcony in the spring sunshine. I am going to stay outside every single day as long as the sun does and we will lie on blankets in the yard at night and look at the stars. I pledge never to complain about heat no matter how high the temperatures climb. I’ll just grow watermelon and put cucumbers in out water pitchers and mint in our tea.
This weekend I am going to bake bunny cookies and bring out every mismatched piece of flowery china we own. We will have deviled eggs and sweet cookies and maybe even pimento cheese on fluffy white bread.
It is spring in Vermont and anything is possible…

What Passes for Spring Up Here

2009-03-09T06:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I declared that winter was over. I am sticking to it.
Yesterday we began daylight savings time and what a glorious beginning it was. It got up to 50 degrees here and most of the snow melted. Oh, we still had those three and four foot icy drifts against the house that would need chiseling and way more sun to get going. But most of the stuff was really and finally gone. Old ladies all over town were hammering away at the ice with rakes and shovels and picks. It was as if someone had announced a spring-cleaning party. Everyone got the memo. We were all out there. Even the robins were hanging tight to the apple trees and making their glad sound.
We started picking up branches and carrying them to the woods. I hung a little painting on the front porch and brought out the pillows for the swing and the chairs. We took away the winter locks that tighten the doors and keep the wind at bay, and threw open the front doors. The dogs ran joyously in the mud and flowed the rivulets of water down into the meadow. We had tiny little streams and itty-bitty rivers all over the place.
Next I put away anything in the house that felt like winter including the drapes of red berries covered grapevines that twirled around the mirrors and over the mantels. One was festooned with swags of felt hearts and there were birch branches in vases covered with little pink and red felt kisses left over from February celebrations. The old French glass pinecones were put away and the German glass Easter Eggs filled the bowls instead. A couple of springy looking old iron rabbits hopped out onto the sideboard and the candle sticks all got dusty purple to replace the bright red tapers that had been melting since early February.
We changed the snowman flag to one with irises and pansies. Because the declaration had been made and it was time to follow through. We even emptied all the porch pots and carried old withered plants to the woods. The sun stayed out until at least 6:30 and so did we. Supper didn’t come around until after 8.
Of course today the schools are on a snow delay. The roads are icy and the white stuff blankets the land. This is what they call a sugaring snow. Big fat wet flakes and higher temperatures again tomorrow will have everyone tapping trees and boiling sap. It’s running strong now. Low temps at night, plus a few wet snows, followed by sunny warm days equal thick rich maple syrup for which every farmer up here is known. I love to go into the sugar shacks and breathe in the hot sugary smell. There are four grades from fancy down to B. But each farmer creates a taste of his own from the age of his maples and the temperature of his fire. True Vermonters prefer the B and we have developed our palettes over the years. No more thin lightly flavored pale amber Fancy or Grade A for us. No siree. We are real B people now. We like ours dark and thick, not heavy like molasses, but richer than the diner stuff and with a deep maple flavor that lingers.
So it looks like winter again out there and the purple, orange and blue glass eggs inside seem a little premature. But no matter we have had a taste. This is just a little spring snow. It won’t amount to much and by tomorrow or Wednesday it will be part of the flowing streams and mud rolling down the mountains. This is why they call it the sweet valley. The mud rolls down rich with nutrients and lays the foundation for the riot of color that is surely on its way. It’s snowing. We need a fire this morning. Because finally, it is spring in Vermont.

Hurry Spring

2009-03-06T08:06:00.001-08:00

Winter may be losing its hold. That whole in like a lion thing happened up here with a vengeance. We got a new dozen inches of snow on the first of March. Early yesterday morning it was -1. This was highly annoying to me and Eloise. But today we are expecting rain and a high of near forty. This stuff is gonna melt. It’s supposed to be in the thirties and forties here for the next several days. The ice under the snow is going to give way. The robins have come back and they are busy at the apple tree and the wintry berry bushes. Yesterday afternoon it was sunny and warm in Putney and you could smell the mud heating up under the snow. I declare that winter is over. I need it to be and so and I declare that it is.
I am moving out of the season of fear that has been enhanced by one cold gloomy icy day after another up here. I am afraid of losing Eloise. She has for so long been my calm sane touchstone. She kept love alive for me during the dark days around my mom’s funeral. Her calm steady presence has always been my reminder.
But warm days are coming. The new meds seem to be improving her pain. We are going to have some spring at least.
I think fear is an emotional geography meant to be crossed.
Eloise doesn’t have much to do with fear. She mainly thinks about cheese, and lying in a big pile of soft snow every morning, it is a part of her routine, along with watching chickens, and eating cheese, chewing bones, and snuggling close for a back rub. The failing markets don’t move her to panic and neither does a sore knee or old age. She struggles to stand up now so we bought her a therapy bed. But it is hard to get up from and so she has given it over to Stuart and Pippi who are quite pleased. Instead she stays by my side teaching me in this as she has in all else. No reason for panic. We might just get a whole summer. Sad won’t kill you. And I can be sad later when she is gone. I better enjoy this last part or it will prove I didn’t learn much from her in ten years.
We had been helping Eloise watch her weight. That meant less cheese. Cancer means more. So as far as she is concerned this whole cancer thing is just an old age bonus. There is a big lesson there.
Change is disturbing, endings are sad, but necessary for whatever will come next.
So come on spring…..

Love

2009-03-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

Eloise is the love dog. She sidles up to you and scooches ever closer. Pretty soon she is sitting on your foot or lifting your hand gently and teasing it down her back with her nose for a rump rub. She has a sweet friendly way when she leans into you. At 110 pounds you feel the lean and steady yourself as the warm presence takes you over. When I work at my desk she is always close by. She is content to be…her example has quietly taught me about calm over fear and worry. She has always understood what matters. There is food, cheese especially, (the cheese rinds from the boutique farmsteads at the farmer’s market are cause for celebration), bones are nice for a long sunny afternoon chew, and only scratches and cuddles are urgent. She let the cats clean her face over the years just as she let little children climb on top of her. She has always taken the long view.

She is pure love. Everyone smiles when they look at her. People comment about her graceful elegance. She is always calm and ever poised. We share nothing in our personalities except that she has taught me every single thing I know about being calm and centered. I am excitable and loud. She is quiet and dignified. She is content with the view from the porch. She watches Stuart run around protecting us all from the unsavory terrorist in the garbage truck, or the thief who conceals himself in the appliance repair suit. Stuart barks and worries and Eloise herds him back into the house, reminds him about the fire and settles him back down. Pippi, the newest member of the house jumps around begging for “mom” to lick her. She rolls on her belly and Eloise obliges with a few long licks and eventually noses her down into something closer to calm. She opens her paws and lets the puppy scoot into her warm embrace. She always preferred sleeping alone. She is big and gets hot, but she tolerated little Pippi who needed a doggie mom and accepted this role too with her usual grace.

She loves to watch the chickens. She especially likes when we give them scraps of things like POTATOES. They think she is a bear. When she ambles over I swear she smirks when they run off and she gets the scraps. But a cautionary quiet calling of her name, and she takes only one bite and then comes right back to the porch letting those chickens have their supper. This lady can sit next to a low table filled with canapés and never even put her nose near. She waits to be invited, which of course she always is.

There has only ever been one thing that ruffled her. When the kids were younger and we would wrestle and play with wilder abandon she would bark and chase us away from whichever child she felt needed her protection. Eli losing a game of hide and seek and tag would call piteously “Elooooise”, and she would come running and pin whatever bigger kid or adult as Eli giggled and happily ran away. She protected him fiercely like a Mama Bear would a cub.. Once when a dear friend played soccer with him in the yard and he screamed, Eloise came bounding out of the house and caught that friend’s arm holding it gently in her mouth until Eli sounded the all clear.

She has the biggest vocabulary of any dog I have ever known. “Where is Eli, Eloise?”, and she’d run and bark wherever she discovered him. She is smart and beautiful and she is all love. Her first vet asked us why we’d chosen a Bernese Mountain Dog. I answered that they were gorgeous and smart. “Brains and beauty” he quipped. We didn’t know the half of it. We walk in the woods with all three dogs and our cat Zoe. How did we get a cat to walk with us off leash? Well, Eloise taught her. She came along a couple of times and hopped out of sight amongst the fallen trees. Eloise would go off trail and herd her closer and eventually she got the idea. The cat stays as close now as any dog. Stuart leads the way because Eloise lets him. Pippi runs ahead, falls behind, and bounds off the trail after chipmunks. Eloise galumphs along after her and gently redirects her back to the path. We all fall in line around this calm natural leader. She smiles and leans into you and you find you have no choice but to accept her superior wisdom. Once when we lost power during a winter storm she slept next to me and I was as warm as toast. She never once moved despite her preference always to sleep alone.
When any one of us is sick she sits vigil by the door to whatever bedroom we are in. She waits and just sits with us. She holds whatever we must hold as steadfastly as any minister ever has.

I don’t know how to face losing her. I am not ready damnit. Anyone can see I need about forty more years with this dog to become even remotely the better person she calls me to be. But I figure she’ll teach me how to do this hard sad goodbye thing too. I know already that it has something to do with more cheese rinds and maybe if we are especially lucky a few quiet days on a quilt in a sunny patch of soft grass. She has taught me how to get past fear with presence and constancy, love and hope. I expect she has something to teach me again But I sure hope she waits a while….

Eloise

2009-03-03T05:45:00.001-08:00

Today is a really sad day. Eloise has been diagnosed with bone cancer. We will make her comfortable and steal as much time together as we can so long as we are able to keep her feeling well. If we can just get through the rest of this winter maybe we can have one more sweet summer together. All this snow and ice are especially diabolical right now.
I am as close to Eloise as I have ever been to anyone. I love her dearly. She is only ten years old, but in ten years we have made a whole life.
There has been nothing but joy in this sweet uncomplicated relationship. I cannot stop crying....

Resolution Work

2009-02-27T12:12:00.003-08:00

Security. At New Year’s I chose this word to live for the year. It was a word that I was going to think about, read and write about and decide its meaning in my life. By January the stock market had already been acting silly for a while. But nothing like it has been doing lately. Now we are down around 7000. I remember when 10 was a bummer.

I also remember when we chose our investment strategy based on something called a risk assessment. (Is risk the opposite of secure???) We spent many hours considering our own risk tolerance and decided that we were risk friendly. We were still in our high earning years, we had a long 20 plus years to go until retirement, and I bought and sold companies, started new ones, borrowed enormous sums of money, sometimes made it and sometimes lost it, and generally lived in world where managing risk was just part of the daily grind.

But now that all seems like a long time ago. Having a high-risk friendly portfolio meant one might expect swings of up to 30%. Could you stand to lose 30% of your net worth in one day? If so then you were risk friendly too, and probably had lots of small caps and emerging market investments in your portfolio. But today the very notion of risk has changed. Can you stand to see you ret worth plummet to zero would be a better question today. It is a very insecure feeling. I hear of people whose portfolios are only down by fifty percent. They look like geniuses to me. We are down deep into the 70s.

So if risk has a totally different meaning today, what then of security? How do you get it? And if you are or were a risk friendly person is security even the goal? What does it look like?

I have lately been thinking that if we are going broke anyway, maybe we should sell everything, jump on a plane, and move to Italy for a year. Getting on a plane has always been one of our first answers to whatever problem needed solving. Maybe we would decide to stay or maybe we would move back and start over. This is highly impractical for a family with one recent college grad and a college sophomore deep into her program. When I realized that these were my musings in the middle of the night, I wondered if my risk profile had really changed much after all. I am building another business these days. It is coming along nicely and since language and the power of words are crucial to its success it is not likely something I could translate into an Italian business. Or at least I would need to know how to say way more than Prego if I did.

But if security is knowing that you can be happy a lot of different ways, then I am secure. Because I have been happy richer and I have been happy poor. (Richer was better,) And rich of poor you still only get just this one life. So shouldn’t we be doing the soul work that makes us sing? Marrying John and having these kids is the truest work of my soul. And these old Vermont Mountains made me sing. So did the chickens. They do still. I suspect Italy would be like an opera. And I might even need to live one day in the bustle of Manhattan. I think that would be a marvelous place to be old, with your grocer, your theater, and your coffee shop all on one city block.

Maybe security has nothing to do with money. That is a radical concept for someone who has always tried to make bunches of it for the really good schools and fabulous trips, and gorgeous old houses filled with good balsamics and walls of books. But maybe security comes with the choosing. We are people who intentionally choose these lives we lead. We choose our careers, our friends and the places we live with intention as opposed to habit. Maybe the old empty spots leftover from an unhappy childhood where there was never enough…love, happiness, attention, or money…..where wishes and desires were berated and belittled as the selfishness of evil…maybe those old wounds have been filled up with the happy power of choice. Maybe security and choice have always been one and the same.
It’s a new concept. Luckily I have ten more months to get it right…..

It's a Bird. It's a Plane....

2009-02-23T04:29:00.000-08:00

There are five seasons in New England. There are the same four that everyone knows about plus mud. When the snows melt and the rivers start to flow again, things get pretty muddy down here in the valleys. There are several feet of snow on the mountains and before long it will all be rolling downhill our way. We had two blizzards here this week and there are a couple of feet of new powder out there now, so it will be a while before we have to haul out the muck boots. But a couple of weeks ago we had a few fifty degree days in a row and another sign that spring might be coming back to Vermont making the rounds at coffee counters in all the country stores.

Our friend Irma was one of the ones telling the tales. She and her son had been driving along RT 30 enjoying the sun and avoiding the slippery melting ice when they heard it. It was a loud thwump. It scared them both. The ice must have fallen off an overhanging tree. Luckily it hadn't hit the windshield. These falling icicles can be real hazards, off of houses onto pets and people, and from draping trees across windshields and car roofs. They figured they'd better pull over and check for damage. Sometimes, the ice gets stuck up there on the ski rack and what didn't crack any windows the first time gets a second chance when it rolls the rest of the way down.

Irma's son pulled over and got out to check things out. A minute passed in quiet sunshiny stillness. He slowly got back into the car. Irma, asked "Well, did you see what hit the car.?"
"Yep."
"Well is anything broken?"
"Nope."...(Her son is a fifth generation Vermonter. Why say in 42 words what can just as easily be conveyed in one? Irma is from CT. She has raised three boys here with her Vermonter husband and has yet to fully adjust)
"Was it ice? Did it roll off somewhere on the road?"
"Nope"
"Well, come on then. What was it?"
"Fish."
".....Oh nooo...."
"Yep."

And then they headed quietly, in stoic New England fashion, to the car wash.

You see when the river ice begins to crack, the rivers start to flow, and the hawks can finally find breakfast again. The fish are big and fat, and cold and the hawks seem to drop more of them from Feb-April than at any other time. They make a horrible noise apparently when they hit the car. And the fish scales can be found affixed to windows and radio antennas for months. There are a lot of these stories right about now. Maybe the hawks mouths are too cold to hold them just yet? Maybe the fish are too cold to be held. Everyone has a theory.....

So, yes, fish falling out of the sky. Really.

Irma and her son went to the car wash, and unfortunately, there were bits of trout caught in the ski rack that sort of baked on in the car wash. The car smelled liked cooked fish for a few days. Luckily the blizzard froze it again, and so the smell is gone for now. The benefits apparently of unending winter.....
We have fish falling out of the sky up here.
Maybe Job was from Vermont.

Hannah

2009-02-19T10:08:00.000-08:00

I always wanted a girl. I imagined long flowery hippie dresses and funky jewelry with flowery hats. I figured we'd play dolls together for hours at a time. I dreamt of long cozy talks and painting our toenails with minty glassed of iced tea and a pile of magazines between us. I figured we'd trade books and secrets and I vowed we would never have teenage screaming matches like I did with my own mother. I imagined it all good.
What I got was even better.
Some of us are lucky enough to get two chances at the mother daughter bond. You don't have much control over it the first time around and you get a scary awesome amount of control on the second.
Hannah Isabel came into the world on February 19, 1989. And for the last twenty years she has brought us thousands of hours of pleasure, mixed with hardly any worry and lots of pride and amazement.
We were thrilled when we got her and we are thrilled still. Her daddy kissed her 10,000 times before she was one so no man would ever be able to say he kissed her more. This anyway was his plan.
When we moved to Vermont the year she was thirteen one of her friends advised her to pout and complain and not just go along with our harebrained scheme. But our Hannah has always been a pragmatist. "They have decided. I might as well be cheerful about it because we are going. And they promised that if we are miserable and I am right and they were wrong we can move back. Besides I am going to ask for a horse to make it easier"
She got the horse and I got one too and we rode into Vermont and her teenage years together.
We spent hours on the balcony looking at the mountains and talking about boys while we soaked up the sun and painted nails and read about teenage fashion. ( She tends toward quirky Free People mixed with her easy elegance.) The smell of coconut oil instantly takes me back to those sun soaked afternoons which I will always cherish as among the best of my life.
We followed her to soccer, horse shows, softball, and plays. She was born curious and she tried everything there was to try. She is a student of life, practicing until she accomplishes whatever she decides she wants. Always interested in fairness and justice, she discovered constitutional law in high school and wound up studying it for three years even adding an independent study when they ran out of classes for her to take.
She dated one nice boy after another and we dissected them like rats. She was an astute observer of human nature and she knew what she liked and more importantly what she didn't. Tall, well mannered and funny were at the top of the list. She likes warm cars, open doors, and liberal politics married to sweet attention and playful Saturdays at the beach or on a sled.
She was an organizational wonder who forgave me lost keys and missed appointments. She never met a rule she didn't like and she made the trains in our house run on time. She was a born gown-up and God knows there were plenty of times when we needed one around here.
Hannah is trustworthy and smart, reliable and funny, silly and true. She is a great big sister to her younger and older brother both. She is the most fair and rational person I have ever known. I have always admired her and often strive to be more like her in this cool-headed poise especially.
At nearly six feet tall she looks like an elegant racehorse. Her hair is always neat and her beautiful face clean and shiny. Only this girl is built for speed and duration. She is the kind that lasts.
Why fight, we know we have a good thing. Hannah compares our relationship to her friend's relationships with their parents and she says we are closer than almost anyone she knows. Since many of her friends spend their vacations here she figures they want what we have. Some of her girlfriends have become like daughters and sisters to us, and have spent more holidays with us than with their own families.
We do read together and we get manicures and pedicures and cook big elaborate holiday meals. The family recipes are in their fifth generation from John's Great Grandmother down the line to Hannah.
We are plenty lucky and we know it. She is exactly what I was dreaming about all those years ago when I had dolls spread out all over my bed. Only I didn't know back then how big to dream. Hannah has shown me how.
Happy Birthday Hannahbella, no longer a teenager and now more woman than girl.
I love you more and more and more....

Cabin Fever

2009-02-17T12:03:00.000-08:00

We have it. All of us. We had a run of those fifty degree days where a bunch of the three or four feet of snow we had melted, followed by a few more inches and a nice little February ice storm. Then we got some more warm days and the driveway and the steps were like a skating rink. I was afraid every time I stepped onto the marble that I would do one of those cartoonish back flops only they don't feel like cartoons when you are 46 and counting. I have been afraid to go anywhere. Only of course work beckons in spite of chills and hacking cough. So John walks me out like maybe I am 102. He warms up the car and even drove me around like a sweet chauffeur on the really whiny days when I couldn' face the mountain roads.

Everything in our house is sludgy and there is salt stuck between the old hardwood boards. The old wooden pharmacist's counter has been oiled five hundred times this winter, but still it looks dry and forlorn. Our mud room smells like old wet winter. The boots are in piles, and they look worse for the wear. There isn't a scarf out there that doesn't have little pulls and the gloves look like maybe we milked cows in them. They are stiff and yucky and begging for spring. Our lips are chapped, our hair is dry and no amount of olive oil and honey face mask can hide the cracks for long.

Eli and John are on winter break. Benjamin is home with his ankle surgery scheduled for Friday and Hannah will be home for her birthday this weekend. But everyone wants to know the same thing. What is there to do? Sledding has lost its allure. And of course there are grassy patches here and there amidst the snow, but then since we are expecting snow again for the next two days I guess those will be gone by the weekend. And every time it warms up our mudroom fills with the detritus of being on the downhill side of all that melted snow. The French drains are all ice down there and doing nobody any good up here. It is Godawful.
We are pitiful and getting pitifuller.

So what is there to do around here anyway? Well we can make repairs. Eli's ipod isn't charging so phone calls to Apple, the box got here and it is on its way. His 360 also was on the fritz. Benjamin handled that one and the replacement is already here. Our closets have clothes we will never wear and that we meant to give away last spring. And there is a tub fill of pictures just waiting to be organized into big satchel sized envelopes maybe by date, and then put into albums bought two summers ago and put away for winter when there would surely be days with nothing to do. Oh gosh look there's Benjamin playing ice hockey int he fifth grade. We really need to organize these pictures. The basement and the attic look like refuge camps. Why not give all that stuff away and organize the rest? Somehow I think that TV from 1987 could be pitched.

There is plenty to do as it turns out. I re-organised our closet which is also a dressing room. John had three thousand coins strewn hither and yon now all neatly contained in a giant vase with butterflies. And my kids are too old to want their old childhood art adorning our home, but I love all that junk, so I plastered the walls in the dressing room with it. I added a nude John did of me with his Christmas acrylics. I look like a Rubens, round and happy with a wild mountain of cherry coke hair. Not fit for the kitchen perhaps but perfect for the dressing room.

What is there to do? This is the time for all those projects that were put off for a dreary day. Well they are here. A whole bunch or them and more on the way. Projects! We must crawl our from under the covers and move. Weekends are not for hibernating. We are not old fat bears after all. Well we are dfinaitely not bears anayway.This is the time we were talking about when we said later. It is later than we thought and we are bored and out of our minds. Maybe I'll do all the drawers next. Old batteries and hair bands better watch out. Projects. We will surely be saved!

Be Mine

2009-02-14T06:24:00.000-08:00

I have really been married about four times. My first marriage happened mostly in a three floor walk up in Lafayette Park in St Louis. I lived there on Park Ave with my husband and our little boy in a wild and woolly city life. We went to every park with a slide or a pond that the City had on offer. We found ice cream stands in neighborhoods north to south. We ate breakfast at Shoney's where Benjamin brought his little bear and we left more food on the floor than in any body's stomach. We had big parties with Frank on his sax and Lee on the guitar. We met the guys when we were dating during those hot sexy days at the Oyster Bar where we'd gone every Saturday for blues and food from the Bayou. Once we traded them my old flute to play at one of our legendary parties. They were glad for the barter and spent the night and we all became friends who sang Papa's on the Housetop to each other over Saturday's French Toast. We were broke but happy. The three of us that made up our little family could while away a whole Saturday at Union Station on ten bucks. We'd watch the fudge guys sing and dance and put on their fudge show. They gave us enough free samples to make our teethe ache. And we'd play in the train store where one of us dreamed of being a conductor and the other two were along for the ride. It was a short marriage held together with left over flowers from the florist next door and a Panama hat from Marge at the Union Square kiosk.

But it wasn't meant to last. Before long I was ensconced in marriage number two with a sexy guy who got on a bus every morning and left his wife and two kids behind to make bird feeders out of pine cones and peanut butter. We had just one car and even less money than before. We dug around in old purses for change for the dollar movie night and ate casseroles for supper with homemade popsicles for dessert. This old house was in a little town with schools said to be good, and there was a library just a couple of blocks away with free concerts in the summer. Our house was filled with books on homemade shelves and we read and caught fireflies before bed in July. We played at LeCalire Park where we fed the ducks our stale breads and popcorn and ate picnics on the quilt we carried from home. The daddy chased after the big one and coached him and his friends to winning season after winning season in soccer. He carried the little girl always wrapped in every pink ever made in her bike seat all around the county. Our windowsills were lined with pots of seeds and in summer our yard bloomed pink and orange and red and yellow. It was a riot of color haphazardly planted where either the little boy or baby girl picked the place.
We made love in a bed where kids piled on, but we fitted each other in and around. We also had Sophie and Molly and Emma and Henry, cats and dogs who we loved and who always loved us back, smack in the middle of that big bed surrounded with quilts hung like a sultan for a sweet cozy, almost or sometime, privacy.

Stuart came in those years too, and back then was the wild terrier who never saw an open door that didn't entice him to run. That marriage was punctuated by annual vacations where we'd pile into the car with food and clothes and toys and drive 18 hours to their first beach we came to. Our daughter's first word was beach and our little boy looked like a dolphin playing for hours in the surf. We bought groceries and ate yogurt and nuts next to cheese sandwiches, cereal and fruit, grabbing hand fulls of food between trips to the beach. We were sunny and happy and our kids were having childhoods raised on love. Pretty soon we were making better money and the schools stopped looking so good. We commuted with our big kids to St Louis for school and work. We found a hippy little rich kid school and scraped together the money to pay the tuition while we all lived in that cozy two bedroom one bathroom house. It was plenty worth it because our kids had lofts and couches in their classrooms with teachers who aimed for success with love and creativity. If we could have had our childhoods over it would have been there. We were pleased and proud.

Of course everything wasn't always perfect. We could make up problems as well as the next guy, but whatever came along, we solved together. We were always on the same side. We believed in the power of our love and our marriage and saw the rubs that came our way as the blips and the goodness as the real stuff that mattered. 'Over the course of a fifty year marriage this will have been a blip', John said to me one sad day. I have carried that in my hip pocket ever since.

Before long there was a third baby. This little guy barely remembers that time in that loud little house with the sand box and tree house out back. It was our second life on a Park Street, That little baby boy though was already being carted on airplanes and learning about being a baby in offices all over the US. Mommy took him to work, because her old sunny life, with the guy who got on the bus was already fading. Business were bought and grown and sold. The parents were growing up along with the schools and so like the first marriage, this one was not made for life. It lasted ten sweet years before everyone packed up a truck one December and headed out for Marriage Number Three.

This time we all lived in a house on a broad fancy boulevard with a park right smack in the middle. (Apparently our lives were always defined by one park or another.) We had Easter Egg hunts in this one and ate Thai food around the corner and the biggest business we'd owned yet had its warehouse just a few blocks away. We got Eloise and were the only people we knew with a Berner to love. We were back to a city life in an old three story Victorian where jazz bands played at our parties and kids streamed in and out. These years there were more good schools and boards and elaborate vacations that lasted for weeks. We still found beaches, tropical. New England, and even European. Our finances had improved and we were the hip family of five who had Sunday brunch at sidewalk cafes around the city. We spent our evenings at basketball and soccer. And summers were spent by the pool with milkshakes and fries brought to the table by college servers who liked getting tan and diving in on their breaks. We loved these lives. The kids had great schools and the money was good. We had friends who read interesting books and could talk about politics instead of each other. This house was a beauty with walnut and oak. The boxed beams were mahogany and the built in bookshelves were filled with Gilchrist and Geoffery Rush. We read and hopped in our hot tub on cold winter nights and wondered about whatever might just come next. It was only five years though before the trips made us wonder. After every vacation we'd start planning another. The drive from the airport was always sad and depleting. There were Meineke Muffler shops next to the Thai and our kids were becoming mall rats in spite of ourselves. Even the parents were spending on silly Yurman and Ferragamo. This was not the life of the mind and soul we'd intended to teach. Our minds were all right but our souls had gone shopping.

So we began our fourth marriage in the Green Mountains of Vermont. We didn't need a park since we were living in the original. Now instead of Thai or brunch in a cafe, we had croissants with our chickens on our own stone terrace beneath sunny blue skies handmade by God. The house was a restored old farmhouse with four glorious old porches. There was one just for the mom and her teenage girl. They sunned on the balcony with nail polish and magazines and talked about boys and learned about love. There was another made for parties and one night it held a concession stand filled with Dots and Snow Caps while Jurassic Park played on a sheet on the side of the house. Now the kids were almost grown and the talk was of love and careers. Our vacations were quick trips to the city for Christmas movies and ornaments, and longer weeks at the beach now just four hours away. Instead of the mall we walked by waterfalls and raised chickens. There were more good schools and now college was included. There were more Boards and always more books. And the little boy and little girl now all grown up even shared a summer job a a beach. They brought back friends and so did the adults. The youngest boy lived outside like a little Tom Sawyer. He learned the woods instead of the malls. Big friendships were made and the joy just continued. There was a hardship this time. Some worries added up up but the family stuck fast. These people hung together and had Christmas at home. Living in this beautiful place was not always like being on vacation, but even in the hard times it was close enough. The beauty was free and our pleasures piled up.

Six years and counting on this fourth marriage so far. We have sweet middle aged heat and I am still in love with this man I have married four times. Our love has created all this other love which ripples out from the marriage. And isn't that after all the point? Isn't love the reason for this whole other shebang? His are the feet I turn to at night and he is the one I always call when I know something funny. I don't know what will come next, but one thing I know for sure. John is the Valentine I will always think of when hearts show up in the grocery stores and February 14th will always make me glad he is mine....

Two More Reasons To Be Married

2009-02-11T07:39:00.000-08:00

Forty-eight degrees. It was a heat wave here in Vermont this weekend. We better not get used to it. March is the second best ski month in Vermont after January. We get the bulk of our snow up here in those two months. And my bloggy friends were talking about flip flops in their part of the world this weekend. We surely weren't doing that. It's hard to justify flip flops no matter how silly you might feel, when there's still three feet of snow outside your window. Melting snow, but snow all the same.

So here was the view on Saturday. The snow was melting on the long lane and driveway around our small holding, Underneath the plowed lane, just under those plowed and packed down three or four inches of snow, was a thick layer of ice. It was perfect sledding. Eli and his friends were out at midnight laughing and whooping it up on the icy path that they thought we'd somehow made just for them. It was warm and slippery and it was all plenty of big fun. Then we had to drive the car.

Now the car was bumped up against the snow drift on the passenger side. I must have pulled it in last, right up to the house, leaving myself a wide path on the driver's side to get to the walk. Thus someone entering the passenger door would have to step into about four feet of snow. John and I were going out and he suggested I drive since the driver's door was so prettily placed.... I backed up and he waded through a little less snow and got in.

Now there is a hill behind our house and the drive winds up that gentle hill and back around down our long wooded lane. Perhaps I didn't have enough speed going up the icy hill. Perhaps speed wasn't exactly the answer anyway. Maybe the hill really should have been sanded, only then we would have ruined the sledding. I climbed the hill, sort of, for a minute anyway, and then the car just slowly began sliding backward down the hill. Braking had no effect. We were in an uncontrollable backward free fall. I was breathing hard and saying "I have no breaks I have no breaks". My stomach dropped.

Then my husband, that calm guy I married, offered this... in the same tone of voice he uses to ask me if I'd like a little more coffee....."Honey we aren't hanging over Niagara Falls. This is our yard. We'll hit one of the snow drifts." Which of course was exactly what happened.

Oh. Not a cliff. Our yard. Oh. Yeah.

We traded places. He spun the thing around and we drove calmly out the same way we came. Will we sand it? Eli and his friends vote no. John adds that spring is surely coming and there is only a month or so of really good sledding left. And so maybe we won't. I'll back out into the turn around and skip the hill and the boys will sled like maniacs into the next snowstorm.

Not Niagra Falls honey. Spring is coming...
Two more reasons....

Leftover Pizza

2009-02-06T12:36:00.001-08:00

It is hard to know just where this story begins. Our kids were all home throughout the holidays. Mostly they ate or talked about eating, or cooked, or were underfoot making just a little appetizer while we cooked. College has apparently made them very very hungry. Plus it's been pretty cold so what else is there to do?

Now our Hannah is not a great cook. She is more of a great burner upper. One day Miss Hannah decided to warm up leftover pizza. She pre-heated the oven and placed the pizza on the shelf...... in the cardboard box. Then she promptly forgot all about it.

John thought he smelled smoke. At first he figured Hannah had probably burned something again. By now the kids were outside sledding. But after a while the smell grew stronger. He decided that he'd better investigate. Soon. Right after he finished the chapter he was reading. The smell didn't go away and sure enough when he eventually ambled downstairs it was billowing out of the kitchen. Apparently the kids had left the oven door slightly open. He opened the oven the rest of the way which was an error, Flames and smoke leaped out licking up the wall on the side of the big Viking range. John remembers thinking that this thing sure made a powerful fire. He'd never understood why we needed a commercial oven anyway. It cost too much and now it was probably going to burn the whole house down. "Figures", he thought. John grabbed the box of fire in an oven mitt and decided to throw it out the window.

This was an odd choice, but there was a lot of smoke and so perhaps his oxygen levels were poor and he wasn't able to think clearly. Anyway he aimed for the kitchen window. Now let me tell you about our kitchen window. It is one of those wonderful old June Cleaver affairs with two mullioned doors that open out. These were the only windows in the house we hadn't replaced because I liked the idea of calling the family in for supper after a long summery day of gardening and playing badminton or something. But it is winter and we don't often open the window when it is fifteen below. In fact it is not only closed in the winter, but latched. So, instead of pitching the flaming box out the window, he put his hand threw the glass when he attempted to push it open.

Here I have to tell about John's hand. John only has one hand. His right arm sort of ends at his wrist. There is a small flat part where you can kind of see how a hand would have developed only it hadn't. So I am married to a gorgeous man with one hand. This will become important later, so please remember it.

Now this pushing his hand through the window did in fact allow some of the smoke to escape through the broken glass so that was a slight improvement. But there were still flames coming out of the oven, (We clearly don't clean it often enough based on all the things that managed to burn in there), John's hand, the smallish one without fingers was dripping blood, and the room was full of smoke. John did manage to get the window the rest of the way open and drop the burning box into the snow. So it was also cold, and steam and smoke were the view outside the window.

To this scene I came home after a board meeting walking through the door with my friend John Sobel and our wet cold sledding kids followed. The smoke was thick. Hannah screamed, "Daddy what did you do????"

Oh, and John was barely visible on the floor behind the long wooden antique pharmacist's counter. This was where he'd fallen when he slipped on the wet floor where he had apparently sprayed water with the sink sprayer hoping to douse the thing at some point in the whole adventure. He doesn't clearly remember that part. So he was sitting on a wet floor in a smoky room bleeding. It was quite a scene. We got the dogs upstairs and opened all the doors and windows and turned on the attic fan. Did I mention the part about how it was 15 below outside? That's below zero. Fahrenheit.

We cleaned it all up and headed to the clinic for stitches since his hand was dripping blood like a faucet. I wrapped it with gauze first and...(here is where you need to remember the part about how he has just the one hand, and that it is a smallish sort of end of the wrist affair)

When we got there the nurse almost fainted holding onto the door when we began unrolling the bandage and she began to wobble and say, "oh...oh...oh!" a lot. John looked satisfied that finally someone was appreciating his pain and taking his predicament seriously. He started telling her the whole story in great detail. Then just as she grabbed onto the table for support weaving and wobbling and I was wondering where they'd taught her this unbecoming behavior, I realized what was happening and finally remembered to say "oh he didn't have a hand there in the first place'
She had to sit down. But I think she was actually pretty relieved. They sent us a new nurse though.

The next weekend, we went to our dear friends Jack and Karen's house for dinner. They'd invited a new couple to our regular sixsome. So I was telling everyone this whole episode as funny dinner theater. But the new people were looking on in horror at John's bandaged hand that was causing such hilarity.

(Now here the whole hand thing is coming back around again. Remember that it is smallish and bandaged it must have looked like somebody had just cut off his hand. Got the picture?)

These poor people sort of smiled at the story at first, but they kept looking furtively at John's hand and looking at me wildly gesturing and explaining about the fire, and laughing really hard about him sitting in the puddle amid all the smoke and blood. Pretty soon they stopped even trying to smile. They began to look at me as if maybe I were Mengele's cousin.

Finally I realized why they weren't laughing and so did John and Jack and Karen and our other friends Roger and Ellen. But of course by then we were laughing even harder, as they looked ever more horrified, we were caught up in the snorting choking kind of hysterical laugh, and none of us could manage to get out the fact that he hadn't actually cut off his hand, that it was just a few stitches under there. We all must have looked properly crazed laughing and then trying to explain how he didn't really have a hand anyway, and then laughing like real lunatics over that. We finally did manage to explain, but by then they were pale, and their polite laughter was forced and weird. We found that funny too, and these little inappropriate snickers kept sneaking out. They wound up leaving sort of early. I am guessing we may never see them again.......

The Story of Love

2009-02-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

I love Valentine's Day. I always have. It never mattered to me whether I had a beau or not. I especially liked making valentines for all my classmates when I was in elementary school. Even though I was probably the worst crafter in our grade, (well next to Ricky Pulley and Mike Brown. I was always surprised when those tough guys showed up with their little mailboxes decorated with red and pink paper hearts just like the rest of us. I couldn't imagine them living somewhere with a mom who would buy them doilies to decorate their boxes with. I could only ever imagine them taunting smaller boys on the playground and twitching up bigger girls skirts as they got off the bus) I loved making the little mailbox that would hold all those valentines at the party. My mother was a poor crafter too. And after my dad died she worked full time, so making the valentine box always seemed to sneak up on her, because she was frazzled during the week and since she was a lousy crafter she put it off on the weekend. Every year she would say in a really bright voice, like she has maybe had a real inspiration, "Hey honey let's cover a shoe box with foil and you can cut out hearts and glue them on that"

I always acted Ike I too thought this was a novel and exciting approach. And sometimes, (because crummy crafter kids don't need construction paper), when there was nothing but typing paper in the house, she would go up and get me scraps from her fabric box and I would cut hearts our of flowery red fabric or pink flannel from my Christmas nightgown. My mailbox was always a mixture of the glitz of aluminum foil and the more tender homespun from the sewing room.

I didn't care. I couldn't glue or cut worth a shit either and so my hearts were often shaped like eggs with tails and the glue oozed out along the sides, because I believed strongly that if a little were good then a lot would surely be better. This rule was tested year after year when my box had gloppy dried pearls of glue along side Lisa Thompson's box, which like her ponytail was neat and perfect in every way. She had shiny white butcher paper on her box, and lovely doily hearts backed by bigger red and pink ones. Her ponytail next to my mop of wild curly hair was the perfect metaphor for all of our hands-on projects.

No matter I loved the whole shebang, gloppy dried glue and all. And when I had kids of my own we made valentines endlessly for the whole month of February. We ate heart shaped waffles and put red hots on the mashed potatoes. I spent the whole month humming the words to "that's the story of, that's the glory of love" My kids still know the whole thing by heart twenty odd years later. They groan when I start off, but by the finale I am proud to say they are always right there with me.

And over the years, when I bring out the birch vase and fill it with dry branches which we wrap with little pink and red felt kisses for the desk in the library and hang the felt garlands of hearts that are recycled from old sweaters, the conversations often turn to love. "What is the story of love anyway", Hannah asked one year. Other years it was Benjamin or Eli who had questions about love, theirs or someone elses's. And I have always had answers. The words may change from year to year, but the answer is always the same.

There is the perfect duet that happens in our kitchen when John and I hustle around to get a dinner on the table. He may be cooking the pasta while I am making the peanut sauce. He might be cutting up the chicken while I search for the garlic sauce when our hips bump and we both grin and before you know it we have plates of hot steaming Thai food on the table and someone else turns off the TV while we ask about Eli's math test, or hear about the teacher who farted right out loud in class. When I come to bed after John and it is fifteen below outside there will be a warm heating pad on my side of the bed right where my feet go. My car is always miraculously cleaned and warmed before I have to leave for work, and John's grandmother's nut roll appears on every holiday morning just like when he was little, because Grandma taught me before she died, so my John will always have it on every holiday as long as I am around. When the kids came home once and found us painting the kitchen because there had been a little kitchen fire, it didn't matter who did it or what happened. We got out the paint and the brushes, made a whole bunch of nachos and dug into the food and the job. John is the first person I call when I hear something funny and at night we always fall asleep touching. And lately when Eli got into a little spot of trouble for looking on a website for math help, which his parents thought might be cheating, his sister called with the website information and all the notes from the curriculum guide about how important it was for students to use the site for homework help. And last weekend Benjamin and John dug Hannah's new beau's car out of a ditch. Never mind that he is 6'7" or that it was 7 o clock in the morning on a Saturday and everybody was half asleep,. Hannah came back in for a shovel and went back out with two men besides.

A good marriage carries love forward into the world. It expands and touches the people who come near.
And so that's the story of.....that's the glory of...love.

Sunday

2009-01-31T17:17:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow is Sunday. I love Sundays. Albert Schweitzer said, "Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan"

It used to be our whole society understood what that meant. Folks went to church, cooked and ate a big meal and just generally spent the day enjoying their pleasures. The stores were closed so nobody shopped. Instead we puttered. We read or worked in the garden. People went on walks even Sunday drives. Remember those? You would pile into the car with your parents and a quilt next to a thermos of coffee in the front seat, and maybe make a stop for milkshakes at a drive in stand, or pull over and spread the quilt somewhere pretty and eat the homemade snacks that your mom had packed. I remember my dad tidying up his tools on Sunday afternoons or maybe putting up a shelf. He fished a lot on those Sundays too. My mom, always an avid reader, set aside Sundays for the big weekend paper and her pile of magazines. Sometimes she might throw a fluffy novel into the mix. The rest of the week she read more literary things, but Sunday was for Reader's Digest, Redbook, and Good Housekeeping. Sometimes she gave herself a homemade facial on Sunday afternoons, mixing avocado, olive oil, honey and oatmeal into a big bowl and slathering it all over her face. Then she would place a fluffy towel right on top still warm from an oven set on low. Sometimes she'd add cucumbers to her eyelids and lean back into the deepest chair in our living room. The place would smell like the produce department at the grocery store while she "seeped"

Sunday was the day you rested. You put your feet up and took a deep breath. Sunday was a metaphor for the whole weekend. Saturday might get a little crowded with the hairdresser, washing the car, grocery shopping, and maybe cleaning up for a Saturday night card party. It was work but with some sense of fun and frivolity. Cartoons in the morning, and cheeseburgers for supper. But Sunday was the real day of rest. If it hadn't gotten done by Sunday it could surely wait until Monday.

Please tell me what exactly happened to Sundays? Where did they go? Now everything is open always. We shop for shower curtains because the ones we have are dingy. We notice this and then somehow on Sunday it becomes unbearable. Or we run twenty errands, stopping by the dry cleaners, the pharmacy, the bookstore, and taking every kid in the neighborhood to play every sport that there is to play. People work on Sundays. Lots of them, not just the folks in the stores. Less people go to church, (which even for someone whose faith was always a little on the shaky side , was still a good place to sing and think about life and the big questions you never have time for on Tuesday. Plus the music was good, and there was always plenty to see...What color would Wanda's nails be, and would she dare to wear that tarty dress again? Would Charlie Herman pinch Edna Jones the organ player? And would the Davidson kids do something truly awful, like the time one of them got stuck in the bell tower wedged in between the bell and the stairs as he tried to steal it and the fire department had to come. The clanging was stuck for an hour so church had to be postponed, only of course nobody left because we all wanted to see how it would turn out.......like that)

And with church out of the picture so is the reflection and even the big Sunday dinner, eaten at noon or 1 o'clock followed by the occasional Sunday nap...now long gone too. Sunday is almost indistinguishable from Tuesday except you might go into the office later, or do your work from home, or shop because there is a sense that if you stop spending for even a minute something really bad will happen. I suspect the whole global financial crisis is a result of these lost Sundays.

We moved to Vermont in a very real way to get Sundays back into our lives. We didn't want our kids growing up in the malls. We wanted to find the natural world and because we were so alienated from it we figured we better move a thousand miles and see if anybody else had it. We wanted our kids to grow up to be thinkers and we felt like the noise in the city was making us all fuzzier and duller. We wanted to live the values we professed to believe. Then we got here and I wrote about every kind of weather and mountain. One's inner thoughts can be depressingly dull it seems. We read every book we owned, and there are thousands of volumes, and then bought a whole bunch more. We talked politics but mostly just to each other, because there aren't too many people and finding the two or three you will love out of a tiny pool is harder than it might seem. So then we made a New Year's resolution to go to the city more and see art openings and interesting film. That has brought back a little more culture, and lots more to talk and think about. But still, we carefully never go on Sunday. Because at forty-six I have finally grasped the meaning of these Sundays. The peace from one really good Sunday can carry you more than just a week. A Sunday spent in the woods with the dogs, talking to the mountains which some might call praying and sometimes I do too, with the smell of woodsmoke guiding us home, can pretty well fix that really bad meeting on Wednesday, a call from the school, the kid who wrecked and needs a $2000 repair for the third time, and even allow for a sense of calm when the market dips below 8000. The magic of a few good Sundays in a row is that you come to realize that happiness and sadness don't have to be tied to circumstance. You can be happy when things are hard and sad when the reasons are elusive. I learned about that once from a string of pretty perfect Sundays. It was a revelation and it has fed me in ways I still can't fully describe.

At forty-six I may only have another couple thousand or so of Sundays left, I don't intend to let one go ever again. My nails might be ragged, and my floors might be dirty. But if they didn't get tended by Saturday they can surely wait one more day. Because tomorrow is Sunday. I have to read the paper and go for a walk with some kids and a few dogs. My husband and I might need a nap and maybe we will make cherry cobbler for supper. There probably ought to be some real food to go along with it but an omelet might be enough, or maybe pancakes and breakfast for supper. Because tomorrow is Sunday and by golly Albert sure knew what he was talking about.....

Pass the Popcorn Please

2009-01-27T10:59:00.000-08:00

We spent the whole day, really most of the weekend reading dumb books and watching silly movies. Hannah is deep into the vampire series that all the young girls are reading. I was reading a bunch of old bad Nelson DeMille thrillers. John too. And Eli was hip deep in a juicy time travel story. Benjamin was playing video games, one after another, like he was twelve years old again. These are not the things you tell other people you are reading and doing, but sometimes you just need a bunch of junk food and brain candy, and we were cold and had been cold for days and we needed some comfort. Minus 15 gets to you after a while. It just does.
I finally said to hell with the oil bills and we turned the thermostat way up and started burning about $50 or $60 bucks a day. But by golly we finally got warm. We had roaring fires in both fireplaces, so we could meander back and forth from the library to the playroom and read trash or watch it. We wore fat wooly socks that were purple and green and our favorite, oldest, softest jammies and robes, for two days straight. The hardest part of the day was getting the salsa and the cheese inside those little scoop chips and remembering to get them out of the oven before the cheese burned…(I messed up two batches one way and another. The chickens were glad though) We rented a bunch of old Harrison Ford movies and let our hearts race, as he was chased or chased one or another terrorist.
I have been running around like a maniac with six client’s annual funds, two fat capital campaigns and 27 parties between now and February. And of course I loathe parties, but my clients don’t know. I look like a cheerful big-personality extrovert who has been waiting all her life to meet you and your friends. And really I have met some very nice people. Lots of them. Nice smart engaging Vermonters, but I was tired and all out of extrovert. Bad books and junk food tired. Rotel dip tired. We took it right into supper and had a yummy trashy Velveeta mess from my childhood that my boutique cheese making friends would probably break up with me over.
And now, when you are cold and tired and need a little old fashioned trashy Velveeta comfort you can have some too. Shhh I won’t tell if you won’t.

Beer Cheese Soup…with Popcorn Even
4 chicken bouillon cubes
3 cups water
1 can beer
1 sweet Vidalia (or any sweet onion), diced
2 1/2 cups potatoes, raw and cubed
1 lb Velveeta cheese, cubed
2 cans cream of chicken soup
In a large saucepan, combine bouillon, water, beer,
onion (I like to blacken mine a bit first), and potatoes.
Simmer 20 minutes, and then add cheese and soup.
Simmer 30 minutes. Serve with popcorn on top.
Enjoy!

History

2009-01-21T06:27:00.000-08:00

What a day...

Trillions of dollars lost, two hot wars, unemployment rising too fast to count, and still yesterday we were all united and hopeful. There was a feeling of expectation in the air as this gentle brilliant man came to Washington to steer this unwieldy mess into a safe harbor. Mr Obama walked through one door and Mr Bush walked out another and just like that an era was over and a new one had begun. The simplicity of the thing was dazzling.

He's only one man. We tell ourselves that we mustn't expect miracles. And even as he placed his hand on Lincoln's Bible the market tanked and fell under 8000 points for the first time in years. The banks are worse than wobbly. It doesn't seem like another twenty billion will do much more than stave off disaster for a couple more months. Still we keep borrowing it and pouring it in. The banks are nationalized now. If they fail we will all hold the bill. The markets seem to be begging the government to let capitalism defend itself. Let a couple of them go and let the evolutionary nature of capitalism take over it seems to shout.

And Obama's big speech was a classic liberal package. Of course the guys in Greenwich CT are unhappy and of course the market tanked. But this president believes that capitalism is here to serve the country, not the other way round.

Still even in the direst Republican homes there is praise for this young African American family and the sweet man with the funny name. Everyone wants this thing to succeed. We have indeed chosen hope over cynicism. Because by golly this is America. We thrive on adversity. Always have and that's just the plain truth of it. We never succeed when we try to get leaner and meaner. This is the entrepreneurial capital of the world. We like bigger and faster, stronger and braver. We will not all drive little cars and apologize for our excess. We will find two kids in a garage somewhere who invent a new liquid fuel first and they will get rich and wear funny t shirts on TV in their congressional hearings where they explain it all to the grown ups.

This is America. And in America we get up in the morning, we go to work and we solve our problems. President Obama it's a mess, but we are all behind you. We will keep getting up in the mornings and we will fix this thing together. Good luck to you sir. Godspeed....

I Swear

2009-01-19T13:24:00.000-08:00

We have a secret up here and I am going to tell it to you now. Winter has a smell. So does snow. Yes it really does. They are perfectly distinct one from another. Winter smells like woodsmoke, thick winey stew, bread baking, pine, and the old burner when it is newly full of oil.... which everyone believes.
Snow smells like freshly pressed linen which only people from way up north can believe and actually understand. Or maybe raw silk. Have you ever been in one of those little boutique stores that specialize in linens and natural raw fabrics? They are constantly steaming the clothes in there. Think of that crisp smell in that close place and take away all warmth and you have the smell of snow. Now pair that with a little woodsmoke hanging over the valley from all the chimneys and you will have the smell that lingers just outside our back door. At night when the moon is full and the snow is crisp and sparkling, the smell is perfectly clear without any interference from warming cars, or wet barking dogs, or kids eating snacks, It hits you in the face the way the clothes smell when they are just fresh from the dryer. It is too cold for the loamy smells of the woods that will permeate everything by May. It is too cold even for the smell of the piney woods to hide the top layer of snowy air. You get hints of pine when it is ten below, but the overwhelming flavor is of snow. Eli's cheeks after only an hour or so on the sled smell like snow. All our hats and mittens and even my coat and hair smell like the snow. Really. I swear.

Today I drove into a snow drift. I hit a small patch of ice and braked uselessly while my car careened slowly down the slippery slope on the side of the road. I tried backing out and only succeeded in digging myself even deeper into the bank. Luckily I was close to home. I pushed hard and opened my door and stepped into the four feet or so of snow. I walked, getting my skirt and long johns soaked. It was slow going since it was deeper than my legs are long. I trudged home and when I came in the smell of snow was so powerful that it brought John calling, "hey somebody left a door open the snow is coming in".
No only me, the Abominable wife, coated from the waist down and filling the house with the heady smell of fresh snow. I headed for the tub while the boys headed out on the rescue mission for the car. I sat in a deep tub full of hot water and grinned thinking about how it was the smell of snow that brought them out. Snow has a smell. Who knew?

Energy

2009-01-15T05:28:00.001-08:00

It's minus 7 this morning in my part of Vermont. I know because I checked first thing this morning when I got up. I am not even there, but some of my people are and I wondered what they were waking up to this morning so I checked.

I am in NYC which thinks it is having a bitter cold spell. Thar's what they're calling it on the radio. I think it's in the twenties. I will allow that all this city wind in your face makes it feel pretty blustery, but it is hardly bitter.

Here folks are back at work after the holidays. The restaurants are only about half full and the hotels are affordable again and pretty empty. The traffic is the same though. A loud wash of music comes up behind you on Broadway from 18th and then stalls next to you or just in front before weaving in and out and pushing it's taillights into the long crowded stream of them that run all the way to the Hudson River, or New Jersey depending on which way you are going. In a minute or two you will hear it's blaring sounds up on the next block. Sometimes a firetruck whoops it's way past and people sort of scooch over a little bit as it makes it's own narrow lane down the middle. I always think God help anyone whose house is really on fire. It will burn long before the light changes.

The sidewalks were crowded when we went looking for good cheap Indian last night. We found a spicy little restaurant just blocks from the hotel filled with regular Indian people which is always a good sign. The food was fantastic. Lots of heat and cardamom. The scallops sitting on top of some hot colorful stuff were amazing and so was the chicken curry with the cauliflower turned orange by the hot sweet stuff it was cooked in. I miss the real ethnic food in the city possibly most of all. And so every time we get a chance we grab bunches of it. Hannah and I rounded out the evening at the Angellika. It is an old classic theater in Soho with high lavishly painted ceilings dripping with old chandeliers and real desserts at the counter. We kept the Indian theme and saw Slumdog Millionaire which is just as good as everyone says.

This morning there are horns and wind, and we will run around and have lunch with friends. I used to thrive on this. I needed the hurry and the stuff. I was charged by the high octane energy here, the people making deals and running the world, all of them always rushing as if the whole thing would stop spinning if they weren't really careful. But now all I can think about is the very different kind of energy back home. It is slower. It paces itself. But it is steady and constant. It's strength is fed by wind and snow, cheerful fires and the simple beauty of a mountain morning. I can't wait to get home. I want to warm up to its glow. Because that's what it is now. Vermont is no longer the experiment where we moved to see if we could find the natural world and live closer to it.

Vermont is home. Minus 7, sure. I'll be there by dark.....

Lessons

2009-01-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

The first year we moved up here these deep snows scared me. I wondered how would we ever manage to shovel it all, (We wouldn't) How would we get out? (We didn't need to) How would the dogs manage? (Just fine) What if we ran out of heating oil? (We'd call the oil guys) And how would we manage? ( LIke everyone else)

These were the questions and the fears that swirled around inside my brain. I remember opening the door to let the dogs out after the first really deep snow and realizing that little Stuart couldn't go out until somebody made him a path. The marble steps were all snowed under and the drifts were leaning about three feet up the sides of the doors. I shut the door and walked back into the kitchen and stared out the window and cried. I wasn't ready. What had we done? What had I been thinking?

Now finally six winters later I have begun to adjust. I understand that the old city brain that felt the need to shovel and salt, sweep and rearrange has faded away. I have no need to order this snow anymore. It isn't mine to control. There are plow guys who make a swath for the car, and we shovel off the steps, kind of and mostly, just like everybody else. There are no neat glistening sidewalks surrounded by new snow. Everything here lives contentedly under a blanket of white for a few months every year. Stuart that little Carin Terrier is 12 now. John makes a path for him until the plow guys come. Pippi the other little dog tramps happily behind Eloise the Bernese Mountain Dog who makes everybody a path. We keep stores of milk and butter, flour and sugar. We have eggs out in the hen house and we can always make do if the big snow comes just as grocery day was approaching. The grocers never get those storm runs up here where everybody empties the shelves. We all make do. Sometimes the plow guys are late like today, when there were some 14 or 15 inches of new snow dropped, they have a lot of work today and since it's Sunday nobody is going anywhere anyway. There was already a couple of feet out there and now it is closer to three. When these really big ones hit on weekdays nobody goes anywhere either. Businesses close. So do schools and even the Post Office. Once the banks closed. But if you need them, really really badly, you just call Patty at home. Everyone has her number. She'll come in and get you what you need.

What I have learned in six winters is this.....

The world does not need me to run it.
It runs along quite well without my shoveling, or cleaning up whatever it creates. Better in fact.

And slower is better.
Running around to try and get everything done by some magical imposed deadline accomplishes nothing more than doing it at a saner pace would have. In fact it accomplishes less. I look and feel frazzled, not competent and busy like I always imagined I did. The lady with the long johns, flannel and fleece, over a billowing purple skirt, who fixes her coffee before she tackles the windshield to get to her client meeting, is calmer and gentler and inspires more confidence than the one who used to arrive on time, huffing and puffing and breezing into the room is inappropriate shoes with cold feet. Nobody was ever there to greet her anyway, because her clients are all New Englanders now. There were home fixing their coffee, and getting on their heavy boots. They'll be along in a few minutes, having had a full breakfast, with clean windows and warm feet. By late morning or early afternoon at the latest most of them will be on the slopes getting in a few runs while the new powder holds.

The city lady used to look at them and sees unprofessional people living in vacation land with no sense of urgency.
They looked back at the city lady and wondered why she was so nervous and how long it would be til she went back.

Now she sees people who understand time. There is always more of it and when there isn't they will know they used up their last measure of it on a woodsy walk with their dog or next to a cute little kid in a pink snowsuit up on the mountain. They have warm feet and they know there is always time for a cup of coffee before taking to a snowy road.
Now they see a woman who still wears those silly gypsy skirts, but she has on good Canadian boots and she isn't in such a hurry anymore. She brings her dog with her in the front seat and they feed her pieces of their biscuit under the table at meetings. Maybe she'll stay after all they think.

And even the deer will come up close to the house for their kibble now. They can't find it in the meadow and even the dogs have finally stopped barking at them. I think we have adjusted.....

January

2009-01-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen a snow tornado? We had a humongous ice storm up here Tuesday night and then the second wave hit yesterday. The winds were whipping the snow around and you could look out the windows and see three or four of these cool snow funnels blowing all at the same time. They whirl and spin and dance like crazy snow characters. Some of them are six or seven feet high and then there are dozens of little bitty ones that never get more than a few inches off the ground.

Today the guys are out sanding the roads. There is about an inch of ice under all the snow now and the salt mostly just exposes the ice. But the winds have quieted and now we have lovely fat flakes dropping straight down and our chicken house looks like a set piece in a perfect little snow globe.

Wintertime is beautiful here. There have been whole seasons of it when I worried and yearned for spring. But this time I was ready. I am happy to have a snowy January and December was like a made for TV holiday special. Now the last of the pine needles have been swept, and the ribbons and greenery have all been taken down. We packed away the ornaments in one fast afternoon and the house seemed quiet and a little sad. The end of the holidays always makes me a little mournful. It is a time of reflection and remembering before taking on the new resolutions and the secrets that the next year surely has in store.

I remember the year the tree fell down and Benjamin's red glass sneaker ornament lost its bottom. I remember too the year we moved to Vermont and wondered if by Christmas we would feel at home. And what would it be like without friends and family when we sang carols and put up the tree? That was the year we found the Three Clock Inn where we still have dinner every Christmas Eve, and the sleigh ride, and our whole lives as we know them now were unfolding revealing themselves a little more each day. If I go way back I can remember the Christmas Eve with a baby boy when I cried and wondered how I would ever correct the mistake I'd made in marrying his dad. And there are all the ones in between with the wonderful Christmas Adventures, brunches at the Adam's Mark, new ornaments from Botanicals, pictures on Santa's knee, the sound of the bells, cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer, and then later when we were all older and hipper looking at the Macy's windows in NYC after a big dinner in Soho.

Looking back and remembering the worries and the questions that have all been answered one way or another makes it possible to go forward with hope and expectation, no matter that we seem to have misplaced trillions of dollars. As I watched the snow tornadoes yesterday I thought about the whirl of our lives. We blow around and make big spectacles too, but then just like the snow we settle back down and have a few pretty fat lazy snowfalls. It is said that you have to love winter to live up here. This year I am loving it. I wouldn't trade this fire and this view with these people for anything else. But pretty soon I know there will be another whirl and one or another of us will start spinning. Then we will pull on our good boots and follow the spinner and see where we wind up. It's January. Everything is possible......

I Believe in the Power of Words

2009-01-04T13:28:00.001-08:00

Peace was just too big a word. It asks lots of questions all at once, personal, political, metaphorical, and physical. And I get a fair bit of it with my dogs and books in front of the fire with a slow snow falling outside. It is just not my word.
I thought about forgiveness for a while. I have a couple of people I probably need to forgive. But I don't really want to forgive the one, and the other is dead so there is no real sense of urgency there either.
I liked the idea of choosing a word or phrase to accompany my new year's resolutions. This would be an idea that I needed more of in my life. I would read and write and think about it and hopefully over the course of a year grow in my understanding of its meaning and figure out how to find or make more of it.
But choosing the word turned out to be hard. What one word or simple phrase did I want to live with all year long? It was a bigger commitment than the regular resolutions. They are at least diluted by the others on the list. Sure, I'd like to lose weight. But I also want to help Benjamin find an interesting and meaningful first real job. I want to help Hannah make a conscious choice about her major so that she picks something with intention and meaning, as opposed to what she needs the least number of credits for, as at least one of her parents did. And if those two happen and my ample backside doesn't change much, well the kids lives are surely more important.
But this whole word thing stands alone. And even if I do it again, even if I do it every year for the rest of my life, I am already forty six, I might only get forty more words total. Fifty at the way outside. That is a small amount of words for a woman who uses so many almost carelessly in any given day.
This idea will reflect and challenge simultaneously. It aims to reveal a weakness and force a consciousness that I don't always feel or even aspire to feel.
So I caught myself considering words that I already possess. After all how much easier to choose humor or gratitude where I feel strong and safe. I could read articles and essays that would reinforce my life. How lovely to be so validated. Also, of course, pretty far removed from the whole point of the exercise.
I also discarded for one or another reasons change, attention, slow...(this one I actually wrote in my book next to the list of resolutions and now I have to amend it), settle down, (..this is something I have been doing now for the whole of my 21 years with John. I would be lying if I said that I am no longer excitable..I come form a long line of over reactors...but I no longer need to buy a new refrigerator rather than clean the old one, and neither do I scream when I am pouring the hot fudge and cause everyone to grab pot holders and open the freezer, and get out of the way and, and, and....so I am way better), choose, simple, marriage...(although I was way tempted to pick this one so I could charge off sex with my husband in the bathroom at a restaurant or behind the movie theater to paying attention to my marriage and following my new year's plans...okay so I told you I am still not quite settled down), and faith. Faith might be next year's word. This one begs for some attention. But not right now, not this year.
But I did actually manage to choose a word. The word is security.
I often have feelings of insecurity. Our finances like everyone's have been in the market freefall. This makes some people worry and behave with more practicality and greater restraint. It makes others run faster to make up for it. I figure you can always make more money. I have made and lost a fair bit of it. Now I want to make another big pile and live in Italy with all of our kids for a year. But does this lead to greater security or less? And does the running around starting new businesses make me feel more or less secure? Why do I always have something on the front burner and a couple more pots on the back burners just in case? I am surely not risk averse, but maybe worse and certainly more confusing, I seem almost to court risk. Is that by definition an inherently insecure act?
Security with my mate has led to years of good decisions piled atop more good decisions. Out of that history stands a strong and satisfying union with it own quirks and language and humor. My security in my ability to mother these kids has built a happy house and a family that we all want to come home to. It is my proudest accomplishment and so I know the benefits of decisions that lead to security.
Now how can I find enough of it to build a secure financial foundation that allows us to make the wild outlandish choices and still have a soft place to land? I don't know. Or I don't know anyway how to do that without becoming bored and risking it all in another silly Monopoly move sure to make me lose all my hotels. Boredom has often been my nemesis. And so that is why my word is security.
I have always claimed not to need it. I think that is probably an old lie leftover from a childhood that didn't have any. So now I am going looking for it. I'll let you know what I find...

Resolutions

2009-01-02T21:54:00.000-08:00

This is not mine, but I love it. It comes under the heading of you can't get what you want if you don't know what you want....

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the Mexican.

"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. . I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."

"And after that?" asked the Mexican.

"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."

"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

"And after that?"

"Well my Friend, That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that?" said the Mexican.

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

And the moral is:

Know where you're going in life….you may already be there.

2009

2008-12-30T11:24:00.001-08:00

I started making new year's resolution lists the year before we moved to Vermont. I wanted to live with intention here in this new country life we had chosen. And I knew from my business life, that a to do list was the most surefire way for me to accomplish what I needed. So I made that first list and then I reviewed it at the end of that year and made a new one right next to it in the little daytimer that I carried with me everywhere. Since 2002 I have these resolution lists of things I want to manifest in my life and at the end of year there are reviews that show me how it is going.

Sometimes things get skipped and put on the list for next year. Eventually some of those fall off. I had 'reduce vulgarity' on there for at least three years before I realized I must like vulgarity. Oh I wish it didn't trip off my tongue accidentally, and so reducing it would effectively eliminate the errors. And in fact as I write this I realize I might even put it on again.

Our first year here my resolutions were vast. We had to settle this whole family into this new life and I had lots of plans to get us there. At the end of the first year I realized that we had done most of it. Everybody was settled into a school, had made friends, and we were living in a place with few people and no malls and we had found new ways to spend our time. We all read even more than before. There were few restaurants and so we cooked big elaborate meals together. Our relationships with the pets became more intimate and they and we benefited from the deeper connections. We played games together, and we spent time in the woods and on the mountains. Our bond to the natural world was beginning. We made lots of errors, but we learned from them. Our cars were outfitted with blankets and flashlights for winter and we learned to plan our routes and tell each other which ones we were taking in the deep snow. The next year we bought the horrible quaint country store, (THQCS), only it took us a while to realize how really really bad that would wind up being, and so the resolutions for a while still included things like to learning to knit, writing more, and homeschooling Eli. Pretty soon Hannah had to choose a college, and Benjamin had to choose a new one, and it was our job to help them find the right places and then to settle into them. Each year our lives were there in the planning stages and in retrospect many of those plans led the way.

For a couple of years now there has been one about figuring out how to live in Italy for a year. This is a long term wish like moving to Vermont started out so many many years ago now. But it has been right along side getting out from under THQCS. Because one of the best things I have learned from living more slowly up here, is that when there are crummy things that need your attention right now, hurry up, this minute, you must also keep the sweet pictures and work toward getting back to those or they will disappear.

Too many people live the lives that happen to them. They live in a place because it is where they are from or where they went to college, without ever having made a really conscious choice in the matter. Or maybe they made one years ago that no longer fits. They date the people who ask them out, marry the one who asks, and they make friends with the people that are around.

John and I wanted to choose. We wanted to live in a place that made our souls sing. We wanted to find friends, even if they were in different geographical areas, that spoke to our hearts. We wanted to live lives that were informed by our values. We love our family and wanted a life that afforded us lots of time to be together. (So for a while I traveled like a maniac to get us out from under the financial morass of THQCS, but that wouldn't suit us very well for long because it didn't serve the main value. It had to be an interim fix) We are politically liberal and we wanted to incorporate politics into the mix with our kids. We wanted to find ways to earn our money that would be informed by our values. We believe in giving and so we needed to find philanthropic avenues that would enrich our lives and teach our kids about the values and satisfaction in giving. We love to travel so that had to be in there. And we believe that one of the reasons people come to earth is to learn, so we wanted to live lives rich with possibility.

Living with intention doesn't mean that you ignore the sirens or the emergencies. Sometimes things will happen that will take you off track, like THQCS did us. But you must stay attuned to what you value and what you want, so that when the siren calls stop and the flames are put out, you can consider whether the life you are living still fits your values and your needs.

This year I am going to add one word to my list. I don't know what it will be yet. But it will be a word that I want to keep with me all year long, like forgiveness, or maybe slow, or joy. This will be a word that I will read and write about, and think on when I am at the waterfall instead of worrying about whatever new problem we have all dreamed up for ourselves. I am choosing my word now. Hopefully at the end of a year with it I will learned to understand it better and have incorporated more of it into my life.

Meanwhile happy new year to us all. May this year bring us all a little bit more of what we want and all of whatever it is we need to live lives of intention and joy.

So Just Slow Down and Wait For It

2008-12-27T20:38:00.000-08:00

Some of the light is came back. This winter's solstice was here. There were also a couple of feet of snow brightening the landscape for Christmas. The woods were all ready for the postcard photos. And then on Christmas Eve the sun was out all day long doing its thing with the shine and glitter. Now, tonight I can hear an owl calling. John shoveled a path to the chicken house and I walk it now, listening to our owl and sharing this cold night with him.
The dogs didn't want to come with me. They think it's too cold for midnight walks under cold stars. The sky is brimming over with twinkly lights and I can see our tree inside where it's warm and our cheery little fire goes to sleep. This little moment, two days late, feels finally and especially like Christmas.

Christmas seemed in a hurry this year. I chased it everywhere, but it was always just ahead of me. We ran down to NYC which is the shiny city that thinks it invented Christmas. They have the biggest tree and the brightest crystal stars. Carols are piped into the streets from Bloomingdale's and Macy's. The bell ringers are on nearly every corner and you can't help but feel dazzled especially when the cold makes you duck in here and there for a little cocoa or holiday grog. We ate our way through the city and everyone got a new ornament for the tree in the Christmasy Union Square Market. I was always in some line or other with kids calling me on their cell phones to tell me we had to move the car, or that the cabbie couldn't wait forever. I couldn't seem to catch my breath and just listen to the bells. St Patrick's Cathedral got by me this year, and so did the windows at Macy's. We had dinner with an old friend one night which was lovely, but some of us were too tired or full or something to see our annual movie. We piled into the kid's room instead and rented one at the hotel. Before you knew it we were hurrying home to finish up the holiday in Vermont with the critters under our tree and a big fire in the hearth. But first I had dozens of cookies to bake and lots of presents to wrap. I love wrapping presents with carols piped into my bedroom. But this year there is a ping pong table in there that Eli bought as a present to the whole family. Yes, in our bedroom. It is 9 feet long and about 5 feet wide, and our big romantic bedroom holds it nicely so long as all our lovely furniture is moved hither and yon. It is an abomination made for tournament level play, (just imagine the kind of thing you would want if you decided to take on the whole Chinese nation and you will begin to get the idea). Of course it doesn't fit anywhere else, and I may be afflicted with a permanent tic from balls passing inches from my face on an almost hourly basis, and stealthy teenagers slipping in for a quiet midnight game whilst we will supposedly or hopefully stay asleep. So I wrapped with little balls whizzing around and the sounds of cheering and the occasional errant paddle hurling through the air. Fa la la....

We exchanged one sweet gift on Christmas Eve over pink sparkly wine, and then spent the next morning listening to carols and opening gifts while we ate the nut roll that came from a recipe John's Grandmother brought here from Czechoslovakia seven or eight decades ago.
I love it when we are all together. All three dogs and the cat stayed in the library with us and played in the wrappings while we opened presents and listened to Eli play his new guitar. There were fat peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate, and Roshkie smothered in powered sugar. There was a ham and gobs of deviled eggs donated by the girls in the yard, next to piles of fragrant cheeses. It was sweet and festive, but it sure seemed to get here quick and it flew right by me the whole time.

But now, a couple of days later, after some five hundred rounds of ping pong, loud new rock n roll chords echoing through the house, and a good old book in my lap that my husband must have found when we snuck into the Strand for a fast run through while the kids got more hot chocolate, just now finally it is starting to feel like Christmas. I got a new Ipod and have bunched all my favorite Christmas tunes together in a playlist made especially for me. The smell of pine is strong and the kids have settled into a routine of Taboo with us every night. We are a competitive bunch and we yell and scream and laugh those loud snorting laughs. You can't use your hands, and I am apparently unable to speak without mine, so I sort of wriggle and writhe and my husband stands behind me and amuses the kids with his impersonation apparently. I got a peak of him in the reflection in the window so I finally figured out why the laughs were so loud during my turns.

Screaming and laughing, a little rock and roll with balls whizzing through the air, a good book, a snowy owl and a few stars after the calendar quieted down was all it took for Christmas to finally get to Vermont. Now I just need to figure out how to get it to stay...

Benjamin's Journey

2008-12-19T08:55:00.000-08:00

When he was a baby and we had company I would have to nurse him in a dark room. Everything overstimulated him. He would flail and kick and boy could he ever make some noise. By the time he was ten months old he could climb onto the kitchen counter. I ran after him for the next several years. As soon as he got up I would feed him and get him out the door so we could run. The year he was four my mom made him a Batman costume for Halloween. He was Batman for two years. When he outgrew the first outfit she made him another. At Hannah's christening, wearing an adorable little suit for a change, when the minister mentioned Hannah's big brother Benjamin he stood up in the pew and called out "I'm not Bendabin I am BATMAN!"

Later the school years were tough. He literally couldn't sit still. I didn't know what ADHD was. I was in my twenties when I had this wild child. I didn't know anything. So I volunteered. I was in the classroom a couple of days a week. In first grade he asked me why the puddles weren't white when the snow melted. He was brilliant. He just needed to MOVE his body.

I told one teacher in second grade that I lived with him 24 hours a day, and if I didn't need to yell at him she certainly didn't. She yelled because he couldn't sit still. She yelled because his handwriting was illegible. I asked her if she would yell at a crippled child to get up and walk. It was the same thing. He was crying in his sleep. He didn't want to go to school. So that year a trip to the school board and about 20 phone calls got us a new teacher.

That same year he got a new bike. We couldn't really afford a new bike in the middle of the year, when it wasn't even a birthday or anything. But Benjamin had given his away. He came home sweaty and late from the playground without his bike. I figured he'd forgotten it like so many times before. But no. He gave it away. WHAT? Well, his friend Andre, " has never had a bike, and I've always had one. So I thought he should have one for a couple of years too"
Oh. Well, come on honey let's get cleaned up for supper.

Of course there had to be a new bike. Only then it got stolen. He'd forgotten and left it in a the front yard. We really couldn't afford another one right on the heels of the other one. We called the police. Miraculously they called an hour later. Could we come to the ice cream stand? They had a kid and a bike. It wasn't ours. It couldn't be. This one was missing all the parts and it was white. The fancy handlebars were gone, the brakes, the standing things on the back. Stripped. But the serial number matched. It was awful. No longer lime green with racing stripes. It had been covered over in dull white. The young mad said he'd bought it "off a kid"

Sure he did. Uh-huh. He worked at Pizza Hut. We took Benjamin in that night when he was working. We asked the manager if we could speak to him. I said, " This is the little boy whose bike you stole. We bought it for him because he gave his old one away to a friend who didn't have one. I won't press those charges if there is a new bike just like the old one on our porch by Friday". I told the police I was doing it. They were skeptical. Friday came and went. Benjamin said "Well at least Andre has a bike. Maybe I can ride that one sometimes. I can't ask for it back mom. It's okay"
It wasn't okay, but no honey I wasn't going to say you should ask for it back.

Then it happened. On Sunday morning, there it was. Lime green, and on our porch with a long note saying he was sorry. Bingo. Benjamin learned that people will often do the right thing if you give them the chance. And he said "Oh good I am so glad I gave Andre my bike. See everything works out"

In fourth grade the principal called to tell me he'd gotten in a fight. We always talked about and practiced non violence. Sure he was wild. Yes, when other kids sat in their seats he leaned way over sideways and sometimes fell out. By now I was amassing books on learning styles and ADD. I knew what I had. But this..this would make all my strides with the teachers so much harder. Always before I could get them to see how sweet he was and that the moving and impulsivity were part of his physiology. They weren't bad teachers. They just were ill equipped. But this was sure to set us back. I was upset. I couldn't understand it. I asked him to explain and to tell us what had happened.

"A mean kid called Stephen a nigger. I told him to shut up and he started singing it. So I hit him. He hit me back and before you knew it we were in a big fight with kids and teachers all around"
Oh.
Okay honey, let's go wash your face.

By the end of the elementary years we could afford fancy private schools. The one we picked had lofts in the classrooms with couches and bean bags. Nobody had to sit at a desk if they didn't want to or couldn't manage it. The teachers were highly skilled and trained. Benjamin thrived.

But then came middle school and changing classrooms was tough. We found a hip hop urban private prep school with tiny classes and he trudged through. Luckily by now at 6'3" he was gorgeous and athletic which made things a little easier socially. He played soccer and basketball and won all city at both. He became something of a basketball star, so he had success, just not in the classroom. School still came hard. I remember when we got his ACT scores back. They were high. His headmaster kept saying, "Wow this is great. Just unbelievable"
I was on the Board by then. No, not unbelievable. He's brilliant. He just sort of hides it really well.

And then college. The first one didn't work out. He felt bad. When would it all get better? He took a semester off and worked with the Dean campaign. Eventually he found a hippie little environmental liberal arts college closer to home. It worked...mostly. Although the level of discourse was disappointing. But he could manage the work. It was also dis-spiriting to see so many kids with less natural ability doing better. And he still drummed and paced and it was incredibly hard being in a small room even with only 20 other students. It's hard to know you are smart when you still struggle to get things in on time, and even to sit still at 21. There were dark days of worry and depression. His feelings of self worth plummeted. But he kept going. I wondered every day if we were doing the right thing in encouraging/pushing him. But where does a kid who is young for his age spend his late teens and early twenties if not college? Developmentally it was where he needed to be. And a college degree is so necessary in our global economy. He trusted us. He hung in. He took fewer classes and knew it would take longer. He wanted to quit at least once every week. But he was brave. He persevered. Some kids and some teachers were judgemental. I couldn't just call the school board anymore. But he understood and mostly forgave their ignorance.
He was kind.
And strong.
And yesterday....yesterday he finished...No make that FINISHED COLLEGE!

In May he will graduate in their annual commencement.

We knew you could do it Benjamin and now you have. You are smart and brave, kind and strong. You know more now than if this had been an easier journey. I am so lucky to have gotten to be your mom. You have taught me more than I could ever teach you. All those games you played with blood and guts, skill and luck brought me hundreds of hours of pleasure. I am as proud in this moment as I have ever been. It has been an honor and a privilege to share this journey with you. I love you honey....

Choosing Christmas Over Global Meltdown

2008-12-17T05:27:00.001-08:00

The sky is a dark slate lavender with no sun. Looking out into the fog of snow we could be anywhere. There are no markers, only dark cold and fast snow. We are in the cloud. You can't see the mountains for the slow and silent fog of snow that has enveloped the whole landscape. It is bitterly cold, but still. The wind has stopped to catch its breath. Even the dogs don't want to go out. We woke up and got some hot food into Eli before bundling him out the door to school when really it seemed more like time to be getting ready for bed. Nature seems to have her days and nights mixed up like a new baby.

Inside, our Christmas tree and Ella Fitzgerald do their best to ward off the chill. The tree stands majestically in the library with a perfect shape, almost like a cartoon version of a Christmas tree. It is about nine or ten feet tall with our gorgeous three dimensional white star on top. A few years ago, the little door that lets you in to change the white light broke and we had to glue it back together. Every year we pray the light will hold, and it has, like a little Christmas miracle. The tree is covered all over with those tiny colorful lights that blend together into a sky of color when you squint at them just right. Our whole lives are on this tree. There is the little hand painted glass sphere with the gondola on it that we brought back from Venice. Another one with a tiny wintry lighthouse scene came home from our first trip to Martha's Vineyard many many years ago. I can see the red bag of popcorn, spun from sugary thin glass that reminded Hannah of going to the movies. And the fabulous Caped Crusader, hand blown, that takes me back to Benjamin's Batman years. And John's gold pocket watch from when he was a little boy wraps around a branch just like it has on one tree or another for almost forty years. My grandmother's Minnie Mouse ornament the year Minnie was introduced must be 75 years old by now. Eli has a white mountain lion, which hangs low and which somehow miraculously no cat or dog has ever broken. We wire it on, but still that thin glass stretched into such an elaborate huge concoction always seems luckier than it has any right to be. There must be more than a hundred beautiful little glass ornaments. Christopher Radco was born just so he could grow up and make these wonderful ornaments for our tree.

I have some wireless speakers so I can hear Ella all the way up at my wrapping station. I have an old battered table with peeling green paint, that I found in an antique store, but which would also be right at home in an ancient chicken coop. It is in our big bedroom which has a door so that the kids can't see what I'm doing. I have baskets of ribbon and old milk glass jars filled with tape and scissors. I am taking this day off to wrap and try and get warm. I have been running fast again, panicked by the trillions of dollars that go missing every day and afraid of the warnings about the collapse of life as we know it. Two of my clients can't pay me because their endowments have dropped beneath the threshold that lets them cut checks. They will pay me, just not today. And since when remains a little unclear, I have been thinking up new clients and meeting everybody I can think of who might need me only they just don't know it yet. I have done this dancing fast routine before. And a dark wintry day when the temperatures are in the single digits is no time to practice the steps. Instead I will make a big mug of hot spicy cocoa and wrap up some things that will make someone smile. I will turn the volume way up and let Ella belt out Santa Baby as loud as those little speakers can handle. Maybe I'll make some of those peanut butter balls, or those little bird's nest cookies so that when everybody gets here, we can all get giddy sugar highs. The world may be falling apart a little bit at the seams, but it's Christmas. I think we've all counted worries long enough. I'd rather measure some sugar and beat a couple of eggs instead.......