It’s 8:00 AM and I’m standing in the freezer aisle at the Wayside Country Store.  Hunters have begun filing in, taking their first break of the morning to enjoy some coffee and hot food and hotter deer stories.  Me, I’m staring through the glass door of the freezer, misting up as I compare the three different packages of bacon on the lower shelf.

I do this a lot.  Something always gets missed on my grocery list, sending me to our local country store, and something about the dusty wide floor boards and the hum of conversation and delicious scents wafting through the air always sends me on a mental meandering.  Yesterday, bacon got left off the list.

I buy local as much as possible, and my eyes first fall on the two pound package with the handwritten label and the words, cured and packed in Windsor, Vermont.  Then I notice the price tag and take a look a the second package.  It’s a much less expensive one pound package from a national brand.  The final choice is another, bigger Vermont brand, but still quite a bit more, so I ponder.

The Big Guy being a big guy can lay waste to a package of bacon in no time flat, but in the last year, Thing1 has become a fearsome competitor in the ‘Eating Anything That Isn’t Nailed Down’ division.  It shouldn’t surprise me – he’s now at least two inches taller than I am – but I am surprised at how fast it’s happened.

This is one of the moments when life bops me on the back of the head and says, “He’s growing up.  It’s happening.”

For most of the last twelve years, we’ve been watching and nurturing the growing, and it’s been the toughest, most wonderful journey of either of our lives.  But as he becomes a teenager and begins growing more into the man he’s going to be, I realize that, while the journey will never really end, it’s about to take a very different turn.

I’m feeding two big guys now, and I blink and reach for the bigger, cheaper package.

Today my writing group met.  Our earth-sheltered house on Minister Hill was the meeting place, and I actually cleaned.  It does happen, but it, like everything else at our Vermont homestead has a season.  And, even though this season begins with a mad cleaning session, it also happens to be my favorite.

There is always one gathering or dinner party that is my line of demarcation between the busy late summer and early fall harvest season and the comparative repose of late autumn.  That get together is the first event of the season.  It motivates me to get the house presentable as well as happily habitable as our focus turns indoors.  And it is the herald of weeks and weekends of small dinner parties, family reunions, and drop-in Kaffee Klatches.

This is my soup season.  The cookie jar is always full, and the kitchen island is always littered with gift basket booty and pastries.  Even the housework becomes enjoyable (for a time).  This is the season my cousin started for me years ago when we lived in Germany, and, unlike the chaos of Christmas and Hannukah that will soon follow, it is not a time of trappings and tension.

Thing1 was born in Germany near Frankfurt, and when he was a few months old we went to visit my cousin in Freiburg.  It was after American Thanksgiving (which some Germans celebrate but businesses have not turned into the starting bell for the  Christmas shopping pandemonium yet) and the quaint, kitschy Christmas Markets that  grace the centers of every Germany town for the month of December were just beginning to setup in Freiburg as we arrived on Saturday night.

It was late, and with Thing1 nursing constantly, we had all decided dinner at home was the best way to enjoy our time together.  My cousin is an amazing and adventurous cook, so I was not surprised by the gourmet meal she set before us.  I was, however, amazed when, after we cleared the dishes, she pulled out an old blue cookbook printed with the old German Fraktur font.

My thoroughly modern and cosmopolitan cousin pulled on an apron and began a baking frenzy I had never seen before.  When the smoke cleared, there were plates of powder-sugar-cover cookies, chocolate treats and all sorts of kuchen and plåtzchen on the counter.  In between mouthfuls of cookie, I asked what had prompted this display of domesticity. She chuckled and said that her mom did it at the beginning of the season too.

Suddenly a vague recollection of another German Christmas years earlier began to rise up through my food-fog.  I remembered a coffee table laden with baked treats and cinnamon-spiced wine.  I warmly recalled an advent ring with candles lit by my normally very secular aunt and uncle.  I remembered – and began to anticipate -Sundays marked by quiet conversation and music.  But mostly I remembered how they had introduced us to their sacred seasonal ritual.  It was a dedicated to communing, not with shopping malls and sales clerks, but with family and friends.

So now that the dishes are cleared from the first casual, cozy assembly,  I’m feeling a bit of that same warmth.  I’ve made a bed for the next guest.  Tomorrow, I’ll continue nursing the soup on the stove.  I’ll bake and ice and sprinkle, thinking of the family who inspired this tradition for us and of the next few busy weeks when we’ll continue the  with new friends.  And with each cookie in the jar I’ll mentally light a candle to welcome the season.

We work harder maintaining our country homestead than we did when we lived in an apartment in the city.  In the city we were DINKS (double-income-no-kids), and there was some cleaning, but there was no yard to mow or dirt coming in from outside.  Kids create additional labor in any household, but our rural, off-grid life creates a number of extra chores.

Our laundry never sees the inside of an electric dryer.   We do the upkeep on our solar inverter.  Heating with wood (whether we buy or cut it) is more time consuming than simply ordering a winter’s worth of oil, but last night as I was working on dinner, I thought of the unexpected annual rewards we are about to reap from our labors.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been stacking wood.  We’ve been stocking the freezer and the pantry in anticipation of snowy weather that can bind us to the house for days.  We’ve been catching up on laundry that will dry inside on racks for the next few months.

As November rolls in, however, the load becomes lighter.  Filling the wood bin becomes our one regular outdoor task.  Snow is imminent, enforcing a welcome break from mowing and sowing.  And the question of ‘what’s for dinner?’ is always, as it was last night, answered by the contantly bubbling pot of Stone Soup on the woodstove.

Last night I wandered back and forth between the pantry and the pot, tossing in dried veggies from the garden and other odds and ends from a cupboard that is stocked for the winter.  There was no recipe and no stress.  And when the pot was full, I sat on the couch to snuggle with the boys as it simmered.

This is our winter pattern.  It’s slow and quiet.  It’s warm and close.

So when night comes, the flames in the wood cookstove become embers that will kindle another fire in the morning, we may be tired from the day, but we never regret the labors we took on when we chose a life closer to the land and farther from the madding crowd.

 

 

I grow pumpkins every year. Some years I grow field pumpkins for Jack O’Lanterns, but I always plant at least a couple of pie pumpkin plants.  My pumpkin passion began a few years ago with a Thanksgiving dinner shopping trip that resulted in one can of  pumpkin pie filling and a long lesson about security.

I was expecting company and had waited till the last possible minute to do the shopping.  A glut of pumpkins the year before had prompted me to plant only one plant, but, a spate of cold weather resulted in a last minute addition to my shopping list.  Only when I got to the store and saw the empty bin did I learn that it had been bad year for pumpkins everywhere.

I moved to plan B – pureed pumpkin.  I headed for the baking aisle, but the pumpkin gods were not smiling on my dinner.  The shelves had been picked clean of canned pumpkin.  Plan C – premade pumpkin pie filling – was an unappetizing last resort, but as I was started going through my alternate dessert list, I almost tripped over another determined hunter kneeling on the ground and rummaging through the lowest shelf.

“Excuse Me!” I yelped.  The other woman about the same size as I pulled her head out from the shelves and gave me a broad smile.

“Hello, Rachel,” she said.  I knew her face and name; she was a teller at our local bank.  I was a bit surprised, however, that she knew mine.  We chatted about our pumpkin quests and our miserable harvests.  We compared garden notes and then said our goodbyes, both of us vowing to plant plenty of pumpkin from now on.

After that encounter I noticed that most of the tellers at her branch did greet our family by name as soon as we came in the door.  I never needed to produce a license  – I’ve passed the small town identity verification.  But I didn’t really think about the pumpkin powwow until I walked into the bank yesterday to chase down a suspicious charge.

In spite of all of the high-tech security out there, someone had managed to fraudulently charge over $200 to my debit card.  So I went in and chatted with my favorite teller about electronic security and safeguards, and she educated me while fixing my account to prevent repeat transactions.

I walked out to my car grateful for our teller’s help securing my account again. I thought about this year’s pumpkin pie insurance sitting at home on the counter,and I thought about what it means to be secure.  For me, it isn’t 128-bit encryption or turning over my digital life or home to a company to monitor.  For me, security is some source of food that’s 100 feet away from our table.  It’s a community we know and that knows us.  And it’s the knowledge that when one of us falters, we are not alone.

The other night the Big Guy was at rehearsal for a community theatre production of ‘You Can’t Take It With You’.  I was cleaning up the daily clutter, making dinner, and supervising homework, when Thing2’s six-year-old imagination – scientifically-calibrated by the Minister Hill Department of Weights, Measures and Pandemonium helped prove my favorite theory once again.

I don’t have any clinical data to support it, but I know that as surely as matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed and that all objects attract each other with a force of gravitational attraction,  it is equally true than any nanosecond of free time discovered by Mom – accidental or planned – will be instantly vaporized by any offspring currently in residence.  The potential for this time sucking phenomenon is exponentially increased when any of the offspring is under the age of 10.

I was almost to the evening’s finish line – the tops on the pots on the wood cookstove were dancing merrily.  Thing1 had miraculously almost finished all of his homework before it was time to set the table, and I was was starting to think I might manage to get people fed and to bed early enough to have a little writing time by 9 o’ clock.  But Thing2 had another agenda – with several items on it.

Between the moment I pulled the dinner off the stove and cleared the plates, I had been treated to a theatrical table-setting routine by SuperDude (Thing2’s rainbow-wigged super hero alter ego), a dinner time art show complete with a lecture on the latest in paper mache and displays retrieved from a backpack, and a treatise on why last night’s spaghetti was more edible than tonight’s.  There were only 5 minutes of actual eating.

Dinner ended and  both boys got ready for bed.  It should have been a straight-forward procedure – jammies, teeth, bed, sleep – but Thing2’s to-do list had grown.  Before their heads hit the pillows, there were 2 glasses of water retrieved, a Q&A about the upcoming holidays, one monologue about Superman and SuperDude’s superpowers, 3 trips (2 of them covert) to the pantry for a last snack, 1 trip to the toybox for the perfect stuffed animal and two reprimands to two little boys who had a sudden case of the giggles when the lights went out.

When all was silent, I went into their darkened bedroom to give hugs and kisses goodnight.  A little later I emerged and settled down on the couch to write in peace and quiet just as the grandfather clock rang eleven.

 

 

 

Like most Americans, I exercised my civic duty yesterday morning and went to vote. But when I left the polling place, unlike an increasing number of Americans, I felt a spring in my step. My confidence was not the result of any electoral premonition; it derived completely from a unique voting experience that may only be possible in a very small town.

When I opened the door of the three-room Town Hall, I saw the friends and neighbors of both political persuasions at their monitoring stations (two rough-hewn tables flanking permanent white wooden, curtained voting booths that feature a space for filling out our paper ballots). The polling station had only recently opened, and yet all four of the booths were already occupied.

One of my very close friend sat at the first table, and after verifying my name per state law, we exchanged pleasantries as usual. Last year and on Vermont Town Meeting day, I was sitting at the other table collecting completed ballots, and as I took my paper, the memory of that day made the still-cool Town Hall meeting room feel warmer.

As a soon-to-be former Justice of the Peace for our town, I had monitored two elections, and, while my increasingly hectic schedule has made both jobs unfeasible, I did enjoy my experience. It wasn’t just a few hours away from work. It was a chance to visit with friends – voters and election monitors.

Baked goodies on the table in the Town Hall records room made the poll sitting experience festive. One neighbor dispersed empty ballots while I and another neighbor collected and sorted the completed ballots as friends and acquaintances filed through. We chatted with each other and with the other voters. Children were often in tow, the younger ones quietly cavorting in the open space and the older ones often accompanying their parents into the booths.

The setting and implied election ethics kept our conversations mostly to the weather and the upcoming gardening season. Sometimes a mention of one regulation or another law drove our discussion into what could have been minefields. The discussions, however, were lively and never heated, and, after living in this town for over a decade, I am no longer surprised.

It was an election, but, for our town, it was just another in a series of annual get togethers. It was a time, like many others, when we came together to eat and talk about the thing that connect us as a town. And it was time when we reminded ourselves that our common values of concern for each other’s well being and respect for each other’s independence far outweighs any disagreement we may have about politicians or parties.

So as I dropped my ballot in the box yesterday, I knew my vote would count and be counted. But I also knew, whatever the outcome of the national election and however divided our nation may be, our little town is still united.

 

I voted as soon as the polls opened this morning, and even though it was a hot topic at work, it wasn’t nearly as distracting as a potential Nor’Easter or a recent Hurricane or even actual work. But for the last hour after work, as my doctored Hamburger Helper simmered and polls around the North East begin to close and report, I allowed myself to pay way too much attention to the colors on a map that will undoubtedly change throughout the evening.  But as the strains of a ‘Hard Day’s Night’ softly emanated from the mp3 player Thing2 ‘borrowed’ from his brother my eyes turned from the glow of the map to the sight my six year old bundle of happiness (ignorance of the world really is bliss) be-bopping to the Beatles, and I chose sides.

Like anyone else I care what happens tonight, but I finally made the choice to turn off the constant results of an election over which I exerted my only control at 10:00 AM this morning.  I snapped the map, closed that window, and went over to join Thing2 for a jig before I gave him a hug.  He looked up at me happily and not at all curious about my sudden display of affection.  And in my head I thanked him for reminding me which side matters the most on Election Night and any other night.

 

A few years ago, my husband, known to regular readers as The Big Guy (he’s 6’6″), was a walking healthcare nightmare.  A cut on a leg turned gangrenous a few months before a torn retina claimed the vision in one of his eyes after months of doctors’s visits and bed rest.

So when a friend stopped by his job to recruit him for a small role in a community theatre production of ‘Incorruptible’, a dark comedy about medieval monks promoting the contents of their graveyard as holy relics, I supported the idea whole-heartedly.  Accumulating medical bills and long, involuntary weeks in bed had taken their toll on his psyche, and, while in public he was still usually his perpetually cheerful and cheering self, at home he was becoming increasingly quiet and withdrawn.  The promise of a creative and engaging distraction was just what he needed, and so, despite his own misgivings about his acting ability, he signed on for his first production at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY and changed all our lives.

A brown-trimmed yellow Victorian opera house in the center of the bustling village of Cambridge, Hubbard Hall is a community arts and education center offering visual and performing arts workshops to students of all ages and walks of life.  And, when the directors at Hubbard Hall are not busy helping the community engage in art, they are  creating it onstage, offering the surrounding rural communities a rare,intimate opportunity to enjoy world class music, opera and theatre that has even attracted the attention of New York Times’ columnists.

For my husband, the opportunity to help create that experience for others became a vital outlet.  He quickly surprised all of us – most of all himself – with his comedic acting ability. We aren’t turning away calls from Hollywood casting agents (yet), but the first part lead to others, and before I knew it, I was a Theatre Widow.

It isn’t always fun and games during theatre season on Minister Hill.  During rehearsals, I may see him for five minutes a day on any given week, and getting two kids fed, homeworked, and into bed alone four and five nights a week does begin to lose its charm by the time the performances start.  But for all Hubbard Hall asks of us during those rehearsal weeks, it gives back tenfold.

I’ve had a pleasant reminder of those rewards this last month.  The Big Guy is currently rehearsing for his biggest role yet in the upcoming production of  ‘You Can’t Take It With You’, and we are in our third or fourth week of late nights and crazy schedules.  And I am in my fourth week of watching my husband come home at ten o’clock at night, energized and excited about the play and about the talented people he’s working with.

So when one of the staff at this magical place called an asked if I would create the poster for the upcoming show, my answer was an enthusiastic ‘YES’.  The query was the result of another post and drawing on this site, and it presented the perfect opportunity to help shamelessly plug a play for the Big Guy.  But it also gave me the chance to do something to thank this little theatre with the big heart for all it has done for our family.  I wasn’t just honored, I was grateful.