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Little Miracles

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It’s always an event when we’re not late getting out the door to school.  I can count on one hand the times Thing1 has been about to rush out the door without a backpack or Thing2 had to go back to their room to grab one more action figure for show-and-tell.  So when we got out the door this morning with both backpacks fully packed, homework finished, and two boys breakfasted and brushed (Mom eats after the chaos), it was nothing short of a minor miracle.

We bundled ourselves into the car and headed out the driveway.  We go the same way everyday, and most days I slow a bit as we approach the little horse farm at the bottom of our dirt road.  Today, I stopped.

Over the last week, Mother Nature had put away the pinky-browns and blues she’d been using during mud season and pulled out her spring palette.  As we descended, the morning sun bathed the hill in gold, and we all noticed how the grass had suddenly become green.  A few daffodils were poking through the leaves by the fence that runs along the road, reminding us that, whatever else is happening in the world, it’s still April.  I exhaled again and snapped a quick pic before rebooting the morning school run.  

There are more mornings than not that I have to stop and snap a few photos of this hill and the tiny horse farm framed by the rounded mountains.  Part of me is always surprised that, after over ten years living on this road, the scenery still takes my breath away.  It’s the answer to a question I started as a teenager while visiting southern Bavaria with friends of the family.

Our friends had a vacation home in one of the centuries-old towns that dots that mountainous regions.  We were there in the summer, and the crystal blue lakes and then-snowcapped Alps in the back ground constantly took my breath away.  I always wondered, though, if living with that beauty everyday would minimize its impact.  Today, as I’m snapping pictures and smiling on my way to school, I’m thinking once again about how the answer to that question is still one my favorite daily miracles.

Signs of Spring

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We’re still getting the nightly dusting of snow, but it melts quickly these days.  White predominates in our yard, but the crocuses have begun to emerge from the ground.  And even as the cold is slow to relinquish its hegemony, it can’t prevent the longer days and, the return of the roadside egg stand as our neighbors chickens begin to produce again.

 

Tis the Season

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We’re well into the first full week of spring and snow still covers our yard.  It’s almost time to plant peas, and my garden is a slushy mess.  The fact that Vermont’s gardening season commenced at least a week or three behind the calendars in every gardening book (even one or two written by Vermonters) once caused me consternation.   By March, I’m ready to get out of the house and start digging.  

A decade of digging later, however, I’ve learned to relax about this thing I absolutely can’t control.  My springtime serenity stems from two sources.  The first comes from observing the long-term effects of that saturating late winter snow pac.  Soggy in spring but still moist enough to prevent the need for watering well into summer, I’ve come to trust that Mother Nature knows what she’s doing.  The other source of my calm comes from discovering a spring signal far more reliable (and delicious) than a date circled on my calendar. 

The sap buckets start appearing in late January.  The large maple syrup operations set long blue tap lines that run from tree to tree and then into huge covered containers, but there are still plenty of do-it-yourselfer’s and small operators who use the old-fashioned taps and buckets that are symbolic of the season.  

We made maple syrup a few years in a row.  Our buckets were recycled milk jugs.  We collected sap for days and made exactly one gallon (you need 32 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup) on our old wood stove.  Our old house was drafty enough that we didn’t mind turning our kitchen into a sauna for a few days, and it was the best maple syrup we ever tasted.  

We buy our syrup now, and, even though it’s available at even the smallest producers through most of the year, picking up a gallon or two at the end of March has become as much a ritual as taking Thing2 to see Santa at the town Christmas party or planting my peas in soggy spring soil.

The steam started pouring from the sugar houses in late winter.  Even now, the nighttime temperatures are still mostly in the freezing range even as the days get warmer, and the sap still flows.  Last weekend, the first weekend in spring, the sugar houses opened their doors to tasters and tours, but it was just a date on the calendar.  For me, it won’t be until the sap slows that spring will really begin.  It’s when the sap buckets along our road come down.

 It doesn’t make the spring season any less welcome, but it does make it a little bittersweet.

 

Snow Days

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Christmas comes several time each year at our house.  We call those extra Christmas days snow days.  They’re the only other winter days that see both boys out of bed before dawn as they race to the internet to check school closing, waiting to see if the Snow Fairy has brought them candy or coal.

Thing2 got candy last night.  It was most likely due to a wind-related power outage than the snowfall we got last night that barely qualifies as a dusting by Vermont standards.  Thing1 got a lump of coal.

Normally I require hard core proof of illness for either imp to stay home.  More snow may be on the way, however that could cause an early closure.  Tonight’s homework is also already done. So, instead of giving Thing1 his morning marching orders, I toss his coal into the roaring wood stove and order him to stand down.  

I have the day off, and with both boys home, it’s more than an impromptu weekend.  It really is a holiday.

Two Makes Chrysalis

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Lately, the company I work for has had the lucky misfortune of having too much business.  For the Tech Support staff, this has meant confining ourselves to our computers almost from dawn till dusk.  Our computers are all at our homes, but the long days, coupled with winter weather and roads have helped spin a thick cocoon around our earth-sheltered house.  I am not naturally extroverted, so retreating behind a protective shell of snow and work has been quite comfortable.  It was only when I responded to an invitation from another confined friend that I realized that my insular shell was missing something.  

I am ashamed to say, that in the months since knee surgery has confined my friend, I have only been to visit at the beginning to bring flowers picked by our youngest son.  When the phone rang last week, I answered with a mix of happiness and guilt.  By the time I hung up, guilt was mostly gone and I was looking forward to a date on Friday afternoon after work.

Friday morning was another grey winter work day, and I was really excited to go have talk and tea at the end of it.  A light snow had just begun to form a blanket over the roads and mountains when I headed down the road to my friend’s house.  For a brief moment, I had to quell my natural instinct to return to my cocoon.  A flare of guilt kept my car moving forward, however, and I would be glad it did.

My friend and I were once in a writing group together, and grew quite close at the time.  We may not see each other for months except passing on the road or at the country store, but there is rarely any uncomfortable silence when we get back together.  Friday was no exception.  

I let myself in through the mudroom door and, after hugs, we remarked on the changes in each other’s hair and physiques before retreating back to my friend’s cozy bedroom behind the kitchen for a huddle.  I took a quick look at my clock – 4ish it was – knowing I had to leave by 5 to get to the grocery store before dark and settled into a comfy chair.

The kettle on the wood stove hummed every now, serenading us as we talked of doctors and cats and neighbors’s recent departures and returns.  Through the window, I could see the now-heavier snow that only seemed to insulate us more as we talked of writing and iPads and husbands.  

I had not written a word all day – a late Thursday night and early start at work had put the kibosh on creative expression for 48 hours.  I knew the weekend schedule would not allow for much writing or drawing, but by the time I stood up from my chair and made a plan to visit again next week, I felt my soul had been fed.  And the feeding of it guaranteed that when the time permitted, the work I want to do will happen and happily.

It was mostly dark and well after 6pm when I stepped out into the wet snow.  There was a snowy trip to the grocery store ahead before I returned to my cave.  Dark, snowy drives usually fill me with trepidation.  This one, however, was a few minutes more of quiet, and I used it to relish the enlightenment I had found in the fellowship my friend and I had reformed.  

Now, back in my cocoon, it’s warm and safe, as always.  But I will not wait months again before I return to the chrysalis where ideas and friendship grow.  

Of Mountains and Mud

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There is little snow on Minister Hill this winter, and part of me has been mourning the absence of sledding and snowshoeing.  The road down our hill is mostly mud now.  

Navigating the deep oozing ruts adds another five minutes to every little venture.  Today, though, even the sight of the nearly naked mountains rising up over the muck as I drove down the hill was enough to slow our trip to the ice rink even further.  If the road had been better, I would have worked harder to pilot and gawk at the same time, but the mud nearly forced me to a stop several times.  I snapped off a couple photos, figuring I would do a sketch while I watched the kids during school skate.  

We returned a few hours later to a road even more scarred from a wintry mix and other vehicles.  I was a few sketches richer.  Thing1, my twelve-year-old, increasingly pensive as he approaches adolescence, was cheerful after racing around a rink for two hours.  Thing2, my six-year-old whose normal state is chatter and dance, was nearly asleep from his exertions.  

The mud up our mountain, earlier the guardian of my mindfulness of the mountains, was now just another obstacle between us and home.  Thing1 began pointing out the least treacherous parts, and the car’s rumble seat imitation began to rouse my younger passenger in the back seat.  As we passed the horse farm that lies just below our driveway, the ruts in the muck became deep slick channels, and my only option was to keep accelerating and let the edges of the chasms help me find the least resistance.  

Ten feet later, as the swells in the silt became more navigable, I was glad I hadn’t had much for lunch.  I glanced at Thing1 who was now grinning and looking very twelve.  In the rear view mirror, I could see Thing2 continuing to bounce, even though the car had stopped.

“Can we go again?” he asked, knowing full well that we will be ‘going again’ tomorrow.  But tomorrow morning, when we head out on our slimy roller coaster ride, I’ll remember that, while the coasting has it’s appeal, the climb can be pretty fun too.

On the Street Where I Live

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It’s been four or five days now since a fertilizer bomb was detonated somewhere on the mountain across from ours.  While the local paper (two towns away) hasn’t picked up the story yet, it was a hot topic for many people at our local country store on Sunday.  Curiosity and concern were still high on Monday, but by Tuesday it was clear that fear was already losing its grip on many of us .

I’m still worried, of course.  Vermont isn’t at war as far as any of us know, so a bomb is not what we’re expecting to hear at eight o’ clock at night.  I am still waiting for some scrap of comforting information.  Even in the absence of information, however, I’m managing to find signs that this town (whose motto is ‘Whatever happens here stays here… But nothing ever happens here’) has managed to put a serious dent in my once Olympic-caliber capacity for agonizing over every potential problem.  There were two of those signs yesterday.

The first one had me trying to remember to breathe.  Mother Nature had been in her paintbox the night before.  After wiping her canvas clean with an inch of rain, she cooled things down.  Then, under cover of night, she brought out her fattest paint brush and daubed just enough white powdery paint over the mountains to cover but not completely obscure the trees and rocks.   I only noticed her work after I’d finished scraping the car and getting six-year-old Thing2 on the road to winter camp.  We scaled the long icy slope of our driveway, and then turned onto the road heading towards the horse farm at the bottom of our road.

The road makes a beautiful S-curve as we get closer.  A few isolated trees frame the rolling hills and the buildings of the farm perfectly, and a day doesn’t go by when I think what a perfect painting it would make.   Yesterday we hit the S-curve just as low purple and white clouds were skimming the powered mountains that rise up behind the farm.  It was breathtaking.  I forgot, for a moment, that we were late, that my foot was still on the gas, and even that a bomb had ever gone off on the mountain across from ours.

When I recovered my breath and remembered to slow down before we hit the more adventurous part of the mud pit we call a road, I drew Thing2’s attention to the scene ahead of us.  We slowly descended the hill, and the painting seemed to envelope us.  Thing2 spoke first after we had passed the farm.

“Can you believe we get to live here all the time?”  He asked.  I couldn’t, and all my recent mutterings that we should move somewhere safer to the middle of nowhere (redundant really) shattered like dust falling with the snow.

The second sign was more subtle, but when I finally saw it, was just as powerful.

The Big Guy went in the afternoon to Hubbard Hall, our local community theatre and art center in Cambridge, NY to pick up Thing2 at his winter break workshop.  Caught up in the excitement of viewing Thing2’s art projects, the nearly empty gas tank in the car slipped his mind, and they headed home. They were almost home when the gas ran out.  Fortunately, a neighbor spotted them quickly and brought them the rest of the way home.  The Big Guy borrowed my car to go get a can of gas for the vehicle still on the side of the road.

He was gone not five minutes when we heard a truck in the driveway.  Positive he couldn’t have filled up the car that quickly, we wondered who it could be.  Before I could get up from the kitchen table (my home office – very glamorous), Thing2 had gone into the mudroom to answer the door.  I had forgotten to lock the outside door again, however, and I suddenly heard a deep voice talking to my son.  It was another neighbor who had seen the car by the road and popped down to see if we needed help.  I told him we were all set and thanked him for checking on us.  Thing2 threatened to entrap him with endless cheerful banter, but the neighbor just smiled at him good-naturedly and waved goodbye to all of us.

I was not yet at the end of my work day and, forgetting to lock the door again, sat back down at the table to finish my shift.  Then the phone rang.  It was another neighbor from across the valley checking to see if we needed any help with the car.  I gave him the same answer, thanked him and hung up.   Before the phone touched the table, however, it rang again.  This time it was our neighbor at the top of our driveway who had seen the car.  I hung up a few minutes later, smiling and thinking that however loud one misguided kook might be, he doesn’t outnumber the ‘good guys’ in this tiny little town.

I realize it’s the same every city.  The ones making the bombs – regardless of their form – are the loudest, but they aren’t the majority.  They can cause havoc with your sense of peace if you let them, however.  I’m still hoping for news about our incident, but by the time the Big Guy returned with my keys, I had seen the second sign.  It wasn’t in the calls from caring neighbors.  It was the fact that, thanks to this town, I’m slowly learning to live my life without locked doors.

 

Lost Weekend

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Across the state, schools had closed on Friday.  Store shelves were being cleared as people prepared for a day of camping in on Saturday.  I stocked the pantry with chips and dip, the fridge with a massive casserole and whipped cream for hot cocoa.  Thing1 and Thing2 made sure their sleds were ready, and the wood bin was overflowing.

But, Saturday morning, the snow had not materialized.  We were expecting a blizzard and barely got a dusting in our little corner of Vermont (4-6 in Vermont is a dusting).  As we gazed out at the trees already stripped of snow by the howling wind, our entire family felt ripped off by the weather industry.

Everything had been canceled for Saturday already – basketball, breakfast out – and with a still-falling mercury, the Big Guy and I quickly decided to proceed with the camp-in as planned.  We fired up the DVD player and began our day-long homage to sloth.

I set out cereal and cinnamon buns at breakfast, and cheese and crackers and other snacks at lunch.  As soon as one of us got the notion to do something productive the rest of the family would intervene, re-issuing the proclamation that today was about doing nothing.  Computers were shuttered, homework was put away, and the phone was ignored.  The conversation never became more serious than debating whether there are more Monty Python or Tolkien references in Futurama.  Our bodies and our brains were only aware of the red hot stove and the person snuggling on the sofa next to us.

It was pointless.  It was unproductive, and it was glorious.

 

Stopped by Woods

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It’s February, and the sledding hill on the west side of town is naked.  The Battenkill River that runs west from the center of Arlington, Vermont to the New York line has been frozen for only a few days this winter.  It’s the second year in a row in which winter hasn’t really felt like winter but more like a long clouding, mud season.  Grey prevails today, lulling us into our individual reveries as we drive about our Saturday routine.

Then as we drive home, turning back onto the road that runs along the Battenkill, the park and adjacent outdoor ice rink come into view.  A shock of white now rises over the river.  As we get closer, we realized the white is ice and snow covering the trees on the river bank.  The ice doesn’t cover everything – it only coated a small clump of trees –  but the covering was so thick and sugary in appearance, that if looked like someone had sculpted it.

The sky is still overcast and grey, but now, roused out of our apathy, the flat light seems to throw everything into stark relief.  A stop by the park has suddenly become an impromptu visit to an art museum, and we continue on home, suddenly aware of the other exhibits around us.

A Moment on the Soapbox

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I spend Inauguration Morning 2013 trying to write and thinking about inaugurating another diet for the umpteenth time.  (There have been multiple first diet days since the first of this year.)  It seems an strange day to be dwelling on something so mundane.  It’s MLK-day after all.  Our country’s first African-American president is getting worn in for the second time.   And yet, somehow, letting the mundane absorb the three members of our family who got to stay home for the holiday is oddly appropriate.

I’ve lived on two other continents in two different hemispheres.  Thanks to my parents’ wanderlust, I had the opportunity – at a young age – to see how bad it can be but also how the good we have isn’t necessarily isolated.  We got to plenty of countries where elections happened peacefully and where political debates are lively.

As youngsters, however, my sister and I also had the chance to travel and live in South America at a time when election results were often in dispute and transfer of power wasn’t always peaceful. Widespread poverty (and depending on the year, dangerous conditions) was a common symptom of the political instability, and I have memories of walking with my mother in Lima, Peru and noticing many beggars parked between street vendors.  My parents still maintain the friendships they made there, and I remember hearing occasionally of one friend or another having to leave the country quickly even after a relatively peaceful election.  It was anything but mundane.

I thought of that today as I took the kids to Bob’s Diner in Manchester Vermont for a treat.  Always hopping, it was a mob scene on this holiday morning.  The bulk of the dining population was of the tourist variety, but – as always- there was variety.

There were well-heeled flatlanders in perfectly coordinated ski pants and jackets sitting shoulder to shoulder with burly plow drivers in their customized jackets.  There were Obama stickers on pickup trucks and Ron Paul and Romney stickers on slick new SUV’s from ‘down south’.  There were T-shirts with slogans ranging from the peaceful to the political to the profane, and it was just another Monday at Bob’s.  Even after an election season completely characterized by cynicism and bitterness, even in the face of an increasingly strident debate on gun rights (and privacy and religious rights), this confluence of humanity – with its politics on its sleeve in some cases – was not only civil, but jovial.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that the Tree of Liberty would need to be refreshed with the bloom of patriots.  I don’t question his courage or passion for his country, and I know he and his suffered to sow the seeds of our liberty.  I also don’t think those words were written without an understanding of their potential consequences.  But Jefferson did come of age in an era when duels at twenty paces were still considered a reasonable way to settle a dispute.

Now, when I look at events around the world and see the human consequences of refreshing each country’s soul by pitting citizen against citizen, I know there has to be a better way.  And, listening to one of Bob’s cheeky waitresses cheerfully debate the issues of the day with a hot-headed regular, hearing their banter rise above the clattering of dishes and cries of ‘Order up!’, I realize that we have it, and it starts with hotcakes and coffee and a side of home fries.  It may be mundane, but there’s something to be said for that too.

Waiting for Winter

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Saturday was the first day of basketball practice for Thing2.  Our basketball Saturdays are a lot like the rest of our Saturdays, except they start a lot earlier.  The odd thing is, that even with the addition to our Saturday to-do’s (a run to the dump, breakfast at Bob’s, and beyond), the early start to the day often leads to a fuller Saturday.  Yesterday, however, the extra hours let us do just enough to feel a little incomplete when we finally headed home.

No one thing on our schedule carved out that hollow feeling.  At the end of the day, however, we all felt it.  We’re still waiting for winter.

This is one of our only weekends without company or somewhere to go, so we decided to take care of a home improvement shopping enjoying some holiday activities.  So, once we got tired of the traveling circus act that is Thing1 and Thing2 (our 12 and 6 year-old boys) at a hardware store, we decided to head to a holiday craft fair hosted by a friend before cutting down our Christmas tree at the local tree and wool farm.

As we drove from Vermont to Saratoga, NY and back, we all noted the holiday decorations, but there was one glaring omission from the scenery.    We mind it too much on our drive, but as we shed our jackets between stores, it began to nag at all of us a bit more.  We passed a bank broadcasting the forty degree temperature, and the Big Guy broke the ice.

“It’s downright balmy,”  he commented as we passed a barren field.

“It’s the third mud season this year,” I replied.  He nodded and we both sighed.  We noted the mugginess again as we went to the craft fair, initially hunching in that traditional winter pose to protect our body heat and then standing upright as we remembered it just wasn’t that cold outside.

We’ve been having this conversation off and on for a few weeks – as I suspect, based on national forecasts, much of the country is.  But when you live in a state that depends on winter weather for its economy and even part of its identity, a December that isn’t that cold outside is an event – and not always a pleasant one.  This is the second un-Vermonty December in a row, and the kids who are old enough to participate in the statewide Junior Instructional Ski Program (JISP) have already been watching the skies and the weather forecasts for weeks.  There are even signs at some borders bidding visitors to Vermont to pray for snow.

My own life revolves around winter more than I care to admit.  I’m waiting for the snow pack that will slowly trickle down the mountain in the spring and summer, preventing me from needing to water my garden most of the year.  I’m waiting for the opportunity to bundle up the kids for the guaranteed energy burn that only a few hours in two feet of snow can bring.  I’m waiting to strap on my snow shoes and breathe in mountain air made more crisp by a coating of powder sugar.

But, hoping that getting our Christmas tree up would get all of us feeling more like winter, we decided to stop at the nearby tree farm on the way home.  Like most transactions around here, this one began with a lengthy (according to the kids) conversation with the farm owner about mutual acquaintances, the scuttlebutt from the country store, where the deer are, how much were the trees, and, of course, the weather.  This time it was the farmer who brought up the 800 pound snowplow in the room, and the mere mention of the missing snow made all of us a bit somber.

The Big Guy and Thing1 ditched their coats as we trudged out to the foggy, soggy field, sizing up the trees.  The farmer followed us offering his opinion here and there, and we all took turns sawing the chosen tree.  Upright, it had looked like the perfect size for our living room, but after we felled it and the Big Guy and the farmer hoisted it on the car, we realized it was huge.

Dwarfed by its cargo, our family wagon looked like something out of ‘Christmas Vacation’, and we all started to laugh.  It took twenty minutes to get the tree secured and say our goodbyes, and by the time we pulled away from the tree farm we were all laughing.

The paved road quickly disappeared, letting us know we had arrived in our hometown.  The Big Guy drove slowly, mindful of the pointy projectile on our roof.  The muddy mess that is our town road sobered us a bit, but as we passed a friend’s house, Thing1 brightened.

“That’s the best sledding hill in the world!”  he proclaimed pointing to the mountain behind our friend’s house.  “It’s a huge climb, but it’s totally worth it.  I can only do it five or six times before I have to come in for a drink. (I want to be 12 again someday.)”

“That’s a great party,” the Big Guy responded, and we smiled in anticipation of the annual sledding party in early that usually marked our last big winter social event.  Then both of us quieted, remembering that there had been no party last year.

“I hope there’s one this year,”  said Thing1, resting his chin on his hand as he gazed out the window.  We said little else the rest of the way home.

Traffic Jam

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Tuesday day before Thanksgiving, and the house is almost ready.  The kids’ room is at Defcon 2 (down from a catastrophic level four), most of the laundry’s done (that was going to get done before Sunday), beds are made and ready for guests, and I only have the shopping left to do.  I dropped the kids at school and turned south on Route 7A going out of Arlington.  I got to the turn off for the highway but, not seeing anyone in front of me, decided to stay on the slower road to Bennington.

A meandering two lane country road dotted with  a few farms and the occasional white-steepled church, Historic 7A (as it’s known in the tour guides) is even more scenic as the November morning brushed the trees and meadows with a muted pink and green frost.  Usually I’m too preoccupied with to-do’s to absorb the view, but this is my last bit of quiet before a long weekend of entertaining, and I am determined to enjoy the drive – as long as it doesn’t take too long.

But I’m coming around a curve, about to set the cruise control when the back end of a decelerating dump truck magically appears in front of me, interrupting my view and my plan.  He continues to slow down, and I roll my eyes.  What now?  We are now crawling forward, but my curiosity is short-lived.

A few seconds later we get to the cause of the slowdown. It is a single flagger directing traffic around another orange-vested road worker. On the side of the road, parked in someone’s yard is an orange VTrans pickup.  And then I see the flagger has a couple helpers.

As the flagger steps out into the road, a couple of Rhode-Island Reds appear, inspecting the scuffed dirt around the parked pickup.

The dump truck and I slowly down a bit more, but we don’t even stop. I watch the dump truck weave carefully around the flag man, and the flag man waves.  The dump truck driver probably doesn’t know the guy.  I don’t either, but a second later I pass and wave too.

I accelerate out of the last curve.  The car speeds up, but I’ve completely slowed down.