“If we’d really thought this through, we probably wouldn’t be going,” I said to my husband as we loaded up the minivan for our family’s final trip of the summer. 

We’d agreed to the trip – four days in New York’s Finger Lakes region with our friends Jeff and Annie and their three children – in the flush of good feeling following a wonderful Vermont visit together in February. 

Jeff and Annie are those rare friends with whom we’ve only become closer after marriage, children, and moves. I went to college with them both, and we all ended up in New York City after graduation. There were some lean years when we lived on opposite coasts, but since our families reconnected at our 20^th college reunion and we discovered that our children were kindred spirits (my children recently declared their offspring, “honorary cousins”), we’ve tried to get together regularly.

The Covid pandemic interfered for a couple of years, but this past winter we gathered for a long weekend and picked up right where we’d left off.

“Let’s do a trip together this summer,” we gushed as we hugged goodbye. 

Click here to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.