Beautiful Things: Tri-Valley Transit

For those who observe the Christian liturgical calendar, we are right in the midst of Lent. The Lenten season involves 40 days of preparation before Easter, beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on the sundown of Holy Thursday. Lent is typically observed by reflection, repentance, and fasting, often characterized by a “giving up” of something. For instance, this year my eldest daughter gave up Starbucks (motivated, I suspect, less by the condition of her soul than by the condition of her wallet after buying $7 drinks post-school.)

This year, I’m observing Lent by taking something on as opposed to giving something up. The two practices are two sides of the same coin, really, since taking something on usually involves sacrificing precious time. What I’ve taken on is noticing one beautiful thing each day: anything that makes the world a little more beautiful. I record it in writing, and I’m compiling my daily reflections on beautiful things in a “Book of Beauty” for my family. It’s been a fun, enlightening, and sometimes challenging exercise.

I’ve decided to do something similar in this column: a series in which I highlight the beautiful things in our little corner of Vermont. After a season in which I delved into the difficult issues of middle age, change, and raising teenagers, perhaps it’s time for something a bit more hopeful – especially as we approach mud season after a particularly grey winter, as we approach the upheaval and unpleasantness of an election year, as we continue to grapple with the bad news of the world. You get the picture: We could all use a little beauty.

I’m going to begin with one of my favorite beautiful “secrets” of Addison County: Tri-Valley Transit (TVT.) Formerly known as ACTR, TVT was formed in 2017 when the public transportation systems of Addison, Orange, and Northern Windsor counties merged. It exists as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, funded by an 80/20 mix of state and federal grants and private donations. The mission of TVT is “to enhance the economic, social and environmental health of the communities we serve by providing public transportation services for everyone that are safe, reliable, accessible and affordable.”

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

Why You Should Watch Bluey

One of the effects of our children getting older is the fragmenting of our family.

That sounds dramatic, but although it sometimes makes me (and the youngest siblings) a bit wistful, I’ve come to see that It’s natural and inevitable. During their early years our children ran in a pack: they played together, read the same books, watched the same shows, attended the same activities, listened to the same music, and shared the same friends. But now that we have children ranging in age from 4 to 16, spread across four different schools and countless activities, their pack days are gone. They still love each other and enjoy spending time together when they can, but they are five individuals.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in our regular weekend game of: Let’s watch something together tonight! What shall we watch?

Nobody’s interested in watching what the four-year-old wants to watch, because they’ve seen it all before: educational PBS Kids fare like Wild Kratts and Curious George. Our ten-year-old prefers wholesome American Girl films. Our middle schoolers tend towards fantasy/adventure (Studio Ghibli films are favorites.) And our teenage daughter prefers a good romance. Meanwhile, my husband Erick and I just want to skip the negotiating so that we can get to bed before 11 pm.

During a family visit this summer we were bemoaning the difficulty of agreeing upon crowd-pleasing viewing fare, and my sister-in-law asked, “Have you seen Bluey?”

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

Basketball: A Love Story

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a holiday that originated as the feast day of St. Valentinus, who was beaten and beheaded in Rome on February 14, 269 for refusing to renounce his faith. How this brutal event became a celebration of romantic love involves some tenuous associations and dubious legends: Valentinus performed secret marriages for Roman soldiers when the emperor forbid marriage, Valentinus wrote a letter to a girl he’d healed of blindness signed “your Valentine,” birds begin to couple up around February 14. Valentinus is also the patron saint of epilepsy and beekeepers, neither of which are often associated with romantic love. I suspect a more likely explanation is that by February 14, in the middle of chill grey winter, most of us in the Northern Hemisphere are so starved for a little romance and color that we’ll jump on any excuse for eating chocolate, donning pink and red, and sending cards and flowers to loved ones.

On the other hand, if St. Valentinus was so devoted to his faith and God that he was wiling to undergo imprisonment, torture, and death, maybe he’s not such a bad exemplar of love – not the lovey-dovey smitten-ness we elevate on Valentine’s Day, but a long and deeply rooted devotion.

Like the love my son has for basketball.

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

Driver’s License

I’m not the type of mother who typically makes a big deal out of my children’s major life milestones.

With five children, my brain simply lacks the capacity to keep track of when everyone first walked, talked, and lost their first tooth. This makes for some awkward conversations when my children come to me looking to fill in the gaps of their developmental histories: To the question, “When did I take my first steps?” my answer is, “Uhhh, I can’t remember exactly…. Around the usual time?” And somehow, I have absolutely no memory of my fourth child’s first word.

While everyone else plasters social media with “first day of the new school year” photos featuring all their beaming children lined up on the front steps in matching outfits, holding little printouts of the grades they’re entering…I routinely forget to take a first day of school photo. During the years when I homeschooled my children, it was hard to muster much enthusiasm for a photo-op when at most they were walking up a flight of stairs (often still in their pajamas.) Now the majority of my offspring leave the house for school: different schools, with different start times and different first days. How do I work with that?!?

I think we do a nice job as a family celebrating birthdays and holidays, but we certainly don’t do anything flashy or extravagant. Presents, cards, a cake, the option of a little party with friends or family – what more could you want?

I love my children fiercely, I just don’t like to put all my celebratory energy into a single event, and over time I’ve learned that it’s better that way. The bigger the buildup of expectations, the harder the letdown afterwards – not to mention the increased stress during the event itself.

But just yesterday my eldest daughter got her driver’s license, and to my shock it feels like a really big deal.

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

Looking for the Light

At the close of my last column, in September 2023, I announced that I’d be taking a brief sabbatical and expressed my hope that I’d return to writing early in 2024. Well, here I am!

In that column, I explained my need for a fall sabbatical: Of our five children, three were entering new schools. We’d have one child up in Burlington (one hour to the north), two in Ripton (30 minutes to the southeast), one in preschool (a blessed 10 minutes away), and one child still being homeschooled. There were assorted fall sports, music lessons, and a driver’s ed class. We’d gained a puppy over the summer. And my husband was returning to teaching after a year’s sabbatical.

Those are just the facts.

Here is what the facts don’t tell you:

The facts don’t tell you that, between 2016 and 2019, I homeschooled all my children. One of them told me that they consider those years “The Golden Days” – and they were. We read wonderful literature, wrote, and learned together in the mornings. The afternoons stretched long; I remember them as seen through the window above our kitchen sink: my four oldest children dressed in various costumes, romping in the amber light with the boy next door or assorted friends – there was always a spare child or two around in those days.

The facts don’t tell you what our particular experience of COVID was like, with a baby still recovering from a stint in the ICU for respiratory distress, and isolation from our beloved friends and homeschool community. How our eldest child turned 13 alone in her bedroom, celebrating with the faces of friends arrayed on a laptop screen, and how she spent much of the next year behind her closed door.

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

Favorite Books of 2023

Hello, friends!

It has been…a while. In early September, I took a sabbatical from my regular column — and, by extension, this blog. So much has happened since then, and so much is brewing for the coming year, but for now, I’m going to kick off the New Year with my traditional list of favorite books from the past year.

I’ve been reading less each year. This is partly due to how busy life is, as the kids get older and are heading in so many different directions. But I’ve also been reading longer, more difficult books; the type of books that used to intimidate me. In recent years, I’ve figured, “If not now, when?” and dived into some books that are, to say the least, a commitment. This year, a friend started a book group specifically for reading the classics. As part of that group, I read two 1,000-page novels that took months apiece: Kristin Lavransdatter, by Norwegian author Sigrid Undset, and The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Both are books that I’ve long wanted to read; neither will appear on this list. I’m glad to have read them, but there is just SO MUCH happening in each book that it’s going to take me another year of processing to figure out if I actually LIKE them.

So, without further ado, my picks for the year!

Favorite Fiction

Foster by Claire Keegan

This was such a lovely, quiet, heartrending book. It reminded me a bit of The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, in that what isn’t said is actually louder than what is. I listened to Foster on audiobook, and would recommend that as the best medium because you’ll get the lovely, lilting voice of Aoife McMahon bringing the Irish characters to life.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Last year I read — and loved — Clarke’s epic Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This book is slim where that book was a doorstop, and modern where that book was rooted in Napoleonic England, but Piranesi is just as strangely compelling. It’s like a little mystery that the reader solves along with the narrator, and is probably best read along with someone with whom you can discuss the questions it raises.

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

This is Lewis’s last work of fiction, a re-telling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, and it’s as far from Narnia as one can imagine! It’s a gut-punch look at how we often wound the people we are trying to love, with the best of intentions. I’d recommend it especially for parents of teenagers.

Favorite Non-Fiction

Falling Upward by Richard Rohr

I felt both seen and challenged by Rohr’s vision of the second half of life. This should be required reading for anyone entering middle age.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

Poet Maggie Smith writes in the most gorgeous prose to tell the most awful story of how her marriage fell apart on the eve of the COVID pandemic. It’s filled with incisive insights about womanhood and relationships. Warning: It will likely make you take a VERY close look at your own marriage!

Favorite Book on Christian/Spiritual Topics

Good Enough by Kate Bowler

I absolutely love Kate Bowler: I have loved her previous books, I listen to her podcast episodes as soon as they’re released, and I adore how she bursts out with her infectious laugh in the midst of discussing brutally difficult topics. This book of devotions was a delight.

Favorite Young Adult Book

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Although my children will never totally outgrow some picture books and children’s titles, many of them are gravitating more towards Young Adult (YA) literature these days. I’m not going to lie: This makes me nervous. But it’s also had some particular delights, and John Green is on the top of that list. I have now read all of his books, with the encouragement of my teens. Of the three I read this year, Looking for Alaska was my favorite. Like all of Green’s books, it’s able to hold in tension the beauty, brutality, and humor of life, seen through the eyes of teenagers. (NOTE: The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down are tied for my top favorite Green books, but I didn’t read them this year.)

Favorite Poetry Book

How to Love the World by James Crews

I read one of the poems in this anthology each morning throughout what was a very challenging fall, and that felt like exactly the right thing to do.

So, there you have it! I’m already into some great books in 2024 (now that I’m finally finished with The Brothers Karamazov and feel like I have my reading life back!) Wishing you all a wonderful year, filled with books that stir your hearts towards all that is beautiful and true.

Living the Questions

There was a moment in my mid-20s when I realized that I might not have my own opinions about anything.

A lifelong people-pleaser, I’d become adept at absorbing the ideas and mores of the people around me. On a superficial note, this was manifested when I went to a summer enrichment program in high school with many students from Southern Virginia and returned home one month later with a pronounced Southern accent. On a more serious level, I had lived two decades without really being sure of what I believed.

Looking back, I have compassion on my younger self. Having lived nearly twice as long now, I would never expect a 25-year-old to have completed the final draft of their life’s vision statement (and if they claimed they had, I’d give them a sympathetic pat on the head.)

But back then, I assumed that a marker of maturity was having the answers to life’s questions figured out. If I was doing life correctly, I’d continue collecting fixed opinions until I arrived at some future point where there would be no more uncertainty, just clarity. To be an adult was to be sure.

That looks ludicrous when I put it in writing. But don’t most of us believe this, at some level? How does our culture deal with uncertainty?

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

Things We Don’t Talk About: The Sadness

I first noticed The Sadness over the past couple of years.

It feels like various things at various times: a lump in the throat, a bitter feeling on my tongue, tears springing to my eyes, the sense that if you peered into my chest you’d see a visible crack running down the center of my heart.

It’s not constant, but it washes over me almost daily. And it’s not just sad or difficult events that bring it on. The Sadness can be most pronounced in the midst of a joyful situation: snuggling up and reading a book to a child, celebrating a happy life milestone, walking the dogs down our driveway at sunset, or laughing with my family or friends. Beauty is almost certain to bring it on: art, music, literature or drama that contain deep kernels of truth. Often, I feel The Sadness most strongly when I’m in a crowd of people.

You might think that a certain degree of sadness would be appropriate given our current cultural moment — and you’d be right. A two-year pandemic that amplified anxiety and isolation is likely to increase sadness. The news is almost always bad and divisive; that’s sad. And my daughter just told me that she heard many people are especially sad this summer because of the weather: Here in the Northeast United States, at least, frequent rain and haze from the Canadian wildfires have resulted in fewer sunny days, which may be causing a sort of off-season Seasonal Affective Disorder. (I can’t confirm her source for this.)

But I don’t think The Sadness I’m feeling can be explained entirely by external circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t affected my daily life for almost a year. After discovering my tendency to doom-scroll during the pandemic, I’ve blocked daily access to most news outlets on my devices. And while this summer’s weather has been a bummer, The Sadness predates Summer 2023.

Let me also assure you that I am not clinically depressed. I have a generally positive outlook on life. I get out of bed and function at a productive level day-to-day: I parent multiple children (and pets), keep a house in decent order, work part-time, and maintain close relationships. The Sadness happens regardless of my mood at any given moment.

We don’t talk about sadness much in our culture; it makes us uncomfortable. I live in a country founded on the ideals of progress, the ability to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps, and “the pursuit of happiness.” In a capitalistic society, acquiring money and possessions is supposed to correlate with greater happiness. The booming health and wellness industry promises a plethora of treatments for all our pain and discomfort – physical and mental. Sadness threatens these scripts. If we measure success by how happy we are, and progress by our ability to continually get happier, then sadness has no purpose. It’s something to be avoided at all costs.

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

Why You Should Watch “Barbie”

“This movie is going to change my life,” my 15-year-old daughter stated confidently.

I looked over to where she sat in the passenger seat, swathed in an oversized pink sweatshirt. I was taking her to meet a friend, with whom she would watch the new “Barbie” film. The film that would, apparently, change her life.

I’m getting used to hyperbolic statements from my teenagers, but I still tend to pause and assess the underlying intent before I respond. Is she being serious? Sarcastic? Humorous? Dramatic? If you see me looking confused for the next decade or so, this is why.

“Well, that sounds really…exciting,” I responded slowly. “Although in my experience, life change is a slightly…longer process.”

“Well, this movie’s going to change my life,” she asserted. “When you pick me up, I’ll be a different person.”

When I picked her, she still looked the same.

“So?” I asked, “How was it? Did it change your life?”

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

Things We Don’t Talk About: Parenting Teenagers

I had a dream the other night.

In my dream, I was hiking a trail high up in the Green Mountains. I was with a group of other parents who have children at my children’s middle school — other parents of teenagers. We weren’t walking the way one normally does with a group on a trail, with everyone spaced out comfortably; instead, we shuffled along in one huddled mass. There was no conversation, only murmurs of concern. I recognized this path: I’d walked it before, and I knew it wound its way in hairpin turns along a steep ridge, so that one misstep could send you right off the mountain. But this time I was walking along the trail from the opposite direction, and in the dark. All I could do was put out one tentative foot at a time and feel my way along. “It would be really helpful if we had a flashlight,” I thought to myself.

Upon awakening, I realized that I’d dreamed about what it’s like to be the parent of teenagers.

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