Friends

Life in the woods/country has already turned me into a homicidal maniac. To explain: I have no problem with bugs (now, rodents are another issue, but that’s a topic for another day). I’ve spent my whole life taking the approach that spiders are good because they eat bugs, and thus benevolently trapping & shooing as many spiders and bugs back into nature as I could. I felt like such a benign, evolved human being. But now I realize that it’s easy to feel that way when you live in suburban/urban environments. After about a week of living in Vermont, it was clear that taking this attitude would swiftly result in our house becoming one big spiderweb. While I still have no intrinsic problem with spiders, they need to not be here. And they’re of no use to me, anyway; we have SO many other bugs, any eating the spiders could do would be a drop in the bucket. So we’ve become a family of ruthless bug killers, right down to Campbell “The Ant Crusher” Gong.

That said, earlier this week I noticed a medium-sized brown spider that had spun a web in the little crack between our sink and refrigerator. She was just hanging out, watching me wash the breakfast dishes. For some reason, she seemed different — peaceful, still. She also seemed touchingly optimistic; her choice of location was definitely NOT a hot spot for bug catching, and for the better part of the week, I never saw a single bug in her web. So I didn’t kill her, and I stopped Erick from doing away with her, too. Because I’d just been reading Fiona Charlotte’s Web, I gave her the completely unoriginal name of Charlotte.

And there she stayed, keeping me company while I did various domestic tasks in the kitchen. We seemed to have an understanding. I wasn’t expecting much from her (although I did entertain some fantasies of coming down in the morning to find “Radiant!” or “Some Wife & Mother” scrawled out in web over the sink). But it felt nice to have some company during the quiet summer afternoons when all the girls were napping.

This morning, she was gone. We haven’t seen her all day, and I’m not expecting her to return. Because I haven’t encountered any new spider corpses, I’m assuming the best. I hope that Charlotte finally wised up to the futility of trying to catch bugs between the sink and the fridge, and has moved on to a more strategic location. I wish her happy hunting.

It’s a week when we’ve been thinking a lot about friends and loss; this morning, Erick attended the memorial service of one of the first friends we made in Middlebury. Adam was 39 years old. He was the husband of one of Erick’s new colleagues in the Middlebury Economics Department, the full-time stay-at-home dad of two boys ages 2 and 4, and a volunteer firefighter. Just that description probably gives you an idea of what an exceptional person he was. I first met Adam and Caitlin back in April at a potluck that the Econ Department hosted while Erick and I were house-hunting. They were so warm and welcoming, the kind of people whom we instantly felt would become friends. When he learned that our two oldest girls were the same ages as their sons, Adam invited us to participate in a little summer soccer league that he was putting together for toddlers.

When we moved to Middlebury, Adam was one of the first people I saw; the girls and I ran into him and his boys at the Ben Franklin’s, and he gave me a big welcome hug. The next week we started attending the weekly “Lil’ Kickers Summer Soccer” that he organized, which the girls have loved and which has directly resulted in us meeting most of the families of preschool children in town. When my parents took the girls to soccer one week, they commented on how Adam knew every child (roughly 30 each week) by name and encouraged each one of them.

Adam and Caitlin invited us to a 4th of July barbeque at their house. There, they told us that they were heading off on a trip to visit family down South. Two weeks later, we learned that they’d been in a terrible head-on collision in Alabama, and that Adam was dead.

So our hearts have been very sad this past week. We’re sad that we won’t have a chance to get to know Adam better, to have him be a part of our life here. We’re deeply sad for Caitlin and their two boys (please pray for them if you think of it), and of course this hits pretty close to home since they’re in the same life stage as we are. And the girls are sad, especially Fiona, who’s at an age to really understand. This is her first close encounter with death. She was with me when Erick called with the news. She sat quietly, and then said, “Mommy, I was really looking forward to seeing Mr. Adam at soccer when they got back, because I really liked him.” All of those trite, corny, but true sayings, like hug your loved ones every day and enjoy the time you have with your friends are on our minds these days.

On the positive side, it’s been amazing to see the speed and grace with which both the town and the college have responded to this tragedy. There is already a website set up to provide Caitlin and the boys with meals and other needs, and some 300 people attended the memorial service this morning. And we will always have Adam to thank for making us feel instantly welcome in Middlebury and for introducing us to people who are already becoming new friends. Hopefully we’ll be able to pay his warmth forward some day.

I know this is heavy stuff for a blog that most of you probably read to see cute photos of our kids. We are all well and continuing to enjoy a magical summer, and I promise an upbeat post very soon. Here’s a cute picture of Erick and the girls after raspberry picking to tide you over for now.

And here’s the quote from The Return of the King to which we often refer when talking to our girls about tragedies for which we have no answer:

Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: ‘Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?’

We believe that yes, it will.

First Visitors

What do you get when you combine this:

With this?The answer: a whole lot of crazy cousin fun!

This week we were graced by our first official visitors (I say first “official” because our visitors thus far — Nana, Boom, and Uncle Chris — have been more like slave labor): my Aunt Carolyn, cousin Liz, her husband Jeff, and their three girls, Ainsley, Maren, and Fallon. At ages 7, 5, and 3, Ainsley, Maren, and Fallon are just about the perfect playmates for the Gong girls. It’s been almost a year since we’ve seen them, but everyone picked up right where we left off.

As the alpha cousin, Ainsley doesn’t abuse her position; it’s fair to say that all the Gongs love Ainsley.

Fiona and Maren seem to have a special connection. Longtime followers of “The Pickle Patch” will remember them from a year ago:Here they are one year later:

One of the highlights of this visit for our family was that it gave us an excuse to celebrate Campbell’s 2nd birthday party. Although she won’t actually be 2 until July 25, since we just moved to Vermont and don’t yet have a large crew of same-age friends, we jumped on the chance to celebrate with 3 other little girls. Since Campbell is a huge fan of Dora the Explorer, we planned a Dora party for her complete with lots of Dora-style tasks, including “pin the petal on the flower…”…and “rescuing wiggly worms and leaping lizards from the mucky mud” (really chocolate pudding).

Of course, the end goal of all these tasks was to reach the birthday cake:And of course, because this is Campbell we’re talking about, she was more interested in touching the lit candles than in blowing them out!But it was a lovely day for her, and we were thrilled to be able to celebrate her two years of life with her beloved cousins!Because this week was the Middlebury Festival on the Green, we enjoyed a picnic and performance by the No Stings Marionettes. This also gave the girls a chance to model their new tie-dye shirts, made under the guidance of Aunt Carolyn the day before. Even Georgia had one!

The girls with their amazing Nanas (aka the Meader Sisters):

And as if that wasn’t enough fun, immediately after the festival we drove up to Shelburne for a tour of the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory.

We loved every minute of this visit, including many other special moments that we didn’t capture in photos, and we hope to see our cousins again soon and often! But for now, I’ll leave you with a question to ponder: which is more intimidating, this Wild Bunch… or THIS wild bunch?

Before and After

I’ve mentioned in previous posts and on Facebook that we’ve spent some time re-painting two rooms in our new home, and I’ve had a couple (well, at least one) requests for pictures. You speak, I listen; here you go:

The first room that Erick and I ever painted (and by Erick and I, I really mean Erick, me, my parents, and my cousin Chris) was the girls’ bedroom. Here it is in its original form:

Not bad, but not exactly appropriate for three little girls. Here it is, de-wallpapered and painted “Potpourri Green”:

We still have some things to do to make the room more fun and cute, but the girls have been thrilled with it.

Filled with confidence in our new-found painting skills, Erick and I decided we could tackle the second room that desperately needed a makeover, the rec room. In its original form, this room was what I can only call a “Floral Man-Cave.” Don’t believe that’s possible? Check it out:

We wanted to turn this room into a fun space that could be easily adapted as the various definitions of “recreation” change for our family. So, right now it’s basically been taken over by toys:

But there’s also a nice quiet reading space, pictured above. We’re particularly proud of this room because Erick and I truly painted it ourselves, which involved a weekend of fairly major logistics as we juggled children and painting. Very rewarding in the end!

Finally, while we’re on the topic of “before and after,” I’d like to share the following item from our local “Addison County Eagle” weekly newspaper:If it’s hard for you to read the text, let me fill you in: the photo on the left is a block in Middlebury in 1900. The photo on the right is the same block today. Now, ignoring the horse and buggy in the foreground of the first picture, do you see the difference?

Me neither.

This is yet another charming facet of this small town. Apparently there hasn’t been much major development in over 100 years, yet somehow, whatever minor changes have occurred are worth taking the time to reflect upon.

An American Childhood

Here is how our Chinese/Italian/Anglo-Saxon girls spent the holiday weekend:

On Friday they had soccer (origin: China). But perhaps I should clarify: “Lil’ Kickers Summer Soccer” bears little resemblance to what one would traditionally think of as soccer; rather, it is an informal group of 30 2- to 5-year-olds who kick soccer balls around a field for an hour. The only rule, which is frequently broken, is that no hands are allowed. But there are t-shirts (made in Nicaragua).

That afternoon we set off for the “big city” of Burlington, where we had to return some items. While strolling around the Church Street district, it was clear how quickly our girls have become small town hayseeds when they begged me to take their picture with this exciting store mannequin at The Gap (a store native to California, like the Gong Girls).

Famished from so much excitement, we headed to GoLoco for some “Mexican” food (quotations because I doubt that the food at GoLoco would pass muster as Mexican in California).

On Saturday, we took our beloved Japanese minivan, “Greenie,” to the pristene shores of Lake Dunmore.

Following an afternoon of swimming and a picnic dinner, we repaired to the Kampersville Deli for some ice cream (origin: Persia).

And then it was time for our all-American girls to dance. On the actual 4th of July, we enjoyed a cookout with some new friends, but were so busy having fun that we neglected to take pictures. Happy Independence Day to all!

Little Pickles in the Big Woods

It took a while to get their beds unpacked....

We have now been residents of Middlebury, Vermont for almost 3 very happy weeks. We’ve all loved settling in to our new house and exploring the area, and the girls could not have had an easier transition. Herewith, five lessons from our first month as Vermonters:

1. We live in a small town. During our first couple of weeks here, it was necessary to have assorted contractors in and out of the house. It was almost impossible to end one of these visits without having become acquainted with the life history of the plumber, painter, glassman, etc. Perhaps most eye opening was the realization, while conversing with Bronwyn the decorator during one of our recurrent visits to Countryside Paints, that the contractors had all been talking about us! So, in a relatively brief period of time, we’ve apparently acquired a reputation as “The Gongs who need some work done on their house.” I guess there are worse reputations to have, and I hope we can avoid them!

As many of you know, I wasn’t sure how we’d cope with the complete absence of any of the chain stores (i.e. Target) upon which I’d come to rely during my time in urban areas. We are coping quite well, and have logged in some productive visits to the town’s enormous Hannaford’s grocery store, a couple of lovely hardware/paint stores, the dollar store, and an amazing Ben Franklin’s (basically an old-style 5-and-dime). But last weekend we did take a trip up to Burlington (the “big city” in Vermont, pop. 42,000) to visit a mini-mall that boasts Wal-Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Home Depot, among other things. It was an hour drive each way, through the most amazingly pastoral farmland you could imagine. And we were almost giddy to see so many stores in one place that we used to take for granted. We were also happy to head back home. I think we’ll try to make a monthly pilgrimage to Burlington, but it’s nice to live elsewhere.

One nice side of small town life is the friendliness. Within days of our moving in, many of our neighbors had dropped by to introduce themselves. I’m already seeing the same families at the library and around town. Whenever we go to Sama’s Deli for lunch or ice cream, we ALWAYS run into one of Erick’s new colleagues. And on Father’s Day when we took Erick to breakfast at the local diner, we found ourselves seated in between both sets of our next-door neighbors.

2. We live in the woods. For some reason, perhaps because we were house hunting in early April before there were many leaves on the trees, we didn’t realize the degree to which our house is located in the woods. I don’t mean that there are some trees in the yard; I mean that we’re actually located within the administrative boundaries of the Green Mountain National Forest. (Apparently that means that the government can decide to buy the land back if it wishes, so please keep it quiet!). If you look at a satellite photo of Middlebury, there is our street and then there is the vast green swath of forest that sweeps up the Green Mountains. We are pretty much the end of the line out here. And it’s absolutely beautiful. Here’s the daily drive home:

And here’s our backyard:

Notice the little shed, which is meant to be used for useful storage but of course has been claimed by the Gong Girls as a play house.

So far, our little Bay Area girls have been intrepid explorers of the forest.

They’ve already seen so many chipmunks that they’re not even excited by the sight anymore, and they caught a toad in our driveway.

But there are some drawbacks to life in the woods. Build a house in the woods, and pretty quickly the woods will start demanding to be let back in. Our yard is filled with hundreds of little saplings that need to be pulled whenever I go outside so that they don’t turn into large trees someday soon and overtake our residence. And we’ve had to come to grips with the fact that pest control will be a regular part of our lives. Everyone has numerous mosquito bites. We have wasps’ nests.

We have ants. Now, those of you who live in California are used to small ants that travel in armies and march endlessly across a surface. These ants always caused me a great deal of panic, because it seemed like they’d never STOP. Well, Vermont ants are a different breed altogether. They travel alone. They are slow. And they are HUGE. Here’s a sample:

I’m sure there’s some sort of metaphor there about the difference between the East and West Coasts, but I’m not sure what it is.

And, yes folks, looks like we’ll have to deal with my favorite pest of all. But as Erick says, “Mice aren’t pests when you live in the woods.”

3. Owning a house is a LOT of work. This is one of those things that we knew intellectually, but just like “Having kids will make you tired,” you don’t REALLY understand it until you’re living it. I would say that this house is roughly equivalent to having a fourth kid, except that kids occasionally repay your efforts with hugs and smiles. We are essentially first-time homeowners; our only previous experience with ownership involved a 1-bedroom Manhattan apartment on the 28th floor of a building with a full maintenance staff. That just doesn’t count. We now have a 4-bedroom house, complete with a yard. It’s the perfect house for our family and we love it, but it’s kind of kicking our butts. It was by no means a fixer-upper, but we have learned that even a non-fixer-upper will need continual fixing up. Never in my life did I think we’d be up on ladders painting our kids’ room “potpourri green,” but that is exactly what we did one week ago. (And we liked it! We’re painting another room this weekend).

Because we live outside of town, we have our own well for water and our own septic tank. We now have to think about things like replacing the roof, staining the deck, and spraying annually for carpenter ants. Thankfully Erick, the logical economist who places a high value on “utility costs,” is fixing us up with technological tools (like Toodledo, our new way of managing the to-do list) in order to organize our new life. He does this when he should be mowing the lawn, but I’m sure we’ll be more efficient for his efforts in the long run!

4. Vermont is a lovely place to live. I’m sure reality will kick in at some point, but right now it feels like we’re living in some sort of extended camp vacation. The beauty of this place, the slower pace of life (we’ve noticed that there’s NEVER a traffic report on Vermont Public Radio, because there’s simply no traffic here!), and the overabundance of year-round outdoor recreation all contribute to the sense of holiday. And in so many ways, it’s as if someone designed Vermont to be as absolutely family-friendly as possible. Just about any restaurant or store seems to have a basket of toys and books handy. And when we visited the town courthouse to get our drivers’ licenses at the mobile DMV station, we were greeted by security guards who gave the girls pencils, stickers, and coloring books and then directed us to the TOY ROOM across the hall (and after all that, it only took Erick and me 20 minutes to obtain our licenses)!

One of the highlights of the past week was our first visit to Lake Dunmore. This is a pristine lake about 20 minutes from our house, surrounded by quaint cottages and campsites. At one end is a public park complete with a lawn, beach, and playground. The girls splashed to their hearts’ content, and then we had a picnic dinner on the lawn, followed by ice creams at the Kampersville Deli on the way home. It doesn’t get much better than that.

5. We love our family and friends.It was a huge logistical endeavor to move the 5 of us across the country. We could not have done it without the love, support, and prayers of numerous family and friends. Tommy & Celeste Stinson were up way too late with us the night before the movers came helping to disassemble furniture. Several gracious friends dropped by meals at just the right times. Erick’s parents hosted us in their house for 10 days while all of our things traveled cross-country. Aaron & Jessie Beck opened their house to us and enabled us to get our East Coast Minivan (now named “Greenie” by the girls, because it is – you guessed it – green). And then there was our East Coast move-in crew, without whom we’d still be living out of boxes!

Nana and Boom, scrubbers of windows, walls, and ceilings!

Uncle Chris (actually my cousin) -- furniture lifter, painter, and clearly an outlier in our family re. height!

Finally, we feel so grateful for our three girls, who treated this massive life change with an incredible sense of fun and adventure. They amused themselves while their parents were stressed out and distracted by the logistics of the move, they behaved well on a cross-country flight, and they consented to sleep just about anywhere (including all together on an air mattress on the floor) until we could provide them with actual beds and mattresses. Perhaps most of all, our sweet little Georgia, who had the dubious distinction of being born 3 months ago, just when all of these changes were taking place, has been an amazing trooper. She’s grown so much since we got here, and now wants to stand up (holding our hands, of course) more than sit. Much to everyone’s delight, she’s now busting out huge smiles and laughs, and is in serious danger of being spoiled by her sisters.

We are so grateful to all of you!! Tune in for future (and likely, shorter) updates.

A rare picture of all 5 of us at home in Vermont.

It Begins….

Welcome to the new & (hopefully) improved Pickle Patch! A brief explanation of the history: the original Pickle Patch was launched in 2008 so that friends and family could keep up with our firstborn daughter, Fiona, as we spent two months traveling on the East Coast. Three years and two additional daughters later, our family is in the process of the most joyful and intense period of change in our history.

On March 1, our latest daughter arrived: Georgia Elizabeth Hope Gong (5 lbs. 8 oz., 18″ long). Everyone in our family, especially her two big sisters, is in love with this new little girl. Despite my fervent wish for a “laid-back” child, Georgia appears to be a typical Gong girl: alert, strong, very happy, and already (in the words of her big sister) “talking up a storm!”

On May 15, Erick’s five years of intense work were rewarded with a PhD from UC Berkeley’s Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics. If you’re interested, his dissertation was titled, “Essays on the Effects of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.”And if you’re really excited by statistical analysis, you can access his lead paper here.

Erick’s work was further rewarded with an actual job, as Assistant Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, in Middlebury, VT. Therefore, in one week we will move from this house in Berkeley, CA:

to this house in Middlebury, VT:

It’s going to be a big transition for all of us. Having resided the past decade of our lives in cities (NYC and Berkeley), it’s going to be an adjustment to living in small-town New England (Middlebury’s population is roughly 8,200, of which approximately 2,000 are students at the college). To make this point visually, here is our “yard” in California:

And here is our yard in Middlebury:

Having spent the past five years in the Bay Area — or in the case of our daughters, their entire lives — we’re no longer used to experiencing all four seasons (one of which will be particularly frigid and snowy, as I recall!).

And, of course, there’s the matter of our community of friends and family here in the Bay Area, all of whom we will miss desperately.

That said, we’re excited for this move, which we think will be wonderful for our entire family. We love the idea of our girls growing up in a very family-friendly small town, and becoming rugged and outdoorsy in a region that encourages time spent in nature. From what we’ve already seen of Middlebury and our new house, we hope and expect that we’ll spend a good long time there. And that may well be the biggest adjustment. With relatively few breaks, Erick and I have spent most of our adult lives moving, following jobs or graduate degrees. In the past 15 years of my life, I’ve moved 7 times — that’s roughly every 2 years. And I’ve gotten to be pretty good at moving; saying goodbye and pulling up the stakes. So the thought of staying, of committing to a house and a town, is an unknown challenge. (But with a professor’s life comes the nice perk of year-long sabbaticals every 4 years, which we hope to use for international travel to assuage our wanderlust!)
This has been a long-winded way of saying that major life changes seemed to merit a new blog, a fresh start. Aside from the new address and new look, here are a couple of other changes:

While there will still be plenty of stories/photos of the girls, the purpose of this blog is to share the images/reflections/experiences of our entire family’s life in Vermont. So, expect the subject matter to be more broad and be prepared to suffer through some news from the adult world in addition to cute kid pictures.
I was a pretty spotty blog writer before; I now have an additional child and a whole family to move cross-country and get adjusted to a new life. So my goal is to post one new blog entry each month. Any more than that will be a bonus.

Frankly, I’ve always been uncomfortable with the self-centered nature of blogging — aside from our parents, very few people find us even moderately interesting. But as the number of people we’ve moved away from grows even larger, I embrace this blog as a lazy way to keep in touch with absent friends and family. In other words, don’t complain that you never hear from us, just read our blog!!