Some Gifts of Spring

We are starting to move outward now. The turning point came a few days before Easter, when I looked outside one morning and saw that there was more bare ground than snow visible through the window.

Later that morning, I took my two youngest daughters and several friends to the playground in East Middlebury for the first time in about six months. The playground was hopping with caregivers and their young charges. As is always the case on those first warm days of spring, I saw people whom I hadn’t laid eyes on since the fall, people I’d nearly forgotten during our long hibernation.

We ate both snack and lunch outside that day. Then, while my daughters napped, I pulled the gardening book down from its shelf with some trepidation. Much to my relief, it told me that since I live in a cold climate, I can safely leave most of the gardening work until May. I left the book on the kitchen counter to refer to in another month, when the ground is thawed and dry and the chance of snow is almost zero.

As if to justify my leisure, the temperature dropped 30 degrees and it snowed the next day, and the day after that.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

Saying No to Lucky

It’s important to learn how to say “No.”

I know, I know, you think, rolling your eyes. C’mon, tell me something new.

Here’s my best shot at something new: I’d wager that not many people have been taught to say “No” by Lucky the Leprechaun.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.

On Summer Activities, Economic Development, and Overthinking

Because I have children who still live at home, and because the work I do does not (yet) contribute to our household expenses, the standard description for me is: “stay-at-home mom.”

I find this description inaccurate at best. I may be a mother who often stays at home, but the truth is that I spend an awful lot of time trying to get my children out of the house.

As much as I love my children, I never cry on the first day of school. In fact, the happiest moment of my day is usually when the mudroom door closes behind my husband and three-quarters of my daughters at 7:45 every weekday morning, and I put our fourth daughter down for her morning nap. The house is quiet, and for one blissful hour I am free to do whatever I want – even if that just means folding laundry (as it often does.)

I cry on weekends. I cry on snow days. And as summer vacation approaches, I feel panic setting in.

Summer vacation is approaching.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.

On March and the In-Between

Even if you love winter, March can feel like a waiting room: You sit, in between where you’ve been and where you’re going, trying to focus your eyes on a tabloid (if you’re lucky) or one of those dull preventive health magazines filled with recipes and uplifting stories about B-list celebrities. Either way, you can’t focus on the magazine because every time the door opens you look up expectantly, wondering if it’s finally time.

March can feel beside the point, in-between.

The other day, I stopped our minivan at the bottom of our driveway in order to put a letter in the mailbox. As I made my way carefully across the sheet of solid ice standing between the U.S. Postal Service and me, I noticed something different. That noise…was that – birdsong? I slid back over to the minivan and opened all the windows, sending a blast of single-degree air into my daughters’ faces.

“Girls, listen!” I shouted. “Hear that? Those are birds!”

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

Into the Woods

If there’s such thing as a “real Vermont winter” this is the first that our family has experienced, four years after moving here.

Massachusetts and Maine may have had it worse, but since I haven’t left Vermont since November, I really can’t say for sure. I’d suggest that once you’ve reached over a foot of snow on the ground and double-digits under 0 degrees Fahrenheit on the outdoor thermometer, any comparison seems like senseless posturing.

We’ve had both of those conditions — the snow and the temperature — here in Vermont, with no relief for a very long time. It snows, and it snows again, the fresh snow piling atop the old because the temperature hasn’t exceeded freezing in over a month.

I love it.

The reason I love this winter weather can be summed up in three words: cross-country skiing.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

Vermont Country

As a Christmas gift this year, my husband sent me away.

I mean that in the best sense: Aware that I could use a solid chunk of quiet and solitude (that’s a euphemism for “escaping the children”), my husband did some research and booked me a two-night stay at St. Joseph’s Dwelling Place, a retreat center just outside of Ludlow, Vermont.

St. Joseph’s Dwelling Place offers both guided and unguided retreat options. I chose the unguided option, which meant I had a comfortable room all to myself in a large, quiet house set on six acres at the foot of Okemo Mountain. There was only one other guest at the house the weekend I was there, and I never saw her. I read (E. B. White’s book of essays about Maine, One Man’s Meat, which was excellent company), I wrote, I took two cross-country ski jaunts, and I luxuriated in the peace and quiet.

But this is not about my time in the retreat center, restorative as it was; this is about what happened when I left the retreat center.

To continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent, just click here!

For Shame

shame, n 1 a: a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety [Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1986]

***

I am not a member at the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op.

There! It’s out!

I have absolutely nothing against the Co-op. It’s a lovely place filled with lovely food — much of it locally produced — and staffed by lovely people. I do, on occasion, shop at the Co-op; just last week I needed two cans of garbanzo beans and I had only one child with me and the Co-op was on my way.

When I took my two cans to the register, the clerk asked, “Are you a Co-op member?” I hung my head in shame and mumbled, “No.” She looked disappointed in me.

Most people are shocked to discover that I’m not a member at the Co-op. It’s a topic that’s come up a lot lately in conversations with friends and acquaintances from all walks of life: new neighbors, my husband’s colleagues at Middlebury College, and life-long Vermonters. We’ll be discussing some food product or recipe, and they’ll say, “Oh, you can get that at the Co-op. You’re members at the Co-op, right?”

When I confess my outsider status, jaws drop. Conversation screeches to a halt. At last, broken by their silent judgement, I start babbling an explanation.

Click here to learn why I don’t belong to the Co-op — and other shameful secrets — in my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent!

Radon: It’s a Gas!

Like most parents of young children, my husband and I block out the days between Christmas and New Year’s Day — dates that correspond roughly with the school winter vacation. During this two week period, we set aside our to-do lists, check email less frequently, and abandon our typical schedule in order to devote ourselves to more sacred pursuits, like celebrating the birth of Jesus, decorating candy canes to look like reindeer, and breaking up sibling quarrels that erupt every five minutes over nothing at all.

I never return to my to-do list so enthusiastically as I do when school resumes after the holidays. Buoyed along by the fresh energy of the new year, I’m ready to accomplish things that have nothing to do with whether the Calico Critters are distributed justly. Rarely am I so content to stay indoors and catch up on correspondence, tackle home improvement projects, and cook gallons of soup.

This new year, my husband wanted to tackle something that’s been on his to-do list since 2011: He wanted to fight radon.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent!

On Writing, the Darkest Day, and the New Year

Last week, my oldest daughter found a copy of our Christmas letter – the breezy family update that I’d slapped together to send out with our Christmas cards. She sat down at the kitchen table to read it, without my knowledge. (It’s still new and surprising that there are members of our family who can read besides my husband and me, and I’ve yet to take the necessary precautions.)

I found her there, sitting at the table, laughing and laughing. This girl is not a big laugher; at seven years old she’s become shy and serious, with a tendency to ask questions that hint at the beginnings of existential angst (“Mommy, do you ever feel lonely?”) She’d never before read anything I’ve written. But there she was, laughing out loud over something I’d written about our family.

In that moment, I remembered why I write. I also thought, If I never write another word, it’s okay; this is enough.

Click here to continue reading the final “Faith in Vermont” column of 2014 over at The Addison Independent.

Powerless

Life changes with the phone’s ring and a single recorded sentence:

“Good morning, this is Peter Burrows, ACSU Superintendent.”

That’s the call we received at roughly 5:30 AM last Wednesday. These calls always seem to come when I’m already up, dressed, and halfway through washing my face. Which leads to the conundrum: Do I go back to bed fully clothed? Will this be the day when my children finally sleep late?

The call informed us that school would be closed for the day: the first snow day of the 2014-15 school year. What had started as an unimpressive slushy rain the day before had turned to thick, wet snow overnight. The snow would continue, on and off, for the next two days, ultimately dropping about 16 inches in our yard.

So, once again, I was forced to confront my ambivalence about snow days. This ambivalence started only when I became a parent; as a child — and as a childless working adult — snow days were welcome chances to relax and recreate. Now that I’m at home with young children, snow days don’t affect my movements or my work as much as they once did. Instead, snow days bequeath me four children — two of whom are usually in school all day and one of whom attends morning preschool — all day long.

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