My Summer By the Pool

“If you value your life, don’t do hockey,” they said.

I heard that advice from multiple parents after our family moved to Vermont. Never mind that our daughters were still too young to participate in organized sports, or that they’d never once displayed the slightest interest in or aptitude for hockey; the advice came unsolicited: “Hi, I’m Susie. Don’t let your kids play hockey!”

I believe the warnings against hockey stem from a combination of the heavy and expensive equipment, the rigorous practice schedule, and the hours of weekend travel to tournaments. But I can’t be sure, because I don’t know any hockey families personally — perhaps because they’re either in the throes of or recovering from hockey season.

Nobody warned me about swimming.

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

Lessons From This School Year

As I sit at my computer to write this, there is exactly one more week of school in Addison County; when this column appears, my daughters will have been on summer vacation for approximately 15 hours. Between now and then there are picnics and potlucks and packing up. My oldest daughter’s Kindergarten will have “Move Up Day,” when she will meet her new First Grade teacher. My second daughter will participate in a preschool graduation ceremony, during which we will celebrate her ability to play, do crafts, and sit in a circle for 15 minutes. (Really, I see no need to continue her education.)

This year — our first in the Addison County public school system — has been a wonderful school year for our family. In August, we’ll send two daughters to public school, while their younger sister begins preschool; we’ve gotten our toes wet, and soon we’ll be wading in deep. So now seems like a good time to reflect on the valuable lessons our family has learned this school year.

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

The Bugs Are Back!

A little less than a month ago, in early May, it finally felt safe to declare Addison County in a state of full-blown spring. All the signs were there: we’d stopped burning wood in the stove at night, we’d cut our getting-out-the-door time in half by omitting hats and gloves and boots (and sometimes even coats!), we’d hung the hammock and put the potted plants back outside, and we’d replaced the screens on the doors and windows. Whenever we returned home from errands or school, our daughters raced from the minivan right into the yard to blow bubbles, climb rocks, chalk the walkway, ride bikes — and even, one glorious afternoon, frolic on the Slip-n-Slide.

For a full week, our family reveled in the renewal of our outdoor paradise. Then, one afternoon, I noticed that small, black things were flying around my head. As I waved them away with my hands, I saw that my daughters were also flailing their arms in front of their faces. And then, I felt that old, familiar pinch; heard that old, familiar buzzzzz — along with my daughters’ shrieks as they raced for the house.

Oh yeah, THAT.

Click here to continue reading about our springtime visitors to Vermont in my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Indpendent.

Teaching Our Kids to Cheer

A couple of weeks ago, our phone rang right after dinner. On the other end was a voice belonging to a 7-year-old boy we know.

“I was wondering if you could come to my baseball game this Friday?” he asked.

He’d recently started practicing with our town’s Little League baseball team, the Middlebury Meteors. That Friday they’d be playing their first game, against the Cornwall Cougars.

When a 7-year-old asks you to attend his first baseball game, you go to the game.

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

Country Mice in Boston

You don’t need me to tell you that it’s been a particularly long, cold, hard winter. Everyone’s saying it, and when they do I nod and roll my eyes in agreement – but the truth is, this winter didn’t bother me very much. I was just grateful for some decent snow to play in (and grateful to not be pregnant this year so that I could play in the snow without worrying about falling). Also, when you have four young children, you’re not going anywhere anyway; being housebound by cold and snow is just like the rest of the year, only with a different view.

All the same, when our oldest daughter’s spring vacation arrived in late April, I was really starting to feel the effects of not going anywhere. So I made plans to go somewhere: Boston.

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

An Ode to Bag Balm

I read somewhere that the best way to tell a person’s true age is to look at their hands. Thanks to the intersection of our vanity with innovations in technology and medicine, it’s now possible to camouflage signs of age in the body, face, hair, and teeth. But as far as I know, not much can be done about wrinkled, mottled, vein—y hands.

Hands may just be the real Picture of Dorian Grey.

According to my hands, I am roughly 102 years old. I imagine that if, somehow, Mt. Mansfield were to erupt today, and my body was preserved, Pompeii-style, in ash, the future archaeologists who unearthed me would say: “Well, according to the hands on this one, she lived a long, hard life. It also appears that, at some point, she was attacked at high speeds by a stack of crisp paper, and she defended herself using only her hands.”

Click here to continue reading my “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent, and discover my hand-care solution!

Meeting Your Meat

*A cuteness bonanza. (Photo by Fiona Gong)*

Last month, we loaded our four daughters into the minivan on a Sunday afternoon and drove to Duclos & Thompson Farm in Weybridge to see the new lambs and piglets.

This was our first time at the Duclos & Thompson open barn, an event that for many local families is an annual sign of spring — much like the appearance of sap buckets on the maple trees, or red-breasted robins, or removing your snow tires. Like those other rites of spring, it’s quite possible that the new lambs and piglets will arrive when there’s still snow on the ground; that March weekend, there was a mountain of snow next to the Duclos & Thompson barn that served as a secondary diversion for all the children present.

The primary attraction, of course, was inside the barn: lambs! Two floors worth of black and white lambs sleeping, eating, frolicking, and climbing atop the bigger sheep. So many lambs, plus a little pile of piglets nursing on their mama. It was a cuteness bonanza.

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

Use Side Entrance

In two weeks, my parents will move to Vermont from the town in Northern Virginia where I grew up, their home for 37 years.

More on that later; for today all you need to know is their new front door in Vermont needs work. Everyone – the real estate agent, the sellers, the contractors they consulted – agreed that the door should be repainted or replaced, and that the doorstep needs to be repaired.

My parents told me about the front door as they were listing all of the work to be done on their new Vermont house, which isn’t really “new” at all; it’s a 1928 beauty that requires the kind of upkeep you’d expect of an 86-year-0ld house. But when they mentioned the front door, I said, “Don’t worry too much about that; nobody’s going to be coming through your front door, anyway.”

Click here to find out why in my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

Local Politics: House of…Cushions?

*“How do you feel about year-round school?”*

My husband and I have been enjoying “House of Cards,” the Netflix political drama starring Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, the ruthless, manipulative House Majority Whip turned Vice President, and Robin Wright as his equally manipulative wife, Claire. According to this series, there are no redeeming characters inside the Beltway. Washington politics is a series of dirty backroom dealings in which everyone uses everyone else; even people who appear sympathetic are just playing nice to get their own way.

With my political education up-to-date by way of television, I felt totally prepared for last week’s Town Meeting Day.

Click here to continue reading about local Vermont politics, as seen through the lens of “House of Cards,” in my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

The other day, I took my four-year-old daughter on a long-overdue “Mommy Date” to spend her birthday money at Ben Franklin. (Long-overdue because her birthday was in July, which is what happens when you’re the second child of four). After our shopping trip, we stopped by Otter Creek Bakery for cookies. As I stood at the counter to order, my daughter sat at a table playing happily with the unicorn figurine she’d just bought.

“Mommy,” she called to me across the VERY crowded bakery, “guess what? This unicorn’s a girl!”

“Really? That’s great!” I answered vaguely. The two older ladies at the next table beamed over at her.

“YES!” she yelled back, “I could tell because she doesn’t have a [insert term for male anatomy here]!”

The entire bakery went silent. Then the guffaws started and I thought – not for the first time – That’s it; now we have to move.

Continue reading in this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.