Some Labor Day Meditations

It was cool this morning when I walked the dogs, and the driveway is lined with the flowers of transition: goldenrod and New England asters. When I came back inside, I changed the wreath on our front door from the summer version (purple silk hydrangea flowers) to the fall (twigs and berries.) I spent much of breakfast talking to my children about Labor Day, which is today: why we don’t have a Labor Day parade (I suspect it’s because school has just started up and everyone needs the weekend to rest), why Labor Day exists (to recognize the labor movement and our nation’s workers), and why tradition forbids wearing white after Labor Day (apparently because some wealthy women in the 1880s decided to make an arbitrary rule to separate “old money” people from vulgar newcomers.)

Last week, two of my daughters and I started school: They went as students, and I returned to the classroom as a teacher for the first time in many years. This week, my three remaining children will go back to school. Given all the change that this entails — five children at five different schools (and in five different sports after school), two of those children starting at new schools, and me working full time – we are doing remarkably well. I sit here on the day that symbolizes the divide between summer and fall, and I am deeply grateful for my renewed sense of teaching as a vocation, and for this job that I love already; I am thankful that my children who have started school are happy where they are, and that my children who will begin school tomorrow are feeling ready and excited; and I am beyond fortunate to have a supportive husband and nearby grandparents who make these logistics possible!

But there is loss and there is pain in any transition, no matter how welcome or necessary the change. I am thinking of another type of labor on this Labor Day: the labor of childbirth. The most painful stage of labor – the moment I always thought, “I can’t do this one more second!” – is called “transition.” As excruciating as it is, transition is also the signal that the long-awaited baby is immanent.

Click here to continue reading this month’s column in The Addison Independent.

Looking Backward, Moving Onward

A couple of weeks ago, I spent the afternoon cleaning out the basement. Our basement is unfinished, cement floors and exposed beams, and it has become a repository of everything that we want out of sight.

We keep the off-season holiday decorations in the basement. Some toys that aren’t currently being played with but that may rotate back upstairs when our youngest child is older. Many bins of clothes that are either off-season or waiting for various children to grow into them. A couple of survivalist shelves filled with nonperishable food and medications; a reminder of our COVID days. Our cat’s food, litter box, and bed are in the basement. And, until a couple of weeks ago, there were piles of files.

These files were filled with school books and papers dating back to 2016, when our oldest daughter was 8, our youngest daughter was two, and our son was not yet born. In 2016 we began homeschooling our children while on sabbatical in California, and we kept homeschooling after we returned to Vermont: first two children, then three, then four.

In 2021 we began to stop homeschooling our children: first two children, then three, and after this school year there will be none.

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

Beautiful Things: The Eclipse

Since this is a semimonthly column, I’m in the awkward position of writing about the total solar eclipse two weeks after it happened. This may be far too late, given the pace at which we’re accustomed to receiving our news these days. On the other hand, given the quantity of news we’re accustomed to receiving these days, it may be excellent timing: It comes after the glut of eclipse images, stories, and reflections have faded. (Although, if you’re anything like our family, you still have eclipse glasses lurking in corners of your house and some eclipse cookies going stale on top of the refrigerator.)

Remember the total solar eclipse on April 8? How could I not make that event the final installment of my miniseries on the beautiful things of Addison County?

The eclipse took me by surprise on many fronts. It was a highly anticipated event that I didn’t anticipate, a big deal that I ignored – but it became a big deal despite my inattentiveness. I was vaguely aware of its approach about six months in advance, when some friends who live in Brooklyn told us that they were traveling to Texas in order to place themselves in the path of totality. That seemed like a lot of effort.

When my 13-year-old daughter, who gets wild-eyed with excitement about things like meteor showers and eclipses, started enthusing about the impending eclipse, I responded with caution: I honestly had no idea when, where, or at what time this eclipse might be happening. I didn’t want her to get her hopes up and be disappointed. I nodded and murmured some vaguely interested words. Did I do any research on the subject? I did not.

And so it was that I failed to realize what hundreds of thousands of people had apparently realized years earlier: That our section of Vermont would lie right in the path of totality on the afternoon of April 8.

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

Beautiful Things: Change

My 10-year-old daughter developed a love for gymnastics this year: She has spent the past six months taking back-to-back sessions of the gymnastics classes taught by the unfailingly patient Terri Phelps at the Middlebury Rec Center.

Last month I sat down at my laptop to register my daughter for her spring gymnastics class. I logged in to our family’s Middlebury Parks and Rec account 15 minutes after the registration had opened. Much to my surprise, the class I’d planned to register for was full already, but thankfully there was another option. With the click of a few buttons, my daughter was all signed up.

This rather unremarkable experience sent me spinning back in time to the way gymnastics registration used to be, when we moved to Vermont 13 years ago.

My three older children also took gymnastics at various points during their youth. Back in the “good ol’ days,” Middlebury sports registration happened in person. As I recall, it was always around 5 pm on a weeknight — a totally inconvenient time for any parent getting off work/wrangling children/preparing for dinner. Registration took place at the old gym and town offices, which were housed in a crumbling brick building that had been the first floor of the old Middlebury High School: When the top floor of the high school burned in the 1950s, a new high school was built across town and the town administration settled into the remnants.

A line began forming at least 30 minutes before registration opened, beginning at the folding table where the arbiters of our fates would sit and snaking down the dim tiled hallway. There was a lovely community aspect to this system: You’d see everybody you knew. On the other hand, everybody you knew was under extreme stress: We were all attempting to keep our tired, hungry children under control while haunted by the question, What if we reached the folding table only to find that there were NO SPOTS LEFT for our child in their desired activity? The disappointment of our children and our failure as parents would be on public display.

I don’t recall ever failing to sign my children up for gymnastics under the old, in-person registration system. Nor do I recall exactly when the system changed, although I suspect it was around 2016, when the old town offices and gym were torn down.

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

Beautiful Things: Haymaker Bun

The other day, an online newsletter to which I subscribe included a link to a blog post titled, “Eleven Adventures with my Teenage Girl.” Because I have more than one teenage girl, I clicked the link with interest – and immediately regretted it. This amazing mother wasn’t kidding when she called them “adventures:” She went hiking, rock climbing, and kayaking with her daughter. They took classes in leather bookbinding and aerial gymnastics, and went on a ghost walk.

In contrast, I consider it an “adventure” when I leave the house to do anything with my kids other than driving them to and from their various activities. And my adventure of choice has nothing to do with hiking trails, rock faces, or trapezes, although those things sound like fun and active things a mom should do with her child – a better, braver, more energetic mom than I. My favorite adventure with my children is to take them to breakfast at Haymaker Bun.

So, for the second installment of my series on the beautiful little things of Addison County, I am submitting an ode to Haymaker Bun.

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

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.