The Mystery Behind the Winchester Mystery House

Our family recently enjoyed an epic trip to California – a trip that lasted two weeks and spanned 6,500 miles as we traveled from Vermont to Montreal, Canada, flew to San Francisco, drove to Los Angeles, and returned to Vermont again by way of Montreal. We slept in five different locations and reconnected with numerous dear friends and family members.

The three days that we spent in the San Francisco Bay Area marked our first return to the region since 2016. The Bay Area is where my husband, Erick, grew up and lived until his college graduation; we’d lived there for half of our first decade of marriage and it’s where our first three children were born. We barely scratched the surface of our family history during this visit, but we did take our children to the Winchester Mystery House.

Erick and I had visited the Winchester Mystery House once, before we had children. It was shortly after we’d moved to Berkeley, something to do on a free Saturday when we were still exploring the new landscape we now inhabited. Come to think of it, we probably even slept late and then read the newspaper over brunch; we may even have watched an entire movie the night before!

The details of that first visit were fuzzy in my mind, but I still remembered the bizarre story behind the Winchester Mystery House. Here is the story as I relayed it to my children:

Sarah Winchester, who had married into the family that owned the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, moved to San Jose, California in the 1880s after the deaths of her husband and infant daughter. She was consumed with guilt over the people who’d been killed by Winchester rifles, and was told by a medium that she had to continually build a house for their ghosts; if construction ever stopped, she would have bad luck – or die (or perhaps both.) So, she bought an old farmhouse and began a 38-year construction project that ballooned the house to 500 rooms, complete with bizarre features like doors to nowhere, curving staircases with tiny steps, trapdoors, and walled-off windows. The building was, of course, never finished.

Click here to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” 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.

Starlings in the Stove

It begins with a faint flutter, like a rustle of paper. Enough to make you stop and listen, wondering if you might have imagined it.

But the rustling repeats at intervals, growing louder as it gets closer. The dogs take notice, lifting their heads before running over to investigate. Still, you think, it might be nothing; it might go away.

Until the unmistakable beating begins, accompanied by a screeching sound like nails on a chalkboard. It’s not nails on a chalkboard: It’s the sound of a bird’s feet and wings struggling against a metal pipe.

There’s a Starling in the wood stove. Again.

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

The Therapeutic Benefits of…Ironing?

“Vacuuming can be therapeutic,” the middle-aged woman told my 22-year-old self.

We were standing in the bedroom that I would occupy for the next year, located in a wing of her Greenwich, Connecticut compound. I was a recent college graduate, working as a classroom teaching assistant in a tony private girls’ school by day and taking graduate classes at night. Until recently I’d been living with two other young teachers in a dingy apartment in Stamford, but when this woman, whose three daughters attended the school at which I taught, invited me to move in with them, it was like manna from heaven. I’d pay no rent, eat meals cooked by the household chefs, live minutes away from work, and have access to the compound’s gym, pool, and tennis courts. In exchange, I would serve as an additional “responsible adult,” with some occasional duties driving the children to school and activities.

I’d also be responsible for my own cleaning.

“You don’t mind vacuuming your own room, do you?” the woman of the house asked apologetically, before adding, “I find that vacuuming can be therapeutic.”

It struck me as an absurd statement from this woman with perfectly highlighted and coiffed blonde hair, her toned body clad in spandex as if headed to a workout (with a personal trainer, of course.) In addition to my humble presence, this household was kept going by a staff of cooks, cleaners, gardeners, trainers, and tutors. Right next to my bedroom was the office of madam’s personal secretary — although she did not work outside the home, she somehow still required a secretary. Her husband was employed as a high-level investment banker at a Manhattan firm; he disappeared in the predawn hours each morning into a chauffeured Town Car.

Of course I didn’t mind cleaning my own space – I’d spent the past six months cleaning up after two housemates (and their boyfriends.) But when was the last time this woman had actually vacuumed? For her to suggest that she occasionally practiced vacuum therapy smacked of Marie Antionette skipping around on her tidy personal farm.

That was over twenty years ago, and I can honestly say that in the decades that have passed I have never once found vacuuming – or any household cleaning, for that matter – to be at all therapeutic. I complete my household chores with resignation because I want my home to be comfortable, welcoming, and attractive. (Also, if I’m honest, because I’m driven by the voices of my Puritan ancestors whispering that other people will judge me as slothful if my home is messy.)

But there is one chore that I have refused to do on principle, except when absolutely necessary, and that is ironing.

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

The Birds…And The Bees

It wasn’t the first time a bird had become stuck in our woodstove; this had happened twice before.

The three events all began with a scrabbling, scuffling, fluttering noise in the corner of our living room. This type of noise can be shrugged off once or twice, but after subsequent repetitions the message is clear: There is another living thing somewhere in this room.

The first time, it was a House Sparrow. The second time, it was an Eastern Bluebird. Now it was a European Starling.

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

My Kids, in the Middle of the Lake

It’s funny what a difference two weeks can make.

Just two weeks ago, I wrote a column about how my husband – always on the lookout for new ways our family can have fun together – had outfitted all seven people in our family with bicycles. I ended that column with the line: “And now my husband is starting to dream about inflatable kayaks, so perhaps we’ll see you on the water, too!”

This past week, my mother- and father-in-law flew in from California for a visit. After my husband picked them up from Burlington Airport, he swung by Costco for what has become the Traditional Post-Airport Shopping Binge. Usually they come home bearing a couple of rotisserie chickens, industrial-sized bags of baking soda, and trays of croissants large enough to feed the population of Rhode Island.

They came home with all of that, but this time they had an inflatable kayak, too.

The inflatable paddleboard arrived the next day, and another inflatable paddleboard is en route.

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

The Family That Bikes Together

Our family’s pandemic coping strategies have failed to follow national – or even logical – trends. We were already living in Vermont, homeschooling, gardening, and keeping chickens when COVID-19 hit, so we had many of the boxes checked already. In fact, the pandemic prompted us to send several of our children back to school, because of the crushing social isolation of homeschooling during COVID. Sure, we did some mainstream things like buying a large inflatable pool for our yard, walking our driveway obsessively, online yoga videos, and binge-watching The Mandalorian, but I may have been the only person in the world who stopped baking sourdough in response to COVID: It took a pandemic to make me emancipate myself from my starter.

One pandemic-related trend was dubbed: “The Great Bicycle Boom of 2020.” When it became clear that COVID-19 would be sticking around for a while, bicycle ridership and sales increased dramatically. For reasons of both recreation and safety – riding bikes was perceived as safer than riding public transportation – people scrambled for bicycles, leading to supply-chain shortages.

On one of our mid-pandemic daily driveway walks, I floated the idea of upping our bicycle game to my husband. Our four daughters, who love riding their bikes, barreled past us, riding back and forth along the quarter-mile stretch. The issue was that neither my husband nor I had a bicycle — having had two stolen during our years living in the San Francisco Bay Area – nor did we have any way to transport our toddler.

“Maybe we should look into getting ourselves some bikes and a trailer so we could all ride together somewhere other than the driveway,” I suggested.

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

Parenting Teens and Saving the Planet

One of the best parts of parenting my teenagers is discussing the world’s problems and how to solve them.

I was about to write: “One of the best parts of parenting teenagers is how passionately they want to save the world,” but I’m not sure that’s quite accurate. Saving the world, in my experience, usually involves getting out of bed before noon on non-school days, and we’re not there yet. It also requires one to move beyond an attitude of “everything-is-terrible-and-thanks-sooooo-much-for-giving-us-this-messed-up-word-Mom-and-Dad.” We’re not there yet, either.

But my two middle-school-aged children are becoming quite aware of the nature of the issues that they’ll inherit. At the moment they’re studying Earth Science, and they are particularly concerned with carbon emissions, deforestation, and climate change.

Because they are a) teenagers, and b) Americans, their potential solutions to these problems mostly involve buying things. We should buy an electric car, for instance. My eldest daughter apparently needs to buy more clothes – of the sustainable, recycled material variety. Their biggest push has been for our family to begin using bamboo toilet paper in order to save the boreal forests. They directed us to a company called “Who Gives a Crap,” where we could purchase 48 rolls of bamboo toilet paper for $64 (plus tax). We have seven people living in our house; that amount of toilet paper would last us roughly two weeks.

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

Lake Willoughby, Part 2: Sharing Stories with Tom

In my most recent column, I began writing about the weekend getaway my husband and I – and our 22-month-old son – took to Lake Willoughby in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. This is a continuation of that story.

The weather was unseasonably warm and humid when we arrived at Lake Willoughby, just as it had been for the past week (although I’m not sure what “seasonable” is anymore in this era of climate change). But when we awoke the next morning, we were greeted with a chilly rain that lasted, off-and-on, for the duration of our stay.

We weren’t deterred. Whenever the rain paused, we set out on hikes or canoe rides around the lake. As fifth-time parents, we’ve learned the rhythm of hiking and canoeing with a 22-month-old: He’s a joyous participant for the first 15 minutes, he screams for the next 15 minutes, and then he falls asleep. So everyone was happy — except for the plumbing at our rental house. The plumbing was definitely not happy.

Everything seemed fine when we arrived at the unassuming little house that had been converted into a rustic hunting lodge on the inside (complete with wood paneling, carved bear and moose figures, and plenty of antlers). It was clean and comfortable. But on our first night there, we noticed that whenever we turned on a faucet or flushed the toilet the pipes seemed to “burp.” The water would fizz and pop. We assumed that there was some air in the pipes and hoped it would pass.

By our second day at Lake Willoughby, the problem was getting worse. The water continued to fizz and pop, but the intervals when air issued from the pipes instead of water were becoming longer and more frequent. Then warm water started coming from the cold water tap. My husband went down to the basement and looked at the pump, and it didn’t look good. Concerned that we might lose water all together, we filled up some large pots in the kitchen. Then we sent a text message to the house’s owner. It was a Saturday evening, so our best hope was that perhaps a plumber could be called for the following day.

Minutes later, my husband’s phone buzzed. He looked at the text and said, “Some guy named Tom is coming over.”

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

The Pod Swing

The pod swing hangs from a beam in our living room like some overripe fruit in a tropical rain forest. It is tear-shaped, made of durable lime green fabric with electric blue trim. You enter the swing through a narrow opening in the fabric; when you settle onto the round, electric blue cushion inside, you are surrounded by lime green on all sides, encased like a pupa in a chrysalis.

The pod swing was not an intentional act of interior decorating. I never cast a critical eye on our living room and said, “You know, what this place really needs is a pod swing.” We purchased the swing on the advice of our son’s physical therapist; it’s supposed to give him practice in “not feeling in control.”

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