We recently passed the 6-month anniversary of our move from Berkeley, CA to Middlebury, VT. Having lived here a full half-year, I now consider myself an expert and feel qualified to spout generalizations and stereotypes concerning the differences between the San Francisco Bay Area and Central-Western Vermont. So, here goes; my 6 observations (one for every month, get it?) on life in Berkeley vs. Middlebury:

1. The weather here is crazier.

Well, DUH, you’re probably thinking. But I don’t just mean that Middlebury is colder than Northern California; we certainly expected THAT. It’s that it’s almost impossible to predict what the weather will be doing 5 minutes from now. In Berkeley, you could pretty much predict that you’d have sunny days with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s for 6 months out of the year; the other 3 months, it would rain. Here, it’s gone from the 90s to the teens; it rains, snows, sleets, blows. And one of the most surprising things is that it’s been a very mild winter so far. I will likely eat these words by February, but I’m about ready for some more snow already!

This unpredictable weather affects life in countless ways, but one that we’ve certainly noticed is that the reduced cost of real estate in Vermont is counterbalanced by the cost of the sheer amount of GEAR that’s required to get through the seasons comfortably. We could have never afforded a house that would hold our family in the Bay Area, but there we could get by with the same wardrobe year-round. Here, our wardrobe runs the gamut from the sleeveless shirts and shorts needed for the hot summer, to the snow boots, snow pants, insulted coats, gloves, and hats needed for freezing temperatures and snow. Plus the snowshoes, sleds, and skates needed for enjoying the long winter. Times 5, in our case.

With all that winter gear and 3 small children, I’ve learned to allow at least 30 minutes for getting out the door. Even so, I’m still constantly sending Fiona to preschool under-dressed. There are two paths to take when dressing your child if you move to Vermont from California: over-dressing and under-dressing. Apparently, I fall into the latter category. The other day she had to borrow gloves from the school stash because she didn’t have any. (Actually, she did have one surgical glove in her coat pocket, but that’s a long story). In fairness, it was 40 degrees, which I think is an acceptable temperature for bare hands. But apparently native Vermont parents feel otherwise.

2. The kids here are tougher. And blonder.

They might wear gloves when it’s 40 degrees, but the kids here are pretty tough when it comes to braving the elements. During the rainy months in Berkeley, there were entire weeks when we didn’t leave the house. In contrast, Fiona’s preschool sends the kids outside in all weather. And I mean ALL. They’re always out on the playground when I go pick her up. Last month, as I drove to her preschool I thought, “Hmmm, it’s 38 degrees with a freezing drizzle. They’re probably inside this afternoon.” Nope. There was my child, mucking around in the cold rain with a stick in the woods (yes, the school playground includes woods). I actually think this is excellent.

Also interesting is that, when we’re at gatherings of local children, our girls tend to be the token brunettes. Now, in the Bay Area, it felt like you were pretty much in the minority if your background included fewer than 2 ethnic groups; if one of these was “White,” you were even odder. But here, Fiona is one of 3 children with brown hair in a preschool class of 18. (It actually took me 2 whole months to get the boys in her class straight, because all those little blond boys look the same to me!)

3. The contractors here are waaaaaaaay more laid back.

We’re in a bleak economic period, and one might imagine that contractors in small-town Vermont are hurting for business a bit right now. Yet, invariably, this has been our experience with local contractors:

[Ringing phone]

CONTRACTOR: Hello.

FAITH/ERICK: Hello, we are considering paying you a substantial amount of money to do something to our house. Can you come give us an estimate?

CONTRACTOR: Sure, I’ll be in your area later this week and I’ll stop by.

Without fail, they will show up NO SOONER than 2 weeks later. That’s assuming you get them on the phone the first time; otherwise you leave a message and they call back 2 weeks later. And it’s another 2 weeks before they show up.

Take, for example, the contractor who did our roof. We LoVe him, he’s basically a member of our family by now, and we are planning to have him come back in the spring to do some more projects. But when he presented us with the final invoice and we totaled everything up, we realized that somehow he’d managed to spread 3 weeks worth of work over 3 months. That takes effort, like taking off the entire month of November because it’s deer hunting season.

4. We spend more time in the car now.

This is counter-intuitive, because we moved here from the land of the 8-lane freeway. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve driven on a road with more than 2 lanes? You guessed it: 6 months. But the difference is that in Berkeley, which is a city, there were sidewalks (and bike lanes, for that matter) everywhere, so we were mostly strapping the girls into the stroller and walking places. Here, the only sidewalks are right in town (and even then it’s spotty). We live about 15 miles outside of town, and there are no sidewalks anywhere. Nor are there things to walk to. So, to do anything – go to the park, the library, the store – we have to hustle everyone into the car and drive. Being able to walk most places is what I miss most about Berkeley.

That said, every time we are in the car, we are moving. Which is not the case throughout most of California. We’d been here a few weeks when Erick noted that you never hear a traffic report on the local radio. That’s because, barring an act of God, there is never, ever any traffic. The worst it gets is about 3:30 PM along Court Street, because the Middlebury elementary, middle, and high schools are all in a row and let out around that time. I’ve also never, ever, in 6 months, had a problem finding great parking.

5. I get more sympathy here.

We have 3 girls under age 4, each separated from the next by about 19 months. So sometimes things get a little crazy, like just about any time we leave the house. This was no less true in Berkeley than it is here, and perhaps even more so since our girls were younger when we lived there. But shortly after we moved to Vermont, I noticed that almost everywhere I went, people would look at us, smile, and say, “Boy, you sure have your hands full!” Often they’d do something helpful while they said this, like hold the door open or prevent a Gong girl from hotwiring a motorcycle.

Nine times out of ten, the person saying this is about 80 years old and looks like they’ve probably raised 5 children while also maintaining a dairy farm. But what made me really notice all the sympathy (support?) I was getting was that NOT ONCE can I remember a stranger saying this to me in Berkeley. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’d venture to guess that it’s the culture. In Berkeley, most people are running around with their head buried in a mobile device, assuming that they have their own hands more full than anybody around them. Here, there just seems to be more time to look around, notice other people, and support them if they need it. Also, mobile reception is pretty spotty.

6. It is quieter and darker here.

The other night, I woke up with a start at some ungodly hour. There was a noise, a loud and unusual noise. It took me a couple minutes to identify the disturbance as: an airplane. Yes, an airplane was passing over our house. That level of noise is unusual here. (And bear in mind that we live about 1 mile from the “Middlebury Airport.” This airport has one runway and, as best we can tell, perhaps one private plane per week either lands or departs there).

And it’s also dark. I’ve commented in an earlier post about the general lack of streetlights outside of downtown Middlebury. However, because we have 3 young children and because there aren’t really any places to go at night anyway, the full extent of the darkness didn’t strike me until the days began getting shorter. Before moving to Vermont, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d had to use my bright headlights in my adult life; now I need to use my brights anytime I’m driving home after about 4 PM.

So, there you have it: the very happily accumulated wisdom of 6 months as a Vermonter.

COMING NEXT: PART 2: If You Buy A House in Vermont….

When you begin your adult life in New York City (as we did) and then move to progressively smaller towns (as we have), it’s funny to see how one’s view of public safety changes, as does one’s concept of what qualifies as news.

To put it another way, how our lives have changed in recent months can be neatly illustrated by our subscription to the Addison County Independent.

We subscribed to the Independent, our local bi-weekly newspaper, on a tip from another professor’s wife. She recommended it because it includes an extensive community calendar of events in each issue. I must say that, thus far, I’ve mostly been overwhelmed by how many weekly pig roasts/ham suppers/chicken barbeques are being put on by various associations in the vicinity, but we have found some great events. (Like the Bristol “Truck Touch,” when the town next-door parked a schoolbus, police car, fire engine, and ambulance on the town green for a Saturday morning and opened them up to kids. Brilliant!)

But more than the events, it’s the news that’s been eye-opening. In the midst of horrible world events, crazy financial markets, and the end of J-Lo’s marriage, last Monday’s Independent featured front-page stories like “Musician follows her dreams,” and “Deadline nearing for dairy deal.” Then there are the editorials! The same edition included editorials titled “Helpful neighbors make Vt. great,” and — to quote the great Dave Barry, I am NOT making this up, “Postal service does a great job delivering mail.” Not to mention the “Pet of the Week,” who happened to be a miniature donkey named Gepetto.

I kept looking, and found some alarming news on page 6: “Brief Thursday power outage affects 2,400 in Middlebury.” We hadn’t been affected, but it sounded serious, so I kept reading: “Many Middlebury residents and businesses went without power for about three minutes on Thursday around 12:30 PM.” Did you catch that? A three minute power outage (cause still unknown at press time) received two columns of print space!

Which leads me to the topic of public safety. Oddly, as I’ve moved to smaller places, I generally have felt less safe. It makes no sense at all; we were in New York City during 9/11 (while we were – mercifully – not directly affected, it was certainly an anxious time). But when we moved to Berkeley, I never quite got over living on the ground floor without a doorman. And Berkeley was arguably less safe than post-Guiliani NYC; during our time there, Erick’s bike was stolen from our garage, and then the bike he borrowed to replace that bike was stolen. There were gang-related shootings just blocks away. Oh, and then there was the Sunday morning we found a hole in our windshield, the cause of which was revealed when we located the bullet next to Fiona’s carseat. (For a minute I thought it was roving gangs of rival economists putting a hit out on Erick, but the police decided it was someone in our neighborhood firing their gun in the air. Which made me feel MUCH better!).

Despite all of this, I didn’t necessarily feel safer moving to small town Vermont. While we can see our neighbor’s houses through the trees, we’re still further from people than we’ve ever been. And at night here, it is DARK. I mean, darker than I’ve ever seen; there’s not a streetlight within miles of our house. Not only that, but due to sightings by our neighbors, we’ve had to have that talk with our girls. You know, that talk? Yup, the “what to do if a bear shows up in our yard” talk….

But reading the Police Logs in the Independent is starting to make me feel that we might actually be safe here. From the Vergennes (a nearby town) Police Log (again, I am not making this up):
“On Aug. 1 gave directions to a motorist on Main Street; On Aug. 2 were asked to find a woman, but learned she had moved to New Haven…On Aug. 2 found a camper door open at Denecker Chevrolet and told a business representative.”

You get the idea. (I love the image of the Vergennes police force checking doors at local car dealerships).

Now, Middlebury is a larger town than Vergennes, so the Middlebury Police Log is a little more down & dirty. In the past week, police:

“Received a report of some boys throwing food onto cars in the Fire & Ice parking lot. Police said the boys ultimately cleaned up the debris and apologized to restaurant officials;

Received a report that someone had stolen 40 compact discs — all containing Christian music — from a vehicle parked off North Pleasant Street;

Told a visiting cyclist that he could not sleep overnight on the town green. Police said the man had set up a hammock between two trees on the green.”

So if you visit us here in M-town, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Keep an eye out for flying food, lock up your Amy Grant cds, and leave your hammock at home. But bring your bear spray.

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.