The More Things Change

At the end of August, as has been our custom for the past three summers, our family spent a weekend at the Highland Lodge, on the shores of Caspian Lake in Greensboro, Vermont. Travel with four young children is never easy, so when we find a location that works, our tendency is to return to it again and again. We began an annual pre-school stay at the Highland Lodge shortly after the birth of our fourth child, and it has become one of our happy places.

Returning to the same vacation spot year after year provides the comfort of knowing what to expect. It provides a coherent chain of memories: Remember what we did here last year? And it provides an encouraging sense of perspective and progress: Every year the children are older, easier, more self-sufficient. Remember those things we were so worried about the last time we were here? Everything turned out okay!

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

Of Ticks and Fear

“Mommy, is that a tick?” my seven-year-old daughter asks. She’s looking in the bathroom mirror, pointing to a small black speck under her chin.

Our family’s move earlier this month from the woods to the fields has not only entailed a change in scenery, but also a change in the pests that plague us: We’ve moved from Mosquitoland to Tickville.

Click here to continue reading about ticks — and how they relate to the current election cycle — in my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for The Addison Independent.

Decisions, Decisions

Our family moved last week.

In fact, it would be more accurate to say that our family has been moving for the past year.

It all began with a dream: What if we lived with a little less house, on a little more land? What if we grew and raised more of what we eat?

After six months of searching, we found a little less house on a little more land. It was a mere six miles from our current house – six miles closer to town. The price was right. And the house was a mess. Although it wasn’t an old house – the first section was built in 1995 – it had undergone two tacked-on additions, had a wet basement, needed a new boiler, and appeared to be mid-way through a haphazard renovation: walls were half-painted, windows were without trim, most rooms lacked light fixtures, and (as I repeatedly pointed out to my husband) none of the bathrooms included towel rods.

“Mommy, I don’t want to live here,” my eldest daughter whispered to me as we walked through the house.

“Don’t worry, honey,” I whispered back. “I don’t either.”

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

Journeys in Pediatric Dentistry

Like most people, I do not love change. This is particularly true if the change in question involves putting up buildings where there were none. I realize the need for economic development: More buildings generally mean more jobs, and that more jobs are good for the overall welfare of our community. Still, I’d rather have grass and trees than bricks and mortar. If a building must occupy land, I’d rather have a charming, crumbling farmhouse than a new construction.

I’m weird that way.

But when we returned to Vermont after five months away and I noticed a brand-new construction on a formerly vacant lot on Route 7 with a sign out front proclaiming it the future home of Middlebury Pediatric Dentistry, I thought, “It’s about time!”

Click here to continue reading my long-awaited pediatric dentistry column in this week’s Addison Independent!

No Child of Ours

Last week — the week when Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile was fatally shot by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota — I had my monthly book club meeting.

The two events may seem entirely unrelated: Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were both young black men in their 30s; my book club is comprised of seven white women in their 30s and 40s. But this month, our book club was discussing my reading pick, the book Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

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

(I was actually all set last week with a “Faith in Vermont” column about pediatric dentistry in Vermont, and then I came home on Thursday night — after a brutal day of getting ready to go on vacation in two days and getting ready to move houses in three weeks — and I had to write this. I wrote it very tired, very raw, and way too late into the night. I think it may be one of the more important things I’ve ever written. But don’t worry — you’ll see the pediatric dentistry column in the near future, too. Because, in my circles, pediatric dentistry is a pressing issue….)

Mosquitoes: The War on Summer

“Why did I have to be born so tasty?!?” my daughter wailed, raking her fingernails across her shins. “I hate summer!”

In our neck of the woods, summer – which should be a season of backyard barbeques, kiddie pools in the yard, hours spent in the garden, and late nights chasing fireflies – is mosquito season. Before venturing outside, we slather on bug spray, don hats and inappropriately warm clothing, light citronella candles, and position fans by the picnic table. Those who don’t take these precautions, who treat summer like it’s a carefree time to wear shorts and tank tops and flip-flops, are condemned to scratch the itchy red welts covering their bodies.

And there are those, like the aforementioned daughter, who deal with summer by refusing to leave the house.

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

The Summer of Patience

The summer of 2016 may hereafter be referred to by our family as: “The Summer of Patience.”

Ah, patience! Defined as, “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset,” patience seems to be on the wane in 21^st century America. Sure, we give respectful lip service to patience and toss around platitudes like, “Patience is a virtue,” but the truth is that our entire culture is increasingly constructed to discourage the practice of patience.

We have apps for everything. Want groceries? Restaurant reservations? Taxi service? Up-to-the-nanosecond traffic updates? Gasoline delivered to your car? A potential life partner? All these and more can be acquired with the touch of a finger. (It’s not even accurate to say, “With the click of a button” anymore. Buttons have been replaced by button icons on a flat screen, possibly because the effort of pressing an actual button wastes precious time.)

Remember when two-day delivery was a luxury? (I believe that was sometime last year.) Now we expect two-day delivery, and my Amazon.com account allows me to request same-day delivery for everything from diapers to dog food.

“Seize the day!” “Strike while the iron’s hot!” “Grab the bull by the horns!” These are old expressions, but they seem particularly relevant in our fast paced and competitive culture – a culture in which self-help gurus exhort us to “Be your best self, TODAY!” and nobody bats an eye.

The result of all this efficiency is that we begin taking it for granted that life will be as quick and easy as a drive-through Starbucks. Our collective capacity for patience has shrunk, and it shows.

Click here (or just touch your flat screen’s button icon) to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.

Marching on Memorial Day

“Can we march in the Memorial Day parade again this year?”

Out of nowhere, one of my daughters popped this question during breakfast on a morning in mid-April. Memorial Day was over a month away. We were all the way across the country from Vermont, on sabbatical in Berkeley, California. And I hadn’t even finished my first cup of coffee of the day.

Such is the place that Middlebury’s Memorial Day parade occupies in the hearts of my children.

At long last, Faith is back in Vermont! Click here to continuing reading about Memorial Day parades, freedom…and libraries, in this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in the Addison Independent.

Saying Goodbye: It’s Deja vu All Over Again

Last week, the woman behind me in the Hannaford supermarket check-out line asked if I knew where Salon Déjà vu was located. She wanted to get a gift certificate for somebody, she told me, but the address that she’d been given led her to the wrong place, and nobody answered the phone at the number she’d found online.

I was absolutely certain that I knew where Salon Déjà vu was, and gave the woman directions based on my knowledge. But when I drove past this location several days later, it turned out to be a different salon all together.

So, I have no idea where Salon Déjà vu is. (Note to Salon Déjà vu proprietors, if you’re out there: Update your online information!)

Only later did it strike me that Salon Déjà vu was a perfect name, given these circumstances.

Click here to continue reading my final “Faith in Vermont” column of 2015 — and the final “Faith in Vermont” column that I’ll actually write in Vermont for several months — over at The Addison Independent.

Current Events, Common Sense, and Craft Fairs

It is difficult for the human mind to commit itself to one thing, and to maintain focus upon that thing in order to see it through to completion.

This is particularly true for parents of young children, who may have only two uninterrupted hours each day (in our house, we call this “nap time”) during which it’s possible to focus upon anything other than fetching snacks, locating toys, and mediating sibling disputes.

And it’s even more particularly true during the holidays, which add another layer of complexity to our already full lives.

A partial list of things I should focus on today: packing my family for our 5-month sabbatical in California; cleaning out our current house in order to put it on the market while we’re away; choosing bathroom countertops for the new house that we’ll move into when we return; holiday baking; organizing Christmas gifts for family, friends, and teachers; watering the Christmas tree; reading my monthly book club selection; writing this column; answering that email about the Christmas pageant; being an engaged wife, mother, daughter, and friend.

What I do during nap time today: bake sugar cookies.

It occurs to me that the way I respond to my life is similar to the way in which I – and, I suspect, many of us – respond to the world at large.

A partial list of things we should focus on: Syrian refugees, climate change, human trafficking, domestic terrorism, mass shootings and gun control, the 2016 elections, buying local, ISIS, instability in the Middle East, Starbucks cups, racial inequality, the economy, police brutality.

What we do: critique Donald Trump on Facebook.

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