Faith in Vermont: Mother's Little Helper
“Wow, your girls sure are comfortable around the kitchen.”
The friend who said this to me was visiting us with his family. He would repeat the statement several times over the course of the weekend, but I believe the first...
Faith in Vermont: I Just Can't Get That Song Out of My Head
“I want to play you a song, to see if you know it,” my husband said to me at breakfast last week.
My husband is what we jokingly call a “binge listener”—he’ll latch on to a song or the oeuvre of a...
Faith in Vermont: ...And Things That Go Bump in the Night
It’s happened many times before, but it happened again last night:
I was sleeping soundly, my brain floating through the mists of the sort of vague, rushed dreams one has when your consciousness knows that you’ve gone to bed too...
Faith in Vermont: Why Not?
Our telephone rang towards the end of dinner one night. My husband picked up the receiver; our neighbor was on the other end.
“Are you hearing noises in the morning?” he asked.
It was an odd question to ask a family with...
Faith in Vermont: That's Lice
Someone once said, “Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans.”
I might revise that to: “LICE are what happen to you when you’re making other plans.”
In my last column, I wrote...
Faith in Vermont: Fear of Falling
The other night, I dreamed of snow.
In my dream, the world was white. I was at my daughters’ preschool, sitting on a sled that was perched precariously atop the roof ridge. This didn’t seem particularly odd, because the roof was...
Faith in Vermont: A Life Lived Deeply
Until our family moved to Vermont, I had very little exposure to people aged 65 or older – the demographic often referred to as “senior citizens,” but which I prefer to think of as “elders.”
I wasn’t alone...
Faith in Vermont: Goodbye, Ben Franklin
The news came on the heels of other strange spring tidings in Addison County: There were warnings of severe storms bringing high winds and flooding, followed by fire danger alerts. There were the multiple bear sightings around Chipman Hill, as...
Faith in Vermont: Love in the Poultry Yard
“I think those hens are about to start a #MeToo movement,” my husband said, coming in one night after tucking our chickens into their coop.
Yes, spring fever has struck our poultry. Watching the chickens and ducks act on...
Faith in Vermont: Watching My Daughters Climb
All four of our daughters love climbing, but one of them has elevated climbing to a lifestyle.
I’m not talking about “climbing” in any metaphorical sense; I’m talking about actual climbing, defined in Webster...