Yesterday, I was on the phone at work, talking with a woman I had never met who was helping me unravel a work question.
She paused suddenly and mentioned that she could hear the governor’s Tuesday press conference on the radio in my office. She told me she worked in the governor’s building and had been told to bring home work. Vermont’s capital — Montpelier — like so many places in our country now, is under careful public safety scrutiny.
Then, as I’ve found happening so often since last mid-March, a stranger and I had a passionate conversation about the uncertain state of our world. While a moment before we had been talking about details, we suddenly began sharing stories of our families.
Then her cell phone crackled, and we ended our conversation before her connection broke.
Green Mountains Review Online published the first chapter of my book Unstitched: Exploring Addiction in a Small Town. The book will be published by Steerforth Press in September. May our world be a less tension-choked place by autumn.
After a terrible week, my daughter heads to ski with a friend. Because of the pandemic, she doesn’t catch a ride with the friend. Because my daughter is 15, I’m the designated adult — for what that’s worth — in the passenger seat while she drives.
Sunday morning in rural Vermont, the roads are nearly empty. North of St. Johnsbury, we pick up the interstate for a small stretch, then turn off and head along the Passumpsic River.
I lean toward the windshield and point out a bald eagle flying over the fields and then a second eagle.
Excited about those eagles? she asks me. From the corners of her eyes, she glances at me. She rounds bend and the eagles disappear from sight.
While she skis, I take a long walk into the snowy woods, and then work in our car. There’s nothing new here: I’ve been wandering through the woods and working in my car, waiting for my kids for years now.
And yet — while everything is the same, nothing is the same.
On our way home, she drives again, and stops at a church so I can get out and take a picture of the steeple and the blue sky.
Skiing along the former railroad bed in the late afternoon, I meet a fellow skier — a man wearing a gray knit hat who’s retired now from the local high school. In one connection or another, I’ve known him since before I became a mother.
We pause and talk for bit. He asks about my daughters, and then he opens our conversation to what’s happening in the nation’s capital. Behind him, I see the Lamoille River winding towards Lake Champlain, flowing its slow way to cross the Canadian border and head to the Atlantic Ocean.
As a complete non-sequitur, I say, The sun actually came out today.
We look at the blue sky overhead between the trees. It’s January in Vermont, and the sun’s presence is never a given here.
We talk for a few more minutes, acknowledging chaos and the pandemic, these odd days and that sun overhead — light without warmth.
Then we part ways, he to his ski, and I towards home.
But time is only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there’ll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.
Often after the new year, the cold hammers down in Vermont, like a nail gun, sealing the human world except for well-bundled expeditions. The coldest I’ve seen is 40 below zero; mist moved ghost-like over the river, creeping over the icy banks like a strange memory.
This year, what small amount of snow we have is often soft, and the air during the day often thaws and carries the scent of water.
It’s an illusion, I know, to imagine that anything but a long, long winter lies ahead of us. But still, yesterday when I left work, I mentioned to a coworker that it was nearly five and day still lingered.
For a just a moment, we stood there with car keys in our hands, reveling at the light.
Saturday morning, we wake to a snowfall — gorgeous fat flakes swirling down — the kind of sparkling snow that miraculously turns the world brand-new and utterly beautiful.
In early afternoon when I return from work, the girls have shoveled the paths and driveway and deck. Inside, they’re drinking tea in front of the wood stove and putting together a puzzle my sister sent from Virginia, a pretty blue puzzle with birds.
I stand at the glass door drinking coffee, thinking where I stood that morning, on the shores of Caspian Lake, its center obscured by drapes of falling snow. Bundled in hats and masks and scarves, I stood talking with another woman about the small town planning process. Then our conversation wandered into the oddities of human life, how determined we all are at times — and I’ll put myself firmly there — to keep our attention focused on our own little stamp of land and home, be it a postage-stamp-sized piece or hundreds of acres. Meanwhile, the snow, the rising and setting sun, the wandering woodland creatures, continue on.
Saturday afternoon, I claim my own place near the fire and read The New Yorker‘s recent “The Plague Year” by Lawrence Wright, reading aloud pieces to my daughters, saying, This is the history you’re living through. This is your story, too…. It’s a lesson for me, too, when I dream of living elsewhere, where sleet doesn’t fall, where the cost of living isn’t crazy-high, where the sun shines even in the heart of winter — a reminder for me to embrace my own accidental luck to live here.
Nations and states that have done relatively well during this crisis have been led by strong, compassionate, decisive leaders who speak candidly with their constituents. In Vermont, Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, closed the state early, and reopened cautiously, keeping the number of cases and the death toll low. “This should be the model for the country,” Fauci told state leaders, in September. If the national fatality rate were the same as Vermont’s, some two hundred and fifty thousand Americans would still be alive.
