I picked up two chairs in a free pile along a backroad yesterday.
No! my daughters said.
In the evening, playing Yahtzee, our cat Acer begins to gnaw on the chair’s loose strands, which makes the girls laugh hysterically.
Something for everyone in the free pile. That’s where we are in the pandemic world.
I pull out the gray hairs,
And under my pillow,
There is a cricket.
— Basho
Like so many places, I’ve limited occupancy in my one room library, and, for the most part, that’s worked. This afternoon, just before the after school program started for the first time in months, the adults stood around in our usual pow-wow and returned to the same theme: we’ll make do.
We did.
One boy leaned in the open door, begging to come in. I told him to wait, wait, that I’d come for him when the space emptied out a little.
When it did, I stepped out on the grass and spied him across the playground. When I gestured for him and called his name, he came running.
Messed-up world notwithstanding, what utter joy to see this sprinting boy.
In honor of RBG, her words:
Earlier, I spoke of great changes I have seen in women’s occupations. Yet one must acknowledge the still bleak part of the picture. Most people in poverty in the United States and the world over are women and children, women’s earnings here and abroad trail the earnings of men with comparable education and experience, our workplaces do not adequately accommodate the demands of childbearing and child rearing, and we have yet to devise effective ways to ward off sexual harassment at work and domestic violence in our homes. I am optimistic, however, that movement toward enlistment of the talent of all who compose “We, the people,” will continue.
— Ruth Bader Ginsberg
My daughter and her friend were been hired for the afternoon to harvest pumpkins.
That afternoon, picking up the girls at the farm, I stood talking for awhile with the couple, whom I’ve known since my oldest daughter was a toddler. They showed me the sunflowers they had managed to save from the frost by covering. The flowers, I could see, were not long for living.
Bundled in sweaters and sweatshirts, we stood talking in the late afternoon sunlight. The couple was appreciative of my daughter and her friend — how the girls’ hard work boosted the boys’ output. I laughed, watching the girls walk towards me, out of the field, holding gloves in their hands, talking with each other.
I remembered those long-ago summer and fall days, when I had worn this child on my back while I sold maple syrup and homemade ice cream. Her little fingers reached over my shoulder, looking for snacks.
The couple’s son drove up on a tractor, a father now himself. As I drove back to our warm house, baking lasagne and apple crisp, I kept thinking of how that couple would give my youngest a tiny pumpkin every year at the farmers’ market. She would carry that orange squash in her two hands, like treasure.
Stony Soil Vermont 