On this Independence Day…. I’m reminded that my daughters’ ancestors on the little wooden Mayflower pledged their lives together (well, the men did) in a Civil Body Politic for the general good of the Colony. 399 years later, our neighbor stands on our back porch, clipping our chickens’ wings. History’s great swoop, and our daily fretting. Which, perhaps, is all I can say, as we head into another election season.
We must hang together.
— John Hancock
For four summers running now, my youngest daughter, her very closest friend, and I go camping every summer on Burton Island, far north on Lake Champlain. The lake is noticeably cleaner than it was four years ago; the girls are definitely older. We recount the year the raccoons ate our food and the year I forget the stove. This year became the year we forgot the tent poles. The girls fashioned a tent from a tarp and rope.
Always, this island enchants me with its summertime mystique, the fluff of seeding trees wafting like fairy confetti in the warm breeze. We’re never eaten too badly by bugs. The girls drink a crazy amount of hot chocolate.
I wake up early in the mornings and read by the lake — this chilly year in my jeans — watching the loons and the ducks with their offspring.
It’s both sweetly idyllic — how could such innocent happiness not be? — and simultaneously not idyllic at all. I write this not to draw attention to my own particular family scenario, but because so much of social media pushes families to believe that everyone is living that glossy, idyllic life. So, in my family, we are, and we aren’t. And I’m darn glad for every bit that we are.
Age 14
On my walk to the co-op, I stop at a bed of peonies and cup a giant blossom in my hands: perfect white stained with drops of red, like a strange variation of the drops of blood on the snow in the Grimms’ tale. Enchantingly beautiful. And that, perhaps, is metaphor enough for one Saturday morning.
When the peonies bloomed,
It seemed as though were
No flowers around them.
– Kiitsu
As if to compensate for last winter’s length, June turns ineffably beautiful. Last night, a downfall again: this morning, our world sparkles, the greenery drinking up rain and growing — every day. Every day, the mock orange beneath my bedroom window unfurls more leaves. The skinny pears in the front yard are fattening their branches lushly.
From New Hampshire, my 14-year-old writes me, I went on a 10 mile hike today. Today, with family, she and her sister are kayaking in a river. I can’t help but remind her wear your lifejacket, use sunscreen. After work, I swim in the evenings with my friends, whose children — paired up in ages and friendship with mine — are also elsewhere. Down the pond, a loon fishes. We make up a silly story about a goose and goslings we see, and the other goose who makes its way along, later….
This June is not a variation of Ram Dass’ Be Here Now. The past is always with me, clinging, and the future unfolds around me, every day, mine and the lives of others’ around me. But there’s this: from where we live we can see deep into the valley where our town, Hardwick, lies. We can see storms mixing in the distance, the white sheets of rain before water dampens my garden. We’re surrounded by the mysteries of the world — the swifts, the pollinators, the raccoon determined to eat our chickens. We’re here, at this moment, taking it in.
And… my daughter’s photo (much to her happiness) heads up my recent Postcard from Hardwick in State 14.
Driving to work, listening intently to an NPR piece about the capture of Saddam Hussain, I hit a young deer. As these things often go, in a kind of slow motion I see the deer leap the guard rail and then stumble.
Braking, I pull over on the graveled shoulder, and the tailgating pickup behind me roars by, in some godawful hurry. While the traffic continues to rush by, I stand there in my sandals, a breeze blowing my thin sundress above my knees. I haven’t brushed my just-washed hair yet, either, so I’m pulling long hair from my eyes and mouth as I walk back along the road. But the deer is gone — whether off to die in the lush and flanking forest or free, maybe even okay, I don’t know.
Gently, rain begins to fall, just a few drops on my face and hands, maybe a harbinger of an all-day soaking rain, or maybe that’s all, simply these few drops on the roadside, while I’m wondering what’s happening in that forest.
If we are lucky, the end of a sentence is where we might begin.
— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Notes from kids beneath the library backdrop….
On the first glorious day of summer, my daughters are on Lake Champlain, walking along a causeway in this enormous lake. The day holds that nearly unbelievable deep green. Walking down to the diner to meet someone, I keep marveling. Just soak it in, I tell my deeper, more distrustful side. Sweet summer… sweet…
Before the white chrysanthemum
the scissors hesitate
a moment.
— Buson
My cat at work in my office…. thinking…
Stony Soil Vermont 