Tag: Photo Gallery

the work

The work of Christmas.

Some of choir is singing for both services and if Julia didn’t have to sit through both services, plus the early call for rehearsal, I’d sing both. There is a song in the second service—Sing we now of Christmas—that is evocative of the dark night and the quiet before celebration. I was happy to do it at choir practice.

A new choir song that we are learning for Christmas Eve.  There are two services that night.  7 and 10, or 10:30. This is the only time of year when we are in the church at night.  The stained glass windows are dark from the inside, no color except from the outside. I don’t notice the stained glass windows that often, but when they are dark. I see them clearly. 

The Work of Christmas is a song, according to our director, that Everyone is singing. The message of the song is that the work of Christmas begins after the tinsel is off the tree and the shepherds are back tending their sheep. It does seem like the perfect Christmas song in this year of tumult and chaos.  A time when we have so much work to do when these holidays are finished.

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vermont 2

It is Indigenous Peoples Day. We are in Vermont, ready to leave today to return home. Julia’s day center is closed today. It will rain for most of today and tomorrow. I hope to stop to do some food shopping on our way home and make butternut squash soup for tonight’s dinner.

There the scene is set. 

It disturbs me greatly that trump proclaimed today a celebration of “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth.” It goes on to say that “[u]pon his arrival, he planted a majestic cross in a mighty act of devotion, dedicating the land to God and setting in motion America’s proud birthright of faith.”

Why does he—or they because that man cannot speak a single coherent sentence. There are way too many grammatically correct sentences and way too much warped “history” to believe that trump had anything to do with the drafting of his proclamation.— but why does he need to lie ALL of the time?

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vermont 1

Shelburne, Vermont. Definitely morning frost. And thank goodness it also turned chili at home before we left. The extra sweatshirt thrown into the bags at the last minute will be used!

Ed and I are ensconced in a sweet and small B&B owned by an architect turned painter and her husband, who is very nice, but I haven’t drilled him on his work life. Yet.

Julia is at Zeno Mountain Farm for a five-day, four-night weekend. She went to their fall weekend last year and was invited back for this year.  (She has not yet been invited for summer camp, which is my goal for her. Once invited, she can come up every year for the rest of her life.  Everyone does, and thus, the wait is long for a spot.) She helped me pack her stuff and then re-pack when we found out how cold it was really going to be. The ride up was pleasant and uneventful until we got to the country road part that goes up and down a mountain for almost 30 miles, okay, a small mountain. Julia began getting angry, anxious, and extremely unpleasant.  At one point, she lobbed a sweater at Ed, who was driving. She spent a good deal of time swearing at the mountain, the road, and us. By the time we arrived at the Farm, I had to spend time with her trying to figure out what she wanted to do. (Not at all sure what we would do if she wanted to not go to Zeno altogether.)

I was unsure if we could leave her.

And then she went through the big farmhouse doors, and someone said hello to her. And in almost an instant, or at least a few minutes, she was all smiles. Hugging two people she knew, ready to hand off her meds to the nurse and go to her assigned room on the third floor. When she came downstairs, she was ready to have us leave. She gave us happy hugs and went off to a giant bay window with couches in front of it to watch the sunset. 

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no. 15

Fifteen years is a long time. I can tick off who has grown, where and how we’ve lived, who has come into my life and who has left, what I have learned and some of what I have forgotten, what new toys I have acquired and what I have let go of. It feels like a lifetime of change and it feels like a moment.

Fifteen years ago today, around lunchtime, David died. I still miss him. I can almost imagine sitting down and having a conversation with him. I have so much news and so many questions. At the same time, however, I cannot imagine it at all. He is too far in time and space and changes away.

Time seems to have wiped away, wiped clean, the most painful missings, the heart-wrenching grieving, leaving in its wake a sweetness, a place from which strength could be built. I know the pilings on which this life I now live rests.

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coming home

Home.  I have chewed on the concept and the actual location of the place for a long time.  I have lived in places where I never felt at home, sometimes gradually finding enough of my people in those places to hold on and not wither away. I lived in places that felt like home, left them with every intention of coming back, never to return. There are places in-between—places where I felt some connection with the air of the place and made important friendships. Boston is one of those places. I moved from Jersey to Cambridge in the middle 70’s to live with David. He had been at Brandeis, dropping out to play in the pit band of the show, Lenny, and then just staying on.  I liked the city then and the neighborhoods in Somerville and Cambridge where we lived.  I was willing to move back to somewhere around here after we finished our degrees. David wanted NYC as home and very certainly, I fell in love with NYC and had no regrets. 

We never returned together to Boston, and when we left NYC for the midwest, I forgot that I had feelings for Boston, the place. 

And I did not quite realize, when I lived in Madison for twelve years, how much that had grown to be a home. It was a hard place to leave. Not the home that I came from, I will never be a midwesterner but the place with the people who supported me, and Julia, those first years of her with us and all the years after David left.  

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birthday girl

She had a very low key birthday because I have been confined to the house or hospital since New Year’s. However, my VNM, aka Ed Childs, brought home her favorite take out, bought her a lucky 2025 bag of Japanese beauty stuff and nifty socks, and served us strawberry short cake for dessert.

And just like that, the little girl who I met when she was five and a half turned 24.

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coming home

Coming home: Get on a bunch of planes. Watch a bunch of movies and eat the weird combination of what is airplane food—My favorite food during our longest flight today from Tokyo to San Francisco was two saltine crackers with a pat of cream cheese. Exactly like something I’d eat when there was nothing else to eat in the house. Try to sleep mostly unsuccessfully and ultimately stumble from plane to plane to immigration/customs to plane and to a lovely friend who drove us home.

After thirty hours traveling, those beds in Newton were incredibly comfortable!

But to back up —

On our last night in Hanoi, we had a hot pot supper—various kinds of meat and vegetables that are brought to the table raw along with a pot of boiling broth on a heater.  It’s good and I’ve liked the idea both back home and in Hanoi.  We’ve eaten it a number of times in Vietnam, but truthfully, when I go out to eat, I’d much rather have the cook do the cooking instead of one of us at the table. Still, it seems like a favorite with the people of Hanoi, including our friend, Tra My. 

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last weekend

We’ve been walking a little slower, trying to savor, trying to memorize, and still, at the same time, trying to stay in the present. We know that we are looking at things we’ve grown use to for the last time. So many streets we haven’t walked down and restaurants we haven’t eaten in. We have gotten better at crossing streets with and without traffic lights and drivers of motor bikes and cars that consider lights, lanes and one way signs as mere suggestions. We are regulars at that pho restaurant on the sidewalk half a block away from our apartment and enjoy so much all the fresh fruit juices that we drink every day.

Lots of flowers were planted during out week away in Hoi An. So nice to see them.

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Hoi An in the rain

And I am missing home stuff.  After a month and six days, I will allow myself such feelings.  Mostly missing is of three varieties: First, I miss Cheshire, Justin and Wilbur, and being a small part of their lives.  Pictures of Wilbur attests to six weeks of him growing.  Even at home, I don’t have an independent relationship with Wilbur—yes, he is one—and so it follows that so far away feels like I will be a stranger when I return.  Or at least, I believe so right now.

Yes, a bit of self-pity. Even during high adventuring.

Second, I miss my church community.  I get the emails!  The list serv with announcements.  A few weeks ago, I felt like I was keeping up with the goings on.  Now, I feel cut off and missing—the Ferry Beach weekend, a special choir concert, the early November Music Sunday music, the 175th birthday of the church lunch.  And lastly, I miss my HILR community—course work, lunches, special concerts and lectures.  I am grateful and happy that I’ve kept up with the one zoom class that I have—those late night class meetings have been an interesting comfort.

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