Count 'Em Up

When it's April and still snowing and the pile of snow on the north side of your house is still high enough that, if you stand on it, you can touch your roof, it's a good time to look around and try to find the blessings in your life. I thought of this the other day, as I drove to work in yet another snow squall, and I nearly drove off the road at the sight of snow geese in an open field at Simplicity Farm, the organic dairy farm just a few miles from my house.

Last year's corn stalks are poking through the shrinking snow pack and, in among them, I have seen for some days a flock of Canada geese. But the other day, white geese with black-tipped wings milled about in their company. Snow geese have made western Vermont one of their stopping points on their southbound journey each fall. In years past, another lifetime it seems, I made fall journeys over the Green Mountains, from my eastern side of the hills, to the Dead Creek Wildlife Refuge to welcome their arrival. They are a spectacular sight when they number in the hundreds or thousands. The other day, I saw only a handful which, in a way, seemed somehow more magical.

I don't know too much about snow geese, but I do know they mate for life. I know they spend their summers in the Arctic tundra. And, I know they are beautiful.

The snow geese at Simplicity Farm briefly expanded my sense of space to the bird's eye view and to migratory distances. I swirled around above all of the murky weather and mud for just a moment or two before landing back here in the Mad River Valley. I drove on thinking about this place where I live. The people who make it what it is. The reasons I've chosen to live here…

I thought about the early phase of committing to it all. Sam had just bought our little 5.8 acre lot and we were living as dorm parents in order to save money to build a house. We spent all of our free time up on the land, cutting trees, pushing the woods back to create a bit of space, excavating the old stone walls that surround us on three sides. We built a tent platform where we thought the house should be so we could try it out...see what the view was like, see how the sun hit at different times of day and different seasons. 

At the end of a work day, we'd sit on the edge of the platform and drink a beer, admire our progress. Suspended as it was in the trees, we could hang our legs over the edge. It felt good to be up in the air. Our house is now where the platform used to be. The trees that held it up are built into our timberframe, still holding us up. 

It was, and is, the right spot.

During that process, we also planned our wedding. That ritual was about our relationship, of course, but it was also about this place…our land, our town, our valley beyond. It was about building a life together, and about building that life here among the mountains and rivers we love, in the company of friends and neighbors we value.

So, when I heard that one of our neighbors on our hill was a justice of the peace, she seemed like the perfect person to marry us. I hadn't met her yet, but I knew where she lived. We'd pass her house a mile before reaching our land. She has the best view of Camel's Hump in the entire state. I started looking for her every time I drove by in hopes that I might meet her. One warm morning, she was sitting outside in front of her house. She was in her nightgown, eating a bowl of oatmeal, the gallon can of maple syrup on the table next to her…my kind of gal.

I might have driven a bit fast on our road, in those early days, always eager to get to our land and never fully appreciating the scenery on the way up. So, that morning when I saw Stephanie, I was almost past her when she came into view. I slammed on the breaks and kicked up a cloud of dirt from the road. I jumped out of the car, amazed to finally see her, in the flesh, after all those months of stalking her.

"Are you Stephanie?" I blurted out.

"Yes," she replied slowly, eyebrows bent in a "who the hell are you?" sort of way, seeming to suggest that I should, first of all, slow the hell down, and second, have a damned good reason for interrupting her early morning solitude.

"My name is Kerry and my partner and I are wondering if you'd marry us!" As if she knew our whole story. As if she cared. As if I hadn't just put dirt in her oatmeal. I don't remember her exact response, but I think it was essentially a "Yes…but let's get to know each other a bit first" kind of answer.

From then on, I drove by slowly and always made sure to wave as I passed—whether I could see her and her husband Louie or not. (Some time later, when I was visiting in their living room, they told me they always saw me wave and appreciated it. They also suggested I convince Sam to slow down.)

Stephanie eventually did marry us, but only after she came up to our half-built house on a warm fall day and sat with us on our back porch. She asked us a bunch of questions—about why we wanted to marry, about why we wanted to live here on this shared hill, about how the hell we planned to get up and down it in the winter! We talked with her about our families and our values and our goals and, when the talk was over, we had a better sense than we ever had before of why we were doing what we were doing.

Stephanie took that conversation and turned it into the most lovely wedding ceremony I could've imagined. I dreaded standing up in front of everyone to say our vows; I was nervous and embarrassed for some reason. But, in the end, the ceremony itself was my absolute favorite part of the whole event. We were surrounded by loved ones—a small group by most standards, only about sixty family members and just our oldest friends. We didn't have a fancy alter or arbor or anything like that. We didn't even have flowers up there. It was just me and Sam, our friend Jim and my sister Amy standing up with us, and Stephanie with her music stand to hold her prepared words. 

Sam and I wrote our own vows—you would expect that of two English teachers, I suppose. We wrote them separately, with no guidelines, and they turned out to express nearly the exact same sentiments—the same themes of respect for each other's independence, desire to share adventures together, devotion to one another and of course a promise to love one another through all the highs and lows. Stephanie's additions were about a sense of place, about our shared hill, about the community we were coming into and which we would help shape.

When I was growing up, my family moved twice, once when I was in third grade and again after ninth grade. I never felt rooted anywhere. I never felt that I had a real home, a sense of history or continuity. I always felt like the new kid, from somewhere else. My whole life I craved home. I have always wanted to belong and have been envious of those with real roots. 

Seeing the snow geese the other day, I was reminded: this is my arctic tundra. I have chosen this place to build my home, set down my roots. So now, as I wait for the snow to melt, and I take stock of my life, I take solace in the blessings I can count. Underneath two feet of snow, there are snow drops working their way toward the sun. My friend Tei gave me the bulbs. And there are tulips and daffodils from my friend Mike; they're on their way too. I have strawberries from Sam's mom and dad's garden, and rhubarb from our friends the Stetsons. I have perennials galore from Char and Jean and neighbors here on our hill. I have a crab apple tree given to me by my friend Bernie on my mother's birthday, to plant for my mom. I have a new stone wall, holding up a new curved garden bed, built by Sam late last summer, that's just waiting for me to decide what to plant…what roots to set. And I have neighbors who appreciate when I wave.

In these seemingly interminable late winter days, it is easy to think about the lingering darkness that is both real and metaphorical. It is easy to feel sad when I think about Japan, or anxious when I think of Tik, another recent student who just spent two weeks in a Syrian prison. It is easy to feel profoundly vulnerable when I think of my current students who have, in the past week, had seizures and been diagnosed with cancer. Even as I look forward to going on our first vacation with Quinn next week, I am reminded of the panicky phone call I received from my friend Mary years ago; she was about to get on a plane and she called to ask if I would take care of her daughter Claire if anything happened to her and her husband.

I have my own panicky thoughts now. I do not want my daughter to be motherless as I am, especially as young as she is. Sam and I spent yesterday afternoon filling out our application for life insurance. But, what value do you put on a life? Who will we ask to raise our daughter? Will our daughter grow to adulthood without having seizures, without cancer? All of this is an exercise in self control.

How does one make it through life with all these hazards to navigate? Is it even possible to navigate them? Believing so is magical thinking…as much as I plan and organize and arrange all the details, there is no controlling it all, there is no controlling what hasn't happened yet.  And, when you are me and control is important, some of these late winter days of darkness and cold are really dark and really cold.

And so, you do what you taught yourself to do years ago: you interrupt yourself even though interrupting is technically not polite; you do it because you have to. You interrupt the dark thoughts by counting up your blessings. You lift yourself up above it all and you look around from the bird's eye view and you see your neighbors' houses which are actually much closer than they feel when the road is blocked by snow, and you see your gardens starting to reveal themselves, and you imagine the taste of fresh strawberries and the feel of sun on your skin, and you feel lucky to have seen the snow geese because they may have been some crazy fluke here in this valley, and you were there to see them and you can tell your neighbors about it the next time you see them because this is where you live. You have a home, a place to set down roots, and so many people who have shared a bit of their world to help you create yours. And, you have Quinn, sleeping on the bed next to you, to hand it all over to someday.

Last spring on May 4th

Slow Learner

"You make me better than I am." 

-Fred Savage to Winnie on The Wonder Years

On the way home from an early Valentine's dinner last night, I was telling Sam about Janie Mae Crawford and her sweet talking, sweet loving man Tea Cake. These are the two main characters in Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I just finished reading with my eleventh graders—just in time for Valentine's Day (you're welcome boys!). I was telling Sam about the moment in the book when Janie realizes that Tea Cake is the real thing and she experiences, as Hurston describes it, a "self-crushing love." We were talking about Quinn and I was saying that for the first time in my life, I think I really understand what true love is; I have never experienced a "self-crushing" anything until now…I have always been more Emersonian in my self-centeredness!

Sam grinned patiently as I explained that I would do anything for Quinn and that while I have loved him truly for a long time (ten years this summer), I wouldn't say I was ever willing to do any self-crushing for him. He's used to my honesty by now.

One time, years ago, someone asked me about Sam; this was before Sam and I got married and this person wondered if I had met my "soul mate." My response was quick and unplanned: "I don't think my soul has a mate; I'm too independent. But I do think I've met my match." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I thought, "Hmm, that was interesting." I had never really thought about myself or my relationship in that way before; I had always hoped for a soul mate, so I was surprised by this matter-of-fact response.

My parents had set a high bar for me: they were best friends, high school sweethearts who were still madly in love when my mother died twenty-three years into their marriage. I experienced serious teenage disgust when I would find them dancing in the living room in the middle of the day, or making out in the garage when I opened the door to take out the garbage.

But even though I was grossed out on the surface, those moments got filed away in my expectations for later years. Through the years I had many nice boyfriends. In fact, I never had a bad one; they were all, every one of them, sweet and thoughtful and attentive and affectionate. And, one after another, I passed them up in order to "keep with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

Then I met Sam. We were in a ten-day Wilderness First Responder class in New Hampshire. He lived and taught in Virginia at the time, and I taught for a traveling school based in Vermont. I lived out of a storage unit, a backpack and my truck. I was sitting in the front row on the first day when we went around the room and introduced ourselves. I heard this sexy voice from somewhere behind me, "I'm Sam," he said, and he mentioned that he was a high school history teacher. I had to turn around. When I swiveled back toward the front of the room, a fellow teacher from my school, who was taking the class as well, caught the look on my face. "Wow," I whispered with a wide-eyed smile and he laughed at me.

Later that morning, the instructors said some of us had to move our cars; we were parked in the wrong place. I headed out to move my pickup, which was loaded with my kayaking and climbing gear. I saw Sam out of the corner of my eye; I watched to see what he was driving. He was headed to another pickup, which was loaded with his kayaking and climbing gear. I knew then that love at first sight was real, and I also knew that I would someday marry him.

Our first kayaking date on the Lehigh River in PA, September 2001

What I didn't know at the time was that before I could marry him, I would have to experience a number of reality checks that were neither romantic nor even pleasant, and that I would learn for certain that Sam was not perfect, and, even more shocking, neither was I. It was in those moments that I had some internal shift regarding soul mates. Meeting my match, someone who could still be himself even in the admittedly overbearing presence of my self, well, maybe that was more important to me than finding a perfect mate. This was a man worth holding onto.

And so I have held on—sometimes for dear life, and other times with only two fingers at an arm's length. It doesn't matter to me how we hold on, just that we do. The peaks now are higher and the valleys less deep, and our patterns make sense enough that we know how to avoid some of the Clash of the Titans brawls we used to have. In fact, we've come to have fun telling some of our fight stories, though we usually find that no one else finds them quite as funny as we do. We are very different, but we are very much alike in our stubbornness and our will to win. Like I said, I've met my match.

So last night, as I was explaining that for the first time in my life, I love someone in a self-crushing way, I expected him to share my feelings about our daughter…our daughter, it is still a stunning concept to me!

To my surprise, Sam's response was, "sometimes." Only sometimes does he have for her that overwhelming I would do absolutely anything for you and you are the most important aspect of every minute of my day kind of feeling. I chose not to dwell too long on my disappointed surprise, believing then and even now that this will change for him over time. I know my connection to Quinn is perhaps more biological than it is for him. I have always had Mother Lion tendencies with the people I love, but now I am really a mother and my inner lion is fierce. Hopefully he'll catch up someday.

When we got home, I went straight to bed, exhausted. Quinn has been waking up more rather than less for the past six weeks and I think I am starting to suffer from prolonged sleep deprivation. I've started to dread going to bed at night, because I know I will be up and down and more tired the next day. The same is true for Sam. And so by four o'clock this morning, when I got back into bed, again, and Sam dared to breathe audibly, I threw an unabashed fit. "Can't you even try?" I yelled. He threw back the sheets and stormed off snapping back, "I'm not doing anything!" I couldn't believe he was going to leave me alone upstairs because that meant no more taking turns dealing with Quinn; I would be the only one who could hear her and therefore I would be the only one getting up. Happy friggin' Valentine's Day to you too, I thought.

Quinn and I made it to 7 a.m., at which time I fed her and changed her one last time and then deposited her on her mat next to the couch where Sam was sleeping. I walked back upstairs to bed listening to her chirp, relieved that she was no longer my problem.

By 8:30 I woke up and the house was quiet. Guilt washed over me. I had been mean, and I had not been a team player. I got up and got dressed, prepared to go downstairs and apologize, again, for behavior that I am embarrassed to admit has become a bit routine. The house was empty, the coffee was still hot, and the truck was gone from the driveway.

Twenty minutes later, they came home. Sam came in through the basement, something we do when we are trying not to wake the sleeping baby…I was the sleeping baby. When he came up the stairs, with the car seat in tow, and saw me sitting by the woodstove, his face lit up. "Good morning!" he said with his bright smile, and I burst into tears. I couldn't believe he wasn't mad at me. He came over to give me a kiss, laughed off my meanness and said, "It's just a nighttime thing! I love you."

That was one of those moments I hung on for dear life. I felt run down, my back sore despite the massage Sam sent me for yesterday, mascara smudged under my eyes from last night's dinner date he planned, my hair desperately needing a cut. "You're beautiful," he said. I laughed and cried all at once. Sometimes Sam's imagination drives me crazy. I'm a reality-based thinker; I tend to stop myself at what's possible right now. Sam spends a portion of every day concocting elaborate plans that often strike me as wildly impractical if not impossible. But this morning, when he managed to still love me, and convince himself that I was beautiful, well, I felt profoundly grateful for his imagination. And I realized he has probably known a lot more about love, for a lot longer than I have. Hopefully I'll catch up someday.

Raising Day, July 2007