Graduation 2017

June 14, 2017June 14, 2017 / Rebecca / 1 Comment

Five days later and I still can’t think about Friday without emotion.

It was a long day of ceremony, starting at 8 in the morning with a whole-school awards ceremony followed by Senior Class Day, where my resolve not to cry began to unstitch the moment I heard the first notes of music in the senior slideshow that H and Reshma put together.

I’m quite sure I had tears in my eyes or on my cheeks from that moment until I sighed myself into bed that night.

Through the awards, the class will, the tributes to classmates and teachers.

Through the grey day that threatened rain in the morning but promised sun in the evening.

Through the parade of gowned students.

Through the birds flying overhead like some familiar metaphor.

Through the flower ceremony, when Reshma surprised us.

Through the special awards, when the school surprised us.

Through a perfect song.

Through the moment we had come for but still were somehow not prepared for.

Though the view of the mountains and the sun bouncing off the ragged clouds. And the people who love H there to celebrate together. And the white tent on a hill in front of the school we all called home for the last six years. And the full moon steadying itself to rise.

It was a day that “marked the edge / of one of many circles.” Circles of H’s life, looping over each other, opening out to the next. Circles of our lives, once centered together and now beginning to drift, still overlapping, but no longer entirely concentric with hers.

It was a day of crows calling out and the gentlest raindrops and the hidden movement of stars overhead. The ending of one thing and the beginning of so much more, I can hardly catch my breath.

~~~~~

p.s. You can see all the photos I took during class day and graduation here.

Baccalaureate 2017

June 5, 2017June 7, 2017 / Rebecca / 7 Comments

They assembled on the green on Thetford Hill for a group photo on Sunday evening in blue and white robes (according to their taste), then went into the church two by two.

The program of events had Hyla giving her speech right after the processional, so up she went and hushed the crowd with her words. As her parents, we can’t help but be a little biased, but we thought it was a beautiful speech.

I didn’t cry then, not much anyway. In fact, I almost felt a little numb: very still, very quiet inside, just absorbing the moment and the room, the dull grey light of the drizzly June evening somehow turning gold as it came through the large windows, the words of our daughter spinning out across the hall, from her brain to her lungs to her larynx to her mouth to our ears to our brains to our memories.

You know when I cried? It was when members of the school band got up and played The Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Not so much for the meaning of the song itself (isn’t it a wedding song?), but because, as songs do, it acted as a worm hole that sucked me back through time to my own childhood, to a moment when I put that very record on my record player.

How did we get from childhood me, alone in a house in the western suburbs of Chicago, to an old wooden church on a hill in Thetford, Vermont, watching our seventeen-year-old daughter confidently take the podium in front of her entire class, her teachers, her friends, her parents? How did all of this happen so slowly and so quickly? How do I have my childhood and hers in my memories all at once?

We were sitting in the church where her preschool still is, kitty corner from her elementary school, a short walk from her middle and high school. Time and geography and memory felt so tightly bound up in those moments last night. The past, the present, and the future. How it was. How it is. How it will be.

Splendid is how it was. Splendid is how it is. Splendid is how it will be.

bacc_group

~~~~~~~~~~
p.s. If you’re interested, you can hear a recording of Hyla’s speech, or read it. And, here also, is the Baccalaureate speech given by Kelly Welsh, one of H’s favorite teachers.

Prom 2017

May 26, 2017 / Rebecca / 4 Comments

Don’t say anything; you’ll just start me crying…

Our darling buds of May

May 11, 2017May 12, 2017 / Rebecca / 8 Comments

For the first time since the kids were born, May gave us a true spring day (an afternoon, at any rate). Poor Darcy had been cooped up in the barn for nearly a full week. It was time to throw the doors open.

The rest of the herd was down in the pasture, so I closed the gate between the pen and pasture, just to give the new family time to adjust to one thing before the next. Then I opened the barn door.

Darcy fairly bounded out, loudly calling to her babies to follow her. It took them only a few minutes to let curiosity override fear, and then all three were out in the sunshine. In her happiness, Darcy did a twisting joy-leap off the high drive, and galloped down the hill to the back of the barn. The babies followed with their first real run down the slope, their sturdy little legs gathering and reaching beneath them as if they had always known how do to this.

After awhile, Darcy, with her gaze focused on the pasture, started calling. I’m guessing she was calling after her last-year babies (the 3Gs). Soon the rest of the herd had assembled on the other side of that gate and I let them in to the pen. Everyone huddled around the fresh kids and there was much sniffing. Darcy kept an eagle eye on the babies, nickering constantly, butting away anyone who was a little too interested. The unconcerned babies were everywhere, trying out their running and balancing skills on the rocks and ledges. I’m sure poor Darcy felt like she had toddler twins loose in a busy shopping mall.

Eventually, everyone got busy eating hay, except for Gideon, who was fixated on the little ones (whether it was interest, curiosity, or jealousy, I don’t know), so Darcy kept checking him, heading him off, butting him, pushing him away. She was gentle as these things go, but persistent. After a time, he got the hint and left to eat some hay. I hung out for quite awhile, sniffing noses with goats and snapping photos until my camera battery died. And then I went inside to leave the herd to themselves.

When I checked a little while ago, the adults were all lying in the straw and grass, sunning themselves, while the little ones explored the run-in stall and the rocks of the barn’s foundation.

Just beyond the pen, the apple trees are budding pink. Dandelions have sprung up out of nowhere and I saw honeybees sipping from them. The lawn is suddenly long enough to mow. The snowshoe hare we’ve caught glimpses of this winter has turned mostly brown again. The goldfinches are brilliant gold. There’s no stopping us now.

p.s. If you have an insatiable appetite for goatling photos, you can follow along as they grow by visiting their album on my Flickr page.

Here we are now

May 5, 2017May 5, 2017 / Rebecca / 9 Comments

Darcy kept us waiting six days. She seemed unbothered by it all. It was just the humans who were anxious, all the way through yesterday morning when I suggested maybe we should talk to the vet to see if we should be concerned.

Of course, that’s what did it. Like taking an umbrella along to ensure it doesn’t rain, if you express your concern to the universe, the goat says, “Ok then, I guess I should oblige.”

It was around noon yesterday and I was going to give her one more check before going for my usual dog walk. No sooner had I stepped outside than I heard a bellow from the barn. I scooted out there with a confused dog by my side and found one wet baby lying in the barn bedding, with Darcy and several other members of the herd assembled around her in a protective semi circle.

I moved Darcy and baby 1 into the prepared birthing stall, then ran to call M home from work. Back out to the barn and Darcy was cleaning that first little one, a girl, whose fur was turning light as she dried.

M arrived in plenty of time to watch baby 2, a boy, arrive. He’s lovely, darker than the girl, and with funny ears that flop around and won’t stay out straight like his sister’s.

They are both doing well. Nursing, napping, being cleaned by their mother, working on learning how to use those little legs.

Outside, it’s raining. I hear it’ll rain for a week. That’s as good an excuse as any to hang out in the barn, listening to baby goats dream.

Stasis

May 2, 2017May 7, 2017 / Rebecca / 7 Comments

Sometimes the only way to start is just to start.

The cats and I are playing a game today. The game goes like this: they sit on the windowsill to my left, close enough to my ear that I can hear their ears twitch. I get out of my chair and they dash for their food dishes in anticipation of a meal that is at least an hour away by my clock. I sit back down. They spread themselves like speed bumps on the rug behind my chair. I get up; they scatter. I sit down; they start knocking things off of tables. I get up; they race for the bowls. I sit down.

I can do this for hours.

Darcy the goat is pregnant, so we believe. She’s round and her udder is full and by our calendar’s reckoning she was due to kid last Friday. She has not kidded. She remains round and calm, lying sedately in the stall we’ve prepared for her, chewing her cud like a bored receptionist chewing her gum. We check on her at all hours. Early morning, late at night, sometimes the middle of the night. We get up in the shivery wet, pull on our jeans, slip into our boots, flick on the flashlight. She rests, and chews, and chews.

She can do this for days.

Spring is notionally here. No, I’m exaggerating. Spring is definitely here, but so reluctant it’s nuts. The last few days have been cold, the last 24 hours full of (welcome) rain. If I weren’t so lazy I’d build a fire, but I’ve had it with splinters and now I’m not even sure where I put the matches on that innocent April day when I thought spring was a bird in the hand. Every few days, spring puts on a bit of a show, peek-a-booing a few new buds, pushing up something vibrantly green from the brown earth, sprinkling the evening air with peeper song. Then we swing back to sweaters. This morning I was shivering in a little cafe, waiting for my car to be repaired, winter coat around my shoulders, hot mug of tea in my hands. On my walk back to the garage, spring scattered daffodils along my path.

She can do this for weeks.

What we are doing here right now is waiting. This is a good place to be, even when it feels frustrating sometimes. We are waiting for things to begin without having used up any of the things we are waiting for. I’m greedy and want it all: the warmth, the rain, the flowers, the warm tea, the moment before everything begins, before the curtain lifts for the next act.

The cats just want their dang dinner.

True North

March 7, 2017March 7, 2017 / Rebecca / 5 Comments

Not so long ago, I wrote about community, about gathering together to shine a little light. Like families, some communities exist because of proximity, or a specific current urgency (an election, for example), or because of existing relationships, or because you fall in and they love you and keep you and why would you want to leave?

And then there are the families–and communities–that you build yourself, little by little, taking some risks, extending your hand and your heart-stained sleeve to other people you admire or want to know better, or who share your love of something essential, like words or art or music.

So this is how I find myself happily part of a new community, one that I am helping to build, along with my friend Shari, and our families and friends. We’ve called this community Literary North, and last Friday was its debut into society: a gathering with the purpose of sharing words and thoughts about community, resistance, persistence, creativity, and hope.

We put a lot of energy into this event. A few things didn’t go as planned (see also, freak snow storm that night, one presenter not showing up), but most of it went better than I could have imagined.

We filled the (beautiful) room with attendees. One talented musician played his own compositions while we gathered. Three brilliant, passionate, and generous authors shared their time, their words, and their thoughts with us all. There were slices of freshly toasted homemade bread, chocolate-maple-nut butter, blood orange marmalade, pastrami, hot herbal tea, and red dragon iced tea. There were hand-printed chapbooks and broadsides, handmade CDs, and hand-folded paper cranes. There were writers and readers, poets and storytellers, film makers and students, musicians and neighbors. And we were all there together, in the moment of creation, our own small community, warm against the bitter cold storm outside the door.

There were two happy little stars who had somehow constructed this beautiful constellation, star by star, around themselves. And who are, even now, tired but sparkling and dreaming about what happens next.

Ben Cosgove (photo by James Napoli)

Taylor Mardis Katz (photo by James Napoli)

Robin MacArthur (photo by James Napoli)

Jeff Sharlet (photo by James Napoli)

One for the pocket

January 24, 2017January 24, 2017 / Rebecca / 3 Comments

Snow day. Or ice day. The sky was raining frozen pellets at 6 this morning and school called to say stay home.

This is H’s last semester of high school. This time next year she’ll be watching snow fall outside her college dorm window and deciding for herself if it’s safe to hike across campus to her first class.

How many more school snow days will there be before spring? Maybe this will be our last? I shoved the bills and to-do list tasks aside. As M reminded me on his way out the door this morning, Save this day to put in my pocket for a rotten January day next year when she’s not here.

So I’m writing this down here for me next winter. Because I’ve missed a whole lot of lasts in my life without knowing it until it was too late, and I’ll be darned if I’ll miss this one.

So I’m putting this in my pocket….

The ice falling and collecting on the branches. The birds flocking to the feeder. The flutter of wings and the occasional muffled collision with the window. Her coming downstairs mid-morning, in a navy blue t-shirt and jeans, suggesting maybe we should try out some new facial masks she’d ordered.

Us sitting on the sofa, faces draped with cold therapeutic masks, watching “The Women,” laughing and repeating our favorite lines, heating up frozen chicken tenders for a mid-movie lunch.

Us sitting on the sofa with the TV on talking about the election and the march, about Aziz Ansari, about how sweet-neurotic the dog is, and how cute-weird the cats are and how we both wanted chocolate.

Us not talking, each in our own online worlds, but within arm’s reach of each other.

Us listening to The Weepies and Jake Bugg and deciding to make crepes for dinner.

Us breathing and being and often not even talking, just living in the same square footage.

Us waiting for M to come home and join us, to make and eat dinner, to do whatever we do as a family, the way we’ve come to be a family these last 17 years.

Me, folding this into a crane, or maybe a cardinal, and slipping it into a safe place in my heart.

This little light of ours

January 23, 2017January 23, 2017 / Rebecca / 2 Comments

We held an election on November fourth. We held an inauguration on January 20. We held a march on January 21.

I’ve had months, weeks, and days to get my little duckling thoughts in a row and I find myself still bewildered. But here’s a try.

Eight years ago this week, we took the week off work and school and drove the familiar 750 miles to Michigan to be with family when Barack Obama took the Presidential Oath of Office.

It felt important to observe this in a way that we’d never before observed such an event, important enough to drive through two days of winter, to take nine-year-old H out of school to make sure she would have this memory to hold on to, a memory of the moment when politics seemed somehow even momentarily washed clean of cynicism. We were told we could hope, and we did. Yes we did.

I have a scattering of water colored memories from those few days, faded color slides: a nearly shut down hotel with no heat or toilet paper; an unheated swimming pool where a pack of little birthday party girls had released a tiny school of goldfish (rescued by M); the warm, inviting living room in M’s parents’ home, with the glowing television in the corner; the upright, earnest young president at the podium; H coming down with a fever that day and sleeping on the sofa through the entire inauguration ceremony; the sense in our hearts that there was much more work to do, but that a door had at last been unlocked and opened just a crack.

I remember another day, many years earlier, when I said to friends that I thought that it didn’t even matter who the president was. That a single person couldn’t have that much power and effect, considering our government’s systems of checks and balances. I’m cringing now at what I said.

I’m certainly older now, and less innocent, and maybe a smidgen wiser.

On Saturday we went to Montpelier to be part of the Women’s March. It was an electric, moving experience to be there, we three smalls bird joining a flock of starlings, a murmuration of feet, hearts, voices. The march itself was short, a mere half mile from the high school to the state house, but there were 15,000 of us (or more) and we lit up the grey day with smiles and songs and purpose. And we were small beans compared with what was going on in DC, New York, London, the world.

My older, less innocent self knows that this was an important first step, but a first step only. And it’s meaningless unless we continue to metaphorically march, every day, together, all of us. I know that we have a lot of hard work to do to make sure that everyone is included, to make sure that everyone is heard, to listen, learn, and let go of prejudices we don’t even know we have. I know that one march, regardless of size, isn’t a solution in and of itself. But I still feel a blossoming hope that was gone only last Friday.

Maybe this weekend was a small movement in the face of the big obstacles ahead of us, the tiniest sway that can build, the way little legs pumping at the air on a playground swing take the swing into the sky. The way single voices make a chorus. The way one candle lights another and another and another.

Something old, something new

January 5, 2017January 5, 2017 / Rebecca / Leave a comment

A year ago I stood at the scrolled ironwork fence at the edge of the Horseshoe Falls in Niagara Falls, Ontario and took a photo.

We were just returning from a trip to visit family in Michigan and, like clockwork, I’d picked up some sort of virus and was sick in a way I hope never to be again in a soggy hotel room. On January 1, I was just coming out of the mist of the virus that we dubbed “Douglas,” and I wanted to breathe some fresh Canadian air. Poor M and H were still in Douglas’ grip, some 30 stories up in a hotel that has a beautiful view that neither of them could appreciate that day.

I have a lot of memories of that day, largely due, I believe, to the photo I took, which anchored me to the moment (pulling my coat close around me in the drizzle, not quite snow, not quite rain), to a feeling (unfettered and a bit loose on my feet after days of being in bed), to a thought (how quiet that rushing water is when you’re so close to the edge).

The next day, home at last, I snapped another photo with my iPod, this time of a lamp’s reflection on our bedroom ceiling. And then I decided to continue. I don’t know how I did it because I’m truly lousy at resolutions and doing anything on a regular basis (diaries, exercise classes, writing projects, reading projects) and there were many days in 2016 when I didn’t feel like taking a photo, or didn’t have a good idea of a photo to take, or didn’t have my camera with me. Still somehow I managed it: 366 black -and-white photos, one a day, no faking, no fudging, not always fabulous, but a record of the year.

That project taught me many things:

Set small goals: one photo a day is not a lot to ask.
Always have a camera on hand; you never know when a good photo will jump out in front of you and it’s a rotten feeling when that happens and there’s no camera to record it.
Don’t worry if you forgot your camera. Sometimes it’s just good to look with your eyes and record the moment with your heart. There will be other photo opportunities.
Be persistent with a project even when your will is weak, when you are tired, when you are sick, when you are NOT IN THE MOOD.
Look for light (and shadow) in new ways, look for texture and contrast, find beauty and detail aside from color.
Don’t be afraid of repetition, of returning to favorite scenes, themes, ideas. Each version is a bit different and the accretion of repetition is beautiful.
When it’s time for a project to end, put an ellipsis after it and then start a new one. Momentum is magical.

To that last point, I began a new daily project this past January 1, using last year’s photos to create a new found poem each day this year. I may post some of those poems/photos here from time to time, but if you want to know more about the project or to see them all, you can follow along at thefoundnow.

I have another photo project idea up my sleeve, too, but I’ll tell you about that later.

And what about you? Did you have a project last year (daily, weekly, sporadically) that brought you pleasure? Do you have plans for this year? I’d love to know. You are all so clever, and creative and inspiring; I can’t wait to hear what you’re up to.

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Today's the day! The sun is shining, the tank is clean, and we're getting out of…