Community members in front of the Marlboro Post Office
We woke to zero and bundled up better than ever to stand in a circle outside the post office where the green banner hung with the sweet faces of those 20 children and the tender adults who cared for them.
There would be no classroom photos of loved ones this year. Noah would not turn a year older. He would not lose his tooth. The candles of the Menorah would be lit without him.
We came for different reasons and for the same reasons, and we came because…
Marlboro Meetinghouse
they couldn’t;
because children deserve our protection;
because it’s criminal to let this continue;
because without the collective consciousness, we are without a compass…
Despite the bitter cold, we chose not to step inside the Meetinghouse, but we rang its bells, “28 times,” (as decided) including Adam and his mother, among the names we spoke:
of each child,
each teacher,
the Principal,
the aide,
the substitute,
the therapist,
the psychologist.
We were an aging group–the youngest almost 50, and the rest older still. The young people were at home with the children, doing the work of families; while we stood as their representatives, in witness.
There were 10 of us in all, some strangers, some dear friends, sharing hopes and tears, and ending with a long, group hug.
Susan & Casey sounding the bell… 28 times.
Saturday, December 13, 2013 Marlboro, Vermont
Susan Kundhardt Joe Mazur Jennifer Mazur Beth McDermet Marge Wright Jonathan Morse Ellen McCulloch-Lovell Chris Lovell Casey Deane Kelly Salasin
the smell of rain the smell of rain the smell of rain
Waiting on Spring (photo:Nicki Steel, 2013, all rights reserved)
Hugs between friends last a bit longer this time of year; while caffeine and chocolate consumption climbs. It’s not winter. It’s the in between time. The waiting. The last foot of snow. The slow melt.
Those of us who can’t leave, head east to Brattleboro, where a 10 mile difference makes for grass. Like winter refugees, we soak up their signs of spring; our lives held hostage by a hill. By mud. By a home. By a family to whom we’re expected to return, and to make dinner and small talk; when what we really want to do is drive south. And never stop.
(I can’t go. I can’t go. I can’t. Right? Even if friends post beach weather just 300 miles away. )
My husband suggests that I work down in Brattleboro this week. “It’s supposed to be sixties in town,” he says. “It will only make it to about 50 up here.”
I add another piece of wood to the stove and try to settle in with a cup of tea; but my mind is as itchy and inflamed as my skin; desperate to shed winter’s wool.
I look outside and note the increasing signs–the green cap of the septic tank, the garden beds, the dry patches of dead grass–indicating land in what has been a sea of snow. Despite this welcome melting, winter continues to trump spring; white beats brown; and my glass is half-empty, and leaking.
“Why don’t we go down to Brattleboro now,” my husband says.
Though it sounds like a booby prize to the beach, I reluctantly get dressed so that he and I can walk the streets downtown, without boots, and drift into shops, and join an event at the River Garden center which sits on the Connecticut and has a glass roof that lets in lots of light.
There we find live music and hot chai and loads of desserts and fellow refugees from up the hill. I hug one too long, as if holding on; and then I dash back toward the front entrance. Toward a sudden and unexpected rain. Not rain on snow which is a sad, sad thing. But rain on earth. And rain on roads. And rain on sidewalks and rooftops–and us.
Just as the sky really lets loose, the sun bursts onto the scene–with a rainbow–stretching across the Connecticut and touching down at the foot of Mt. Wantastiquet. People flock out the back exit onto the deck to see the promise of color; because even though Brattleboro has lost its snow, it is stalled in monochrome.
One man turns toward me, beaming, noting the sweet smell.
“Don’t you love it,” I say, restraining myself from embracing him.
“I smelled it this morning too,” he continues. “Up at our place where there’s still a foot of snow.”
“Two feet,” his wife counters.
“But it smelled like rain, even without earth,” he says.
I smile. And sniff. And consider the different scents that come with rain; and wonder if it has its own.
I walk back to the front entrance and smell the sidewalks and the road. I return to the deck and smell the wood and the earth and the river. I finish back at the road and stay there awhile because it takes me to my childhood. To rain on hot tar in Virginia. Lying face down in the road so that I could soak up every ounce of that delicious, fresh scent before the sun smoked it away.
We linger past the rain, and into the evening at the River Garden, and when we finally head home, into the hills of snow, I feel freer. I decide to stay put. To be here to bear witness to my own spring’s emergence–to the return of our very first Robin; and even more beholding–to the appearance of a baseball–tribute to the life once lived–right here–where it shall return again.
How apropos that the old Co-op is being demolished as this anniversary approaches. What if we each threw something into the wreckage that we no longer wanted: guns, unresolved anger, bitterness?
I wonder how the Co-op will mark the anniversary? I know it will be a day full of anguish for the family of Michael Martin. I know that the days leading up to the anniversary will be particularly hard. I can already feel it in my own body.
What about Richard? What will his body relive of that day? What choices might he wish differently?
If you haven’t experienced the anniversary of a deep loss, then know that it takes its toll. Drink lots of water. Get a massage. Talk to a friend. Plant something beautiful–in the ground, in your life, in a relationship. Breath.
We brought home the tree this past weekend–from the wind swept farm upon McKinley Hill in Jacksonville. I don’t know if it’s really called McKinley Hill, but those are the people for whom we remove our mittens to scribble stiffly: “twenty dollars and oo cents” in frozen ink each year.
We thought about waiting for more snow to lend more of the holiday feeling, but we opted for what we had, not knowing if the weather would offer more or take what little remains.
The sun was bright on the hill and the view spectacular, and so was the wind which made for little argument over which tree was best. (Even the new guy at the baler was surprised at how quickly we returned dragging a balsam behind us.)
It was such a tiny tree that it hardly needed shortening once home, but my husband took off a foot any way–with the chain saw–which my 16 year-old defended, “He’s a man. He has to use the most powerful tool available.”
At the farm, a simple hand-saw had been employed by our resident enthusiast: Eleven-year old Aidan who also pulled the tree carriage down the hill and just as enthusiastically dragged it back up while my husband loaded the evergreen onto our Civic.
I love seeing trees atop of cars. I like counting how many pass us in a day. This is not p.c. of me, I know; many of my rural friends feel compromised cutting down a Charlie Brown rut from their own woods, while others forgo the tradition altogether and hang ornaments from evergreen boughs.
This year I actually considered this, not with environmental consciousness, but with fatigue. I didn’t want to face the dramatic overhaul that is required in tiny living room to accommodate a tree; but this year’s choice was so trim–we only moved a single chair.
Our tradition is to leave the tree unadorned as long as possible to appreciate it for its simple gift of green. Next we add the lights, and these too are left twinkling in solitude to inspire us on dark nights.
The last step is to add the ornaments, unwrapped from their boxes, labeled with dates and gift bearers, and carefully placed upon the boughs for the right effect of color, shape, medium and reflection.
We add egg nog and festive finger foods to this occasion, and then do the same with the holiday leftovers when it comes time to pack up the ornaments after the holiday.
The tree itself remains, lit and then unlit, until I can finally bear parting with the Balsam beauty in favor of order and an extra chair.
The Christmas tree is one of my favorite traditions along with the advent calendar and a daily reading from National Wildlife’s, December Treasury. A tribute to the Evergreen is today’s offering:
Evergreen Reflection, Kelly Salasin, December 2011
The Ancients
One need not go into history to find the reasons for veneration of the evergreen tree or bough as part of the Christmas season. They are of the enduring things of this earth, and man has known them as long as man has been here. The pine, the spruce, the hemlock, the fir – all those conifers that know no leafless season – have been held in special favor when man would have symbols of life that outlast all winters. And even more enduring, in geologic time, are the ground pine, the ground cedar, and the club mosses, most venerable of all the evergreens.
We gather them now, even as the ancients gathered them reaching for the reassurance of enduring green life at the time of the winter solstice. For the pines and their whole family were old when the first man saw them. Millions of years old, even, even at a time when millions of years had no meaning. When we gather them we are reaching back, back into the deep recesses of time. But, even as the ancients, we are reaching for reassurance, for the beauty of the living green but also for that green itself, the green of life that outlasts the gray winds, the white frosts, and the glittering snow of winter.
So we bring in the pine, the spruce, the hemlock – and now, because of the cultivation of Christmas trees on a wide scale, we do so without desecrating the natural forest. We bring the festoons of ground pine and partridgeberry, feeling a kinship with enduring things. They help us to catch, if only briefly, that needed sense of hope and understandable eternity.
The sight of the Legal Load Limit sign at the bottom of our road brings a leap of joy to my heart.
This Vermont Life 