December is a time of preparation, of advent, and in that spirit comes “Holly Days”–a weekend of local shopping in downtown Brattleboro–with deep discounts & holiday spirit.
One of my favorite things to do this weekend is to select my annual calendar; it’s a ritual that helps prepare me for the New Year–shaped by spirit and intention.
Click here to read more about this ritual and our local Holly Days.
While snuggling in bed beside my husband, I spring up with a realization.
“I think this is our 7th Christmas.”
“Not yet,” my husband says, counting on his fingers. It’s easy for him to know from when to begin: 2004, and the 48 hour Christmas.
“You’re right,” he says, “It is 7.”
“You know how significant this is,” I say.
“Yes–And it’s the house ‘I’ built.”
7 years ago this December, Casey and I lived apart for the first time in 20 years. That November the boys and I moved to my sister’s in Florida so that he could devote every waking (and barely-waking) hour to finishing this house in time for Christmas (since he already missed Labor Day, Halloween and Thanksgiving.)
At midnight on December 22, he picked us up at the airport and we moved into our home–the first home that we have ever owned.
“This will be the house that I’ve lived in the longest,” I say, as I roll over to turn off the lamp at my bedside.
“And it’s the house ‘I’ built,” he says again, rolling to turn off his own lap.
We almost didn’t make it to 7 years. Back in 2008 when Casey was unemployed, he looked at some international teaching jobs–a prospect which was thrilling to me–but meant that I’d have to start over from scratch on the 7 year thing.
“I haven’t made it yet,” I say, settling back down into Casey’s arms. “It’s not Christmas yet, and I could die or the house could burn down or something.”
“Don’t say that kind of stuff,” Casey says, pushing me away.
The truth is that this is such an important milestone to me that I’m anxious about it. I felt this same fearful uncertainty before I left for England in my junior year, and then again before our first baby was born.
Sometimes the things we really want seem that impossible, especially when they’re so close to coming true.
I remember when Casey reached the 7 year mark with me. It was an important finish line for him–it meant he surpassed my first love. Though he’s now more than tripled that number, he still reminds me of his longevity–“Almost 4 times as long,” he says.
First love, first son, first house. They’re all so significant.
I don’t know what number home this is for me. I’d rather not count. As an Army brat who was born while her dad was still in college, I’ve had my share of moves and homes and schools
My own boys were born and raised in this same small town, attended the same small school, and grew up with the same kids that they played with at preschool. I was 14 when my parents finally settled down in one place.
That home had been the one that belonged to my grandparents, my beloved “6012.” But our time there was short. My parents divorced, and not only did we lose our family, but our home.
After that, I went to Europe three times, lived out West, moved back home, and then took off for these Green Mountains.
Our first place in Vermont was a tiny farm-house nestled beside a “babbling” brook, and seated at the foot of a mountain beside the National Forest. Both my boys were conceived there, and for seven years, it was our “home sweet home.”
When we left that rental, it was heartbreaking, but the time had come for us to set out on our own, and a few moves later, we were here–in the house that Casey built–with the help of his boys and all of our friends.
7 years ago this Christmas.
(Did I count right?)
Kelly Salasin, December 2011
A few years back, I answered “a call” to SING–by reluctantly joining the Brattleboro Women’s Chorus. This was a one time thing for me, but the women of BWC have continued for 16 years, including this past weekend’s Thanksgiving concert. It is in the spirit of Thanksgiving–for the work of chorus director Becky Graber and the board & women of BWC–that I share the piece of writing below.
It was the second or third stop on the Mother’s Day Nursing Home Tour when it hit me.
The Low Middles and I had just patched our way through Que Sera Sera–a song my mother loved–one whose harmony slipped from my memory when it was our time to sing.
I’d been scrambling to learn my part to this and a dozen others for weeks in preparation for our big concert at the Baptist Church. I didn’t like the pressure. I didn’t like being unprepared.
My jewel of revelation was here.
I had long admired the work of the Brattleboro Women’s Chorus, and had even co-opted their music years ago to create a women’s sing-along in my community of Marlboro; but I had never wanted to perform with them. I didn’t like the responsibility of it. My life had been too full with responsibility.
It was my spirit that cajoled me.
Over the years, I had grown accustomed to responding to this inner voice. It had taken me on a wild ride from an Art and Meditation Class to a Ballet Class to this. I knew there was a good reason why I was supposed to sing with the chorus, I just didn’t know what it was.
Once I had made the commitment and began rehearsing , I expected some great gift of joy to be released.
It wasn’t.
I hadn’t realized how hard it would be to focus on music for two to three hours at a time, particularly in the evening when I liked to crawl under the covers with a book. I hadn’t realized just how much all my years at home had ruined me as a student. I didn’t want to be told where and when to sit or stand. I didn’t like being part of the herd and I didn’t know how to small-talk like women do on the rides home.
Sitting at a cafe one afternoon, I was approached by a friend whose wife had been singing with the chorus for years. “She loves it,” he told me, complaining that she wouldn’t take a break no matter how full their plates were.
I told him that I didn’t really want to join and shared how anxious I felt about the performance. Though it didn’t feel particularly sublime in the moment, his response, like a pebble tossed into a pond, rippled again and again.
“It is all of your voices,” he said, “Coming together, that made the music so beautiful.”
Little by little, I began to experience just that.
On the day that we came to sing at the nursing homes, I knew it to be true. It wasn’t the perfection of any one of our voices or parts, that made the music, it was the mysterious alchemy of coming together–without perfection.
How can I begin to put into words the depth of my experience? How can I communicate the breadth of its influence in my life? Not one of us Low Middles knew our part fully. But each of us offered something to the other–so that together, we made the music.
We made the shades rustle, the faces lift, the eyes brighten. And for me personally, a profound understanding emerged: that I can be supported, that it is not all about me and my responsibility or my perfection, that it is in our fallibility as well as our competency that we support and uplift others.
On the following Sunday, I stood at the podium on the altar at the Baptist Church and gave VOICE to Julia Ward Howe’s words. A wind came through me and spread her thoughts resounding through the room. Tears sprung from my eyes eyes and I was swept up in the passion of her voice. I felt a strength that I have never known. The strength that comes from vulnerability.
On the fourth floor of Eden Park, I had seen vacant eyes, drooping heads, drooling mouths. This is where we discard our elders, I thought. But when the music began, and we came together in song, the room came to life—not just in front of me, but within me.
I saw a husband tend his wife, wipe her mouth, hold her trembling hands. I heard a woman, at first talking out a lifetime of troubles, begin to sing, eyes brightening, connecting with ours. I felt a nurse spread love throughout the room with her caresses.
As we left the floor, I approached a woman who had never opened her eyes or lifted her head to our performance. I gently squeezed her shoulder, and to my surprise, she moved her head to cradle it against my forearm.
I put down my backpack and gave her a full embrace knowing that she felt everything around her even though I hadn’t seen it.
Kelly Salasin, November 2011
I’m certain I’m watching something in Russia or Egypt or Iran, but it’s Chicago. USA. It’s a ballroom in America. It’s politicians and supporters and white linen table cloths and wine glasses. And crashers. Darkly dressed party crashers demanding rights. Ruining the party. Party poopers!
It’s the same in an alcoholic family. There are those who know how to have fun, and those who ruin everything by talking about alcoholism. They’re so serious. Such downers.
America is like that right now. The Occupiers are crashing the party and saying, “This is diseased. This isn’t fun. This is wrong,” and the rest of us aren’t sure who to believe.
We’d rather keep shopping and watching the game than deal with the elephant in the room. Maybe there is no elephant. Maybe it’s just a lot of noise from the family rabble-rouser.
“Just past the dip, and shut-up for once,” we say. We’re not the problem. We can’t control the alcoholic. We just want our beer and our program and to be left alone because it’s the weekend.
But the din is getting louder. More and more family members are speaking up. It’s harder to hear the tv. Shopping isn’t quite as fun. Something’s shifting.
And we’re afraid.
If we admit that things are bad, then things have to change, and what will that change bring? Keeping the status quo feels safer, no matter where it’s heading so we turn up the tv, or head to the gym; and then make a donation for another family who lost everything to hospital bills, and pretend that we’re not worried about our health in the face of water and air and soil so polluted; and tell our kids to work hard and get a good job because that’s what it will take to pay off their students loans and keep themselves busy so that they never have time to face what is wrong either.
And when the family falls apart, we’ll be surprised. We didn’t see it coming. Sure there were signs, but we never imagined…
Kelly Salasin, 11/11/11
Yesterday I drove down my hobbled road, snow encrusted, and turned onto Route 9 for the morning commute to Brattleboro–and didn’t give it a second thought when the flow of traffic stopped, and became single lane, as if it was as natural an occurrence as the mindless speed.
I was surprised to find myself relieved rather than annoyed by the delay.
“They haven’t abandoned us,” I said to my empty car.
In this post-Irene world, road work had become the norm, and we’ve appreciated every moment of it; but then they were gone, leaving our roads were delightfully “passable,” and eerily unfinished.
Last week over a foot of snow arrived before the plow poles were anchored along the dirt roads or the guard rails finished on Route 9.
I don’t need to explain the significance of guard rails, but here’s the thing about plow poles–they show us where there is and isn’t a road. When everything is white, it’s hard to tell, particularly when what was once road, no longer is, because it was half-eaten away by water, and restored, but never fully so.
The lower half of my road is one of those. A few weeks back when they put in the temporary bridge at Neringa, someone dropped a lot of rubble on the sides of MacArthur so that the truck filled with dirt could make it to the site without toppling over. I bet the rubble is fun in a truck. Not so much in a Honda Civic.
When I can’t stomach the bumps, I take the back way to Brattleboro. It’s all dirt, and it’s slower, but it’s predictable, though the potholes are propagating and the ruts where one road meets another are deepening.
Though it’s been two months since Irene, I find myself having flashbacks on this particular day–hauntings from the night we drove home after the flood.
I can see the ghost of a car dangling into a crater near Robb Family Farm. I can see Ames Hill strewn with rocks. I can feel the fear that we might not make it.
So many roads were taken by Irene and so many still hobble. Some friends have only just had their roads repaired, while others have had repairs washed away by the rain. Stopping for a work crew, in the middle of the morning commute, is a comfort now instead of an annoyance; something I once took for granted; like the permanence of highways and country roads.
Kelly Salasin, November 2011
This Vermont Life 