Postcard from Hardwick: Vermont Christmas Story
Twenty winters ago, I worked for the US Census, driving along back roads — sometimes snowy, sometimes icy — in rural Vermont, handing out short forms and an occasional long-form.
On a bitterly cold day, I stopped at a residence on a particularly wind-blown section of ridge, unsheltered from the wind. The single-story residence was nearly submerged in snowdrifts. I knocked at what I believed was the door, not sure if that entry led into a shed or the house. I was about to leave my form as a calling card when the door opened. An older woman stood there, blinking. In my memory, she’s all white — unbrushed long hair, nightgown, skin pale as paper. I explained who I was and what I needed.
I followed her down the hall. The hall reeked of garbage. I remember this keenly: how repulsed I was by the rotting smell.
I sat at the kitchen table with her and her husband. Question by question, I slowly filled out the long-form — nearly 40 pages. The kitchen was quite cold, even bundled in my coat and heavy winter boots. A tepid sunlight washed in through the window behind the couple, over their shoulders and onto the table. Through the window, I saw the snow whirling wildly, as if frantic, then occasionally stopping entirely. In those pauses, I saw the Lowell Mountains in the distance, those curving blue beauties, their crests sparkling with a recent snowfall.
Listening, I gradually realized no one else had stopped in to visit that afternoon, that maybe nobody had come to visit in a very long time. As this couple haltingly answered those questions, I realized this house was thin in many ways besides lacking warmth against the cold. Raised in middle-class small-town New Hampshire — my father a college professor, my mother a nurse — this was the first time I sat in the midst of poverty that gnawed at my ankles, scrabbled at my hands and shoulders: hungry, hungry.
Twenty years later, I’ve often wondered back to this couple who invited me into their kitchen, a stranger with a government clipboard and a string of intrusive questions, spilling snow on their floor. I look back at my younger self, on that dirt road, driving a pickup so rusty I could put a dinner plate through its fender. The truck was too big for my small stature to drive, so I never used a seat belt. I was so young then that it never occurred to me that they might have easily seen my hesitation, my own need for a paycheck evident. I never thought they might have been humoring me.
Two decades and a lot of living later, to my shame, I remember that the woman offered me a Christmas cookie from a paper plate, and I refused. Maybe I didn’t want to take what little I thought they had. Or maybe my sentiment was far less noble, and I simply didn’t want what she offered. For years, I imagined I gave that couple a gift — that little bit of my time, my listening ear on a cold afternoon. Now, I would have thanked her for that small sweet and eaten at their table.
I wish I’d flipped over that census form and reached for another cookie. December is a month both of holiday fullness and a time of sorrow and cold, too; the Christmas story tells of immense joy and a magical star beaming in the heavens, but also of a family in need turned away into the night. More than anything, though, the story illuminates the mysteries upon mysteries of all we don’t know in this great big world.
Shortly before I left, I admired their mountain view. The woman reached behind her and laid her hand on the glass. Save for the wind scrabbling, the house was quiet, quiet as if the rest of the world had fallen away.
“It’s a view,” the woman said, “fit for a queen and a king.”
Indeed.
