Postcard from Hardwick: Home
In my Vermont village, we’re on a precipice. Winter or spring? Rain or snow? Is the world falling apart, or merely crumbling a bit at the edges?
In times like these, I’m reminded again of the sheer luck of living in Vermont. I’m the town librarian in nearby little Woodbury. At a very quiet — and socially distanced meeting — with just a handful of people in the school gymnasium, attention is given to those who are immediately most in need: the elderly, the immune compromised, the hungry. Who will check in with folks? Who will provide? I’ve attended countless town and school and library meetings — where emotions run the gamut from joy to anger — but this is the oddest one. For the first time, ever, I realize how truly the fate of a community isn’t held in the hands of one, or two, or even a gathering of people. Our lists and our plans might very well need to be passed to others who we must have faith will soundly step forward.
The next day, I tape a CLOSED sign on the library door and lock up.
Snow gently falls in the empty schoolyard, piling on the slide and swings. Across the soccer field, yet buried beneath its winter white, I hear redwing blackbirds singing, singing, singing, as if for their own dear life. For the longest time, it’s just me shivering in a sweater and those birds and those snowflakes sinking silently towards the earth.
Every morning, my older daughter, wearing scrubs, heads off with her stethoscope and thermometer to her health care worker job. My younger daughter and I remain at home, strictly isolated. I message my grandmotherly neighbor, sending red hearts, checking in. I’m here, but I can’t stop in to chat.
In the meantime, I lean hard on my main skills — writerly discipline coupled with an often inane sense of humor. After a day of my work and my daughter’s high school studies, I discover a nearly brand-new deck of cards in a drawer. Dealing, my daughter complains that the cards are too stiff. In a month, likely, those queens and kings will be worn flimsy.
From my patch of Vermont soil to yours — whether you stand on crusted snow or thawing mud — that song of spring and warmth and the deliciously ineffable fragrance of mud and fertility will slowly and inexorably return. When that happens, how happy I’ll be to welcome back in the clamor and muddy boots of kids and neighbors and friends.
Keep well.
Be vigilant, patient, and kind.
Red-breasted robins weave their nests, preparing to lay their blue eggs: a promise of summer’s inevitability.
