Comments:
Hi everyone. It would have been fun to see you all. I’ve dragged out the old yearbooks several times this summer sparking lots of memories….though I don’t remember us all looking so old-fashioned!
45 years, let’s see, I left Colorado and moved to Vermont in 1971 and lived in the country. I grew huge gardens and had a nanny goat to milk, taught art in various schools, waitressed when I had to, traveled some, and eventually made a living with my artwork until the kids came along.
We bought a run-down one-room schoolhouse that needed massive amounts of work (and still does…). Things were lean in Vermont then and our little community was tightly woven by both necessity and the charisma of a jolly old-time dairy farmer. We’d all show up to help with haying throughout the summers, everyone was on-call to help shovel manure when it got too hard on the farmer’s back, or to milk when he was away. We’d help each other get in firewood, the farmer would plow us out in winter and rescue our cars from snowy ditches. It was a warm and wonderful way for the kids to grow up. A slice of a bygone time.
I became a Waldorf teacher and loved it; challenging and rewarding work. When my boys were grown I went back for my MA in psych. Not long after I graduated in ’99 I got very sick, diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I was homebound and in bed from crushing symptoms much of the day. Years later I found out it was actually Lyme disease and I tried every treatment, allopathic and alternative but just slowly got worse. It is a strange life lived in a very small circumference; isolating, frustrating, but I’m still here and very grateful for that.
One of our boys lives in Oregon, he’s a timber framer like his dad. Our other son lives in Florida with his wife and our five year-old granddaughter. He does photography and design. They are so far away! My husband and I whine about this a lot. We will simplify our lives and move to a gentler climate at some point, but in the meantime we have three goofy old sheep, too many gardens, still heat with wood, have pastures to mow and fence, roofs to shovel. Dennis works about half the year and the rest of the time does catch-up keeping the place (and me) together.
Wishing the best to all of you!
