It’s quiet here. They say you should not wrap yourself in too much quiet for fear of becoming reclusive, but I’ve not found that threshold yet. The air is sweetly scented with fir, reminding me of the balsam pillow sewing that mom and I used to do. Gosh, it’s one of the best scents.
I abandoned the last tomatoes on the vine in Connecticut and came to Vermont for a couple of weeks. We’ve still got a few rows of potatoes to dig, beets, carrots and butternut to harvest, Brussels sprouts and leeks too. Oh, and those fall peas that I planted are doing great – ready to harvest actually – and I’m not there. Shoot. Now that I write it all down, I guess it’s more than a few tomatoes I’ve left behind.
About half way through my time here I’ll head over to Maine to visit my parents for a few days. Adam will join me and we’ll get the firewood stacked, chimney cleaned, and whatever else mom and dad need help with. We’re looking forward to the drive over. We’ll take RT 2 through Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, dropping us onto 95 in Bangor, which is just far enough north in Maine where the highway becomes sparsely populated, just the way I like it.
I am reminded of a time as a kid when we were making a trip to Eagle Lake in our boat of a Mercury station wagon. It was the nicest vehicle we’d owned to date, had heat plus air conditioning and those big comfy seats that made you feel like you were floating on a cruise ship down the highway. To me, its true measure of luxury was experienced in not needing to keep warm under dad’s old Navy-issued scratchy wool blankets, which was pretty standard for us prior to the Mercury. Back in those days, whenever word got out that a car was heading north, a distant friend or relative of some sort would usually hop in with their own desire to visit the homeland. On this particular trip we had a cousin join us – though I can’t recall her name and don’t think I’ve seen her since, so maybe not a cousin – and she was a smoker. Remember when adults smoked in homes and cars with children present? At some point in the drive, she flicked her cigarette out the window and the wind caught it just so that it blew back into the car. This would be a good time to point out that being the littlest in the group, I was riding it out in the rear cargo area. Just me, sans seatblet, tucked into my sleeping bag with a jug of water nearby that mom had given me as we were leaving. She literally said, “In case of fire.” (Mom has a reputation for intuitive/physic tendencies, but we’ll save that for another day.) Can you see where this is going? So yeah, this cigarette blew back in and landed somewhere directly in my corner of the vehicle. I was about seven or eight at the time and had a particular fear of things catching on fire. (I used to keep a small duffle bag of my favorite things ready to go in my bedroom, in case of fire in the night.) I remember this cousin/friend looking back at panicked me and saying, “It’s fine, I’m pretty sure it blew outside.” Ever the nice girl, I didn’t want to tattle on this adult who also happened to be a guest. Two things little me imagined I should not challenge. So there I was in the way back, scooching around on the down-low, looking for smoke, embers, flames, explosions (did I mention my penchant for envisioning worst case scenarios?), all the while trying to catch dad’s eye through the rearview mirror that in the moment felt fifty feet away. I did grab his attention, but he could not decipher what I needed given my absence of actual words, so he smiled and waved at me, then turned his attention back to the highway. Smoke began to rise between my sleeping bag and the crack where the tailgate and cargo area met. So I did what any young kid who is afraid of tattling would do, I took that jug of water mom had given me and unloaded it in the back of the car. All over me, all over the sleeping bag, all over the cargo area. What a hero. Then I rode the rest of the way to northern Maine in a sopping wet puddle. Later, when I finally told dad what had happened, he said, “You should have told me, we could’ve pulled over and taken care of it.” Right. What a brilliant idea.