Maybe February Is Better

We love our spot in Grafton, Vermont. It feels like we're home when we see that corner church spire and walk into the main inn to check in before unloading our (insane amount of) stuff into our room across the street. We really like to move in when we go there.

Last year, we went in February because we'd just moved, and it was too overwhelming to think of doing Christmas away (we'd booked it well before realizing the timing of selling our house and moving into the new one).

This time, we realized that maybe February is a better time to go, in general.

It was still relaxing and we enjoyed the bookshops and walks around town and up the hills. But...

1) February has more snow. There was a bit, but it kept icing and we actually had to cut the trip short a day thanks to an ice storm that came through Sunday night to Tuesday (we were supposed to leave Monday). The ice made it hard to hike, and warmer temperatures meant more mud.

2) There are fewer giant families in February. They're were maybe three different giant multigenerational parties there, which made everything feel a little...crowded. We could never quite find a time to use the common area with the fireplace in our building. Breakfasts were very, very full and there were many high chairs (filled with adorable tow-headed children that tugged at my heart scars) and self-absorbed people who left their strollers right in the middle of busy entryways. The game room was almost always full of people, and by the time we snuck in for a game of ping pong, there was an odor that seemed to be either a) a spill of something terrible or b) pee (also terrible). We reported it, in part to make sure it was clear we didn't go around stinking up the place, but with all the large families with small children they said it happens. That and being left with the dregs of the eggs at the buffet Saturday morning due to a large party that came in ahead of us, I was more than a little resentful of the large family influx.

3) We just really love our house at the holidays. The weird thing is, in our house we can have a fire with no one else around, there's ping pong in the "basement," we can read and be cozy... We sort of recreated Grafton in our home.  The only things missing are the lovely people we see who work at the inn, housekeeping services, and dining options we can walk to. And creeks and rocks and pine trees, of course.

Grafton

Grafton

Oh wait, that's not Grafton, that's home!

So, we decided that perhaps we will shift our cozy winter stay in Vermont to February break from now on. More snow, presumably less large family gatherings, and more time to enjoy our home at the holidays.

See ya next time, covered bridge! 

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These Are A Few Of My Favorite Books

One of my favorite holiday (and birthday) traditions is the stack of books Bryce gifts me. He picks them out based on what I've loved in the past, but also based on lists like the NPR Book Concierge (so I cannot look at that list until after Christmas) and prides himself on finding books that I would not have picked out for myself.

The other night at dinner, he asked me, "What are the best books you've read in the past few years?"

Oh man, that's a loaded question. I read a LOT, and I have to keep track in a Keep list because I cannot hold all the titles in my head, but a peek at the title brings a flood of details back to me. So I had to think on it a bit. And consult my list.

I thought it would be fun to share with you this, my list of books that I consider BEST, from the past couple of years (in no particular order). It may be a bit more than "a few":

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood 
Speculative fiction/dystopian: farther-in-the-future sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, gloriously multi-faceted and didn't ruin a favorite.

The Invited by Jennifer McMahon
Fiction: A sort of modern ghost story where a couple basically builds a haunted house, supernatural with mysteries and observations on human relationships.  Love this author (other favorites are The Winter People, The One I Left Behind, and Don't Breathe a Word.

The Seven (and 1/2) Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (my edition was Canadian and didn't have the 1/2) 
Fiction, mystery: A mind-bending twisty mystery with a bit of supernatural that had me thinking long after I'd finished, immersive and not a particularly easy read as you have to pay close attention. Totally worth the effort.

first, we make the beast beautiful: a new journey through anxiety by Sarah Wilson
Nonfiction, memoir hybrid: LOVED this book, best book on anxiety I've read in a while. You can pry my sugar out of my cold, dead hands. Loved a lot of the other practical exercises, though! :)

The Three Dark Crowns series by Kendare Blake
YA Fantasy: Like Game of Thrones lite, awesome world building and cutthroat traditions, strong female characters

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrande
YA Fantasy: Ditto the strong female characters and cutthroat traditions, more modern day with horror fantasy woven in, interesting premise.

Bitten by Witch Fever: Wallpapers & Arsenic in the Victorian Home by Lucinda Hawksley
Nonfiction/Art: A Bryce Find that explores the history of colorful Victorian wallpaper that was totally laced with arsenic, interspersed with full color panel reproductions of said wallpaper. FASCINATING.

Notes to Self by Emilie Pine
Nonfiction, Essays: Beautifully honest, gorgeous essays including some discussion of womanhood and infertility. Has been reviewed by Different Shores and The Road Less Traveled.

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
Fiction, YA-ish Fantasy: A gorgeous mystery with some dark fairy tale twistyness woven in, magical and dark. Another Bryce find

The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams
Nonfiction, Memoir: An incredible exploration of living with adversity and then the process of dying unfairly young from colon cancer. Beautiful, haunting, honest, and raw.

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang
Nonfiction, Memoir: Amazing explorations of living with schizoaffective disorder, eye-opening, honest, raw, beautiful.

Rachel Hartman's trilogy (Seraphina, Shadow Scale, Tess of the Road)
Fiction, YA Fantasy: Caveat that I haven't read Shadow Scale yet, I got Tess of the Road first and then went back to the beginning, although you don't have to read them in order, a Bryce find. Strong female characters, bucking societal norms, dragons and giant snakes and interesting mini-dragon things called Qigutls. Great world-building.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
Nonfiction, Inspiration/memoir hybrid: Gorgeous manifesto to the power of creating despite fear, super inspirational (but I still have fear, sigh). Love her writing, even though I hated Eat, Pray, Love.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Fiction: Part hilarious, part heartbreaking, a story of a socially awkward woman and her quest for belonging, romance, friendship, overcoming her personal demons. Laughed and cried in equal measure.

The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery: An amazing mystery with a man searching for answers about his father who mysteriously disappeared and trying to figure out what's really happened with his wife and son (wife is accused of killing his baby son, which sounds like a terrible premise for ALI people but I swear it's okay and all is not as it seems, without spoiling anything). Although it takes place in Queens, strangely steeped in Norse mythology.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
Fiction: A brilliant reimagining of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Gorgeous.

The Darker Shade of Magic trilogy by V.E. Schwab
Fiction, Fantasy: Blood magic allows special people to travel between nearly identical worlds, some with magic, some without, some devastated and angry... it's got magician's competitions, pirates, a little romance...I devoured them. Bryce Find.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Fiction, YA Fantasy: Book 1 of a series, worldbuilding based on West African mythology where a race of magicians are persecuted and in danger of genocide, colliding of the ruling class and an ever-powerful maji. I love that as she gains more power and confidence, her hair gets wilder and more natural (and the author insisted on having natural hair for the cover flap photo). Immersive. Also, more blood magic.

The Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater
Fiction, YA Fantasy: I DEVOURED these books, and cried when they ended. A Bryce Find that resulted in him gifting me 4 books as they came out. Combines boys' boarding school/town girl, supernatural psychic stuff, Welsh mythology. She's a gifted writer.

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
Fiction, Fantasy: Imagine if Scooby-Doo took place when they were in their early 30s as a sort of reunion when bad stuff starts happening and one of the gang has died. Super weird, gloriously so. A Bryce Find.

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Fiction: A beautiful book about loving someone with severe depression who is intent on dying by suicide. Told by the sister, moving and lovely and sad.

Okay, Fine, Whatever by Courtenay Hameister
Nonfiction, Memoir/Essays/Project: A love letter to trying to live less anxiously and overcome fears (or at least attempt to), Courtenay chronicles her difficulties with a change in her career, her relationship with her weight, her dating escapades, and other adventures. It was like reading a conversation with your new (and very smart) best friend.

Anything by Maira Kalman (esp The Principles of Uncertainty)
Nonfiction, illustrated memoir-ish: Hard to classify. Love her honesty, her dealings with loss and grief, her amazing illustrations. A Bryce Find!


There you go, a by no means exhaustive list of favorites but a list of books that made me happy in the past two years or so, many of them gifts from Bryce. Also, I apparently read a LOT of fantasy and memoir/essays. I'm not sure what that says... Maybe I love escaping into other worlds and other people's lives.

EDIT: I can't believe I left out Between the World & Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates! A letter from Mr. Coates to his son on life and race, a tough but necessary conversation and a call to action.

#Microblog Mondays: A Deep Breath

It is the first official day of break -- the last day of school was Friday, but today is the first weekday where there is no responsibility, no school, no work at all unless I choose it (which I don't).

I did have my alarm clock set, for the 8 a.m. Pilates class, which unfortunately I was still late to because I forgot that I always go from school, and that's twice as far from my house. It was a glorious start to the day, getting all stretched and lengthened and taking those big, deep breaths that feed your body luscious oxygen. I always feel taller when I leave.

I feel like I am just taking a big, deep breath, getting space back into my life over the next two weeks. It's a magical year where there's two full weeks off from school, and it's this massive expanse of time and opportunity to feel rested and rejuvenated.

My subconscious doesn't quite trust this luxury--I had a nightmare where we were called back in for 3 mid-break days of school, and I was utterly unprepared and everyone was stressed and angry, but then I woke up and realized NOPE. No stress. I banish you, stupid stress dreams.

The presents are wrapped and under the tree (we're like kids ourselves, I have to stop myself from inspecting shapes, and I have a guess about one of mine but I'm trying to erase it), we have our plans for dinners before we leave for Vermont, we'll be in our favorite Vermont spot in the middle of this expanse of time and then when we get back...there's still SO MUCH TIME left to breathe, to unwind, to slowly prepare for the return to normalcy.

Happy holidays to you, and I hope you have the space to take a deep breath and enjoy all the good things of the season -- the giving, the family and friends, the traditions, the moments of slowed down time if you can snag them.

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#Microblog Mondays: Bye, Silver Highlights

I loved my silver highlights. I've been getting my hair (and cutting it) and not dyeing it for over a year, and I loved the pretty silver streaks at my temples.

How funny, I'm wearing the same shirt today. Hey lovely anniversary Jeff Goldblum print in the back!

Ah, you can really see the contrast in this one! 

I wanted a change though. And all but the tippy tips of my hairs were no longer touched with dye.

So I made an appointment to get some fun things done to my hairs.

I felt a bit like a sellout. But I was did it because I wanted something different, and I can always grow out my greys again. That's the amazing thing about hair.

So here it is, my mid-forties fun hair:

As close to a "before process" picture as I could get, I forgot until the root dye was going on.

Oooh, pretty, my first time with foils. They were heavy.

See the different colors? Ooooh, ahhhh

Okay, so this is shortly before I started sobbing, so I look tired and sad, but there's the front.

Today after blowing it out myself. I might need to get a curling iron! And I think I could probably go a little bolder if I wanted to next time. :)

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Holiday Grief Attack

I did not expect to be on my couch, in front of my (adorable, 5 foot) Christmas tree, face in hands, wracked with gut-heaving sobs on a Friday night. Did not see it coming. I have not cried like that in years. It felt and sounded like pure loss, just pouring out from the core of me.

Friday evening started a little differently -- I was late meeting Bryce for Mexican dinner because I got my hair done. And by that, I mean that I no longer have my silver highlights, instead I have some fun multicolored hair, which is tomorrow's post. We had our dinner, which was completely delicious, and then we decided to go home the way we used to when we lived at our old house.

The reason was an annual pilgrimage to the Holy Molar.

What is the Holy Molar, you might ask?

It is a light display between the restaurant and our old home that I suspect is homemade, and is basically a nativity scene... but, as you can see below, the manger has a striking resemblance to a tooth.

Behold, the Holy Molar in yellow. And also a new red camel and JOY sign.

One year there was a giant pink angel that resembled the Tooth Fairy. It was glorious. 

Anyway, we decided if we were going to go check on the Holy Molar, we should definitely go swing by our next door neighbors for old times' sake and pretend to be carolers. 

So we did. 

It was fun to surprise them, and super odd to have our old house look not so very different (my gardens are still there, my little section of white picket fence is still there, the shed is all lit up and they lit up the pine tree next to it). 

What planted a seed of horrific loss for later blooming though was when we asked how the new neighbors are. I guess the moral of the story is don't ask questions that you will regret, but really I had no way of knowing the impact the answer would have on me. 

Remember when we were selling our house and the people who bought it had two boys, and one was a little tow-headed boy with curly hair who looked just a LITTLE too close to the child I'd imagined we'd have had biologically? Because the Universe isn't at all a big jokester. Good one, Universe. 

Well, the youngest was described as a "mini-Bryce" who is constantly building things and engineering things in the backyard and asking for boxes and tubing and all kinds of things in order to make inventions. He's all kinds of science-y and they were like, "It's like Bryce never left!" 

I think you can see where things started rupturing deep inside me. 

The pressure continued to rise as then they told me that the older son, who is in 7th grade, loved climbing out the upstairs bathroom window to read on the roof. "He reads all the time," they said. "They love all the bookshelves," they said. 

It all stayed tamped down until we got home, but the rumblings were definitely there. 

I don't know about you, but when I am sad or dealing with grief I don't really want to deal with, it comes out sideways. It comes out as supreme bitchiness. 

Bryce looked at my hair and said, "I see the red, I see a fair amount of purple, and there's the blond bits!" And all I heard was "purple," and it made me mad because when I said I was going to bite the bullet and get some fun color in my (finally 95%) virgin hair I'd been growing out for over a year, he suggested that getting some purple in it would make me look old -- like I was trying to be "young and fun" but instead it would just look like TRYING. Harrumph. I don't 100% agree with that, but my plan wasn't solely purple tones anyway. 

But when I heard him say that, I heard, "I DON'T LIKE YOUR HAIR" with an undertone of "YOU'RE OLD AND WE COULDN'T HAVE BABIES SO YOU ARE COMPENSATING WITH YOUR MIDLIFE CRISIS HIGHLIGHTS." 

That is totally not what he said, and so he was flabbergasted when I snapped at him and said "IT'S NOT PURPLE!" (even though there actually are purple highlights in with about 3 other colors, but not in a circus-clown kind of way). He said "WHAT is GOING ON with you?" 

And then I started to cry. I couldn't get it out verbally, which was probably frustrating, but it was just so painful and so deeply held that when it started erupting I couldn't stop the flow to explain. 

These people who moved into our house, the one we had before that saw all of our family building efforts die a horrible death, HAD THE CHILDREN WE'D ENVISIONED. They had a little sneak-out-the-window reader and a little invention-tinkerer. They had a bookish kid and an engineer-in-training kid. Who knew that that was the moment where I remembered that I used to sneak out my bedroom window and sit on the roof of the pantry to read, get a moment of quiet time, and perhaps in college to smoke a disgusting Parliament Light on the sly. That last bit sort of ruins the fantasy.

My shitty brain then immediately took me on a mental journey through what it will look like when the kids run down the stairs Christmas morning and see the tree and the presents all laid out and these people, who I do not know and have nothing against, will have the holiday moments we always wanted in that house but never got. 

It was a horrible trip hosted by the Ghost of Christmas Never, You Infertile Sap. He's a dick Ghost.

So at first the tears came flooding out my eyes while I heaved, and then it became full-body wailing, and I just felt so sad and gutted and like I was feeling all of the losses compounded with interest. 

Bryce got it, though, and just sat next to me, rubbing my back, allowing space to just feel everything and let it all out. Unfortunately by the end I was a wet, snotty, mascara-trailed mess, but I felt lighter. 

And then I looked at our tree, and our beautiful house, that is definitely HOME, and felt like I could breathe again. I didn't feel quite as haunted. 

Which is funny, because Bryce said, "Don't worry, that house is haunted. It won't be as awesome as you imagined it." 

I hope it was only haunted for us. I hope that this family has their lovely holidays and their family moments and their secret reading hideouts and their backyard building projects without any shadow of the losses that made staying in that house unbearable and unsustainable for us. I hope that the move exorcised that, and we can be happy in our new life and they can be happy in their life that just strangely echoes what we wanted ours to look like once upon a time. 

I'm encouraged, because while Friday night was rough, and I felt like I'd been torn apart inside, we watched some silly TV and went to bed and I felt perfectly fine yesterday. It didn't feel fresh, or raw, or anything. It felt like I'd released something toxic, almost like when you're sick (or to go back to college, hung over) and you feel so much better after you finally throw up. 

And now I can enjoy our Christmas for what it is, and spend no more time on what it is not. Unless there's another moment that hits me right in that tender spot, but I know I'll feel it, release it, and then be just fine with where we are now. I can be kind to myself when these things happen. Which wasn't always the case before.

It's an odd sort of holiday gift, to be at a point where these grief attacks can happen, but not disrupt all the goodness of this season for us. 

 

Being Remembered

One of the lovely things about being a teacher is that you have moments when you run into former students, and they recognize you in the wild. Sometimes you're in sweaty workout clothes with NSFW sportsbra cleavage hanging out, holding a jumbo pack of toilet paper or something equally embarrassing in the grocery store, and sometimes you'll look totally respectable and have a cart filled with vegetables. Even when it's awkward, it's lovely to feel a little locally famous.

Yesterday I had two of these recognition moments, at Wegmans after work (while looking tired, but respectable).

As I walked in, I saw a student and his mother ahead of me, and I'll be honest...I booked it so I could say hi. I had this student two years ago, and tutored him in the summer. He and his family were lovely.

Being a special education teacher is tricky... Sometimes kids AND parents do not want you to see them, and they shuffle away and avoid eye contact like you have leprosy or rabies or something. We aren't typically the ones yearbooks are dedicated to. While we work to unlock potential and help students find success, we are also a living, breathing reminder of struggle, difficulties, and other-ness. Which makes it all the sweeter when you've been sighted and people are genuinely excited to see you.

I yelled out the student's name just inside the entrance, and he and his mom turned around and then lit up with recognition.

"Mrs T!" he said, and then we had a 15 minute conversation by the cold beer case. In my defense, the beer case is right when you walk in this particular entrance. His mom said, "It seems like just yesterday that you were his teacher!" and that sounded like a good thing, so it made me all warm and fuzzy inside.

On my way out, I saw a former student and her father at the self-checkout. I did the awkward smile and neck turn without success and then again, found myself shouting a student name in Wegmans. She came over all happy and smiley and I introduced myself to her dad. "Hi, ___'s dad, I'm Mrs. T." Then HE lit up, and he was like, "OH MY GOSH! She LOVED you! She used to talk about you ALL THE TIME!" It was crazy, because I WAS HER STUDY HALL TEACHER. She wasn't on my team, she wasn't on my caseload, I saw her once a day in my crazy study hall last year.

But clearly, all the math and English help and the answering of weird awkward questions didn't go unappreciated. I've never had such a clear sense of recognition from a parent who I've never met before, so it was clearly not lip service to make small talk. She really did talk about study hall and the nutty teacher who ran it. Something about that connection stuck.

She was super bubbly, and talked about how she's made some new friends, and is doing okay in 9th grade, but her study hall isn't as fun. I made a joke about how that's okay, because study hall probably shouldn't be super fun anyway. Ha.

This was my third period study hall where I had to split them up because 1/3 of the football team was in the same room with me and they were NAUGHTY, and there were a lot of seventh graders without any work to do so the whole idle-hands-devil's-work thing, and this was the study hall where we had a lockdown drill (my first day back from the hysterectomy) and one of my students got on a filing cabinet and TRIED TO CLIMB UP IN THE DROP CEILING like Tom Cruise in Mission  Impossible. It was a crazy, crazy study hall.

The point, though, is that it is so wonderful to be remembered. To have those days where you can really feel the impact you have on these young people. It's one of the perks of teaching -- it has ripple effects that just go out and out and out. And as someone without kids, this legacy is very important to me. I love these moments of brief, minor celebrity, and hoping that maybe years on down someone will stop me in the grocery store and I will have taught them forever ago, and they'll still remember. My best friend ran into our 3rd grade teacher while on the Jersey Shore this past summer, and she was in her 90s. It made her cry to be remembered so many years later.

I would love to experience that, tears and all.

Self-Advocacy

With the exception of a couple months surrounding my hysterectomy, I have been doing Pilates at a studio for a year. I have really strong abs and good muscles underneath a soft layer of cheese and pie.

I love this studio -- it's small, classes are typically no more than 4 people, and you get great individualized attention on several pieces of crazy torture-device-looking contraptions called The Reformer, The Tower, and The Chair. I love that I feel like a circus performer when I'm using all the springs and bars and whatnot, and I definitely feel that my balance has improved along with my strength and I am far less of a fall risk than previously. Which was shamefully high for someone who is not 80.

Anyway, I got an email asking those with classes during the "closed for the holidays" period to feel free to choose from a list of class times so we didn't have to miss a session. I picked a 5:00 pm class, but when my email confirmation came, it was labeled...(cue Jaws theme)...

Pre/Post Natal Core

OH HELL NO. I emailed immediately and said, "hey, I think I'll take the 8 a.m. class, I'd prefer not to be in anything -Natal, thanks, sorry to be weird!"

I was super proud of myself, all not-super-explainy but taking care of my psyche at the tricky holiday time, if slightly awkwardly because that's who I am.

Then I got another message, saying, "Oh, they're all 6+ months post-natal at this point, it's really a Core II class now, and they're a really fun group! But, I can move you if you really want."

It was then that I realized that maybe I needed to be clearer.

I had two choices, 1) don't say anything and keep the time at 5 and suffer through because I didn't want to be "weird," or 2) explain a bit and be firm that while they may be a fun group, it's not the class for me. I guess there was also 3) insist on 8 a.m. and not explain why I was weirdly against joining a really fun group of new moms.

I would have totally picked #1 earlier in my experience. I would have swallowed down my feelings, and thought, "how bad can it be?" while totally KNOWING how bad it could be, and then smile through a rotten experience and feel terrible the whole rest of the day, just because I didn't want to inconvenience anyone or make it seem like I had something against a group of new moms who would never know that I'd had angst in the first place and who I likely didn't know at all anyway.

Well, I am proud to say that I picked door #2. I very politely said, "Hmmm...I'll go with the 8 a.m. class...Sometimes a group of moms can inadvertently cause me complicated feelings because I tried so hard to become one for so long. I'm sure they're lovely, thanks!"

I was promptly rescheduled, and it wasn't "weird," and the owner was totally understanding (I'd shared some info when doing my intake, and she'd just forgot that piece, which I take as a compliment, but she did feel a little badly for not remembering that piece of me).

Self-advocacy for the win.

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