with my pops

dad making popovers

garden and barn

I’ve spent the last few days at my father’s house, running errands and spending time with my Pops. Coming home is hard (I think a lot of people feel this way, a kind of retroactive childhood ensuing as we visit our parents). My father is getting old. He’s eighty-one, and he’s lived in the same huge house for almost fifty years. I noticed the backyard hasn’t been mowed, and the garden is weedier than I’ve known it to be. The house is getting to be too much.

At dinner the night I got here, my dad told me he’s thinking of selling the place. He’s got some plans brewing, and although this stuff is hard to talk about, and hard to think about, and hard to do, I feel some relief that the elephant is being spoken of. Nothing too urgent, no swift maneuvers: "I’ve still got enough wood for two winters in the shed." My dad is a DIY-er, in the truest sense of the word, and still, with his bad eyesight and compromised balance and slowing-down-ness, chops his own wood, bakes his own bread (with grain he grinds himself), and makes strawberry-rhubarb pie with homegrown goods.

We’ve had a nice couple of days. I’ve gotten caught up on some errands, cleaned the car, done laundry, and spent many hours finishing up Chris and Emily’s wedding present. That feels good. We went to farmers’ market, on walks to the post office, and on little drives here and there. On Tuesday we went to see the Big Apple Circus, a longstanding summertime ritual for Dad and me, out on the Fullerton Farm. (Thankfully, this time, unlike one unpleasant circus experience while I was in college, I wasn't tripping.) Yesterday we rode up to Farm-Way in Bradford. For those of you who didn’t grow up in rural New England, the nuances of what it means to visit Farm-Way might be lost on you, but I’ll do my best. Farm-Way is the place you go to if you need a hose, any sort of gardening tool, grain for your cattle, work boots, Carhartts, or attachments for the milking machines. You also go to Farm-Way if you want Patagonia clothes, Dansko clogs, or good camping equiptment (a la REI). Sort of a one-stop shop for yuppies and farmers alike, way up to Bradford. ("Up to," around here, is used to denote anyplace upriver, or up a hill, or north. Sometimes, it means somewhere down a hill, or south, or downriver. It’s really pronounced "up tuh" and as long as you pronounce it right, nobody gives flack.) Anyway, around here, yuppies and farmers have a strange sort of symbiotic relationship, and if you want to understand it better, you have to live here, or at least take a trip to Farm-Way.

Anyhoo. I had a nice time at my dad’s house, I found a couple of big boxes of books I’d forgotten all about, poetry mostly, and all my Kerouac (nice timing!) so that’s pretty exciting. I’m on my way up and out just now, though, stopped in Hanover at the Dirt Cowboy Café for a coffee and wifi connection. Trying to update Flickr, I should be almost there. Ready to have onward motion again, I’m driving to Montpelier to meet miss Bethany for some lunch or somethin’, then on to the valley this afternoon, where I’ve got some massage work waiting for me, I think. I definitely have friends waiting for me there, and that makes me real happy. Old friends, good times, good snuggles and love.

More soon, maybe. I’m getting less and less inclined toward blogging/ emails/ phone calls the further into my trip I’m getting. If I haven’t returned your call, you’re not alone. Spotty reception and busy and feeling free and oaty don’t bode well for phonecalls. But I feel the love in your messages, and I’ll be back on the radar in another few days, once I’m done with valley and boston and NYC (hee haw!).
Xs and os. e