The charming meal at the Inn at Mountain View Farm ended part one of our wedding plans — the part where we slipped north, with seven closest family members to witness our marriage vows before a calm and kind justice of the peace. …

by Beth Kanell Three languages. Eighty years. I’ve spent the afternoon looking for evidence of the life and death of my grandfather’s aunt, or tante, Mathilde. I began with the knowledge that I’d already scraped up: her death in 1943 in Theresienstadt, a World War II concentration camp, 30 miles…

Call me naive, if you like. Inexperienced for sure. When I married D, the grad student from the lab flourished his “minister of life” certificate and offered to seal the deal; I wore my mother’s wedding dress (she was still re-explaining that it was a bridesmaid dress because in 1950…

Two things slowed us down during our first eager romantic months: dinner obligations with other synagogue members, and becoming part of Vermont’s bookstore network. Who’s in the Kitchen? For Dave, who did not cook for others, an invitation to dinner at someone else’s house in his bachelor years — that is, until the two…

When I was about 12 years old, my grandfather Ernest came from England to visit the five of us American grandchildren. Naturally tall and accustomed to stooping to meet the gaze of others, he’d include me in conversations, blinking under his bushy eyebrows, his full lower lip drooping where his…

In 2002, as Dave and I became a couple, we both turned 50, at different seasons of the year. (He was older — born on January 1, supposedly costing his father a year of tax deductions that could have been there if he’d been a few hours earlier!) The last…

Merging into a “relationship” at age 50 offers an eye-opener every day. I had (too much) experience in accepting a new person’s conditions and playbook — but I’d never known anyone like Dave. …

Dave and I could hardly wait. We’d come up with the idea to host a poetry reading, as we continued to collect poetry, mysteries, and “Vermontiana” — books by Vermont authors or about life in our state. Already we’d named our specialty bookstore: KINGDOM BOOKS. …

Not long after our first shared meal at the River Run restaurant in Plainfield, Dave and I met as planned to attend a literary event at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum. Who spoke? No matter, now. The audience included Chava W., a Jewish professor, scholar, and author. Dave knew her because…