Moving to the Country, 1

Baby and me, just before leaving the comforts of Montclair, New Jersey. I hope I didn’t spend much on that pantsuit. The hand-knitted sweater on the baby, though, I always really liked, and still would, if it had lasted.

In the driveway, a hint of truck exhaust. In the kitchen, scrambled eggs abandoned in a cast iron frying pan. Antique chairs lashed together in pairs, lined up by the door. Bed frames without mattresses. And everywhere, big turds from a very big dog (which, thank goodness, was not present).

This was not the empty home ready for renters on a quiet Vermont hillside that we’d expected. In fact, as I held the baby — finally asleep, after crying half the ten-hour drive from New Jersey — and waited for my husband, my dad, and my teenaged brother to make sure no human surprises waited in the other rooms, I could have wept. Except it would wake the baby.

With the front door propped open to provide un-dog-pooped May evening air, the vista met every expectation: a long outlook across a forested valley, toward the distant knob of Jay Peak, and close at hand, fenced fields for cows that must be in the barn down the road. The dairy farm ended the town lane, although my husband R had assured me that hiking trails continued up into the hills. No vehicles in action; at a wild guess, everyone down the road would be milking cows or eating supper, and whoever had soiled and stolen from our “charming furnished rental home with wrap-around porch” would be gone to town, or even further.

The men gathered in the living room, and my dad sank onto a couch and nodded. “The…