When Dreams Grow Small, and Love Grows Weary (“Country” 10)

Life on the westward-looking ridge in Irasburg, Vermont, not far from Black Hill, the Orne Covered Bridge, the Black River itself down in the valley: It’s always in my heart. Carrying the baby who became a toddler, then the second baby, through cow pastures to old apple trees, felt right and good, reconnecting to a more direct way of life. We laid out sheets on the ground, then shook wide-reaching branches, so the apples fell where we could gather them easily and make apple pies, apple crisp, applesauce. We learned to call back the cows when they’d ventured past the fence, onto the roadway mostly used by farm trucks. In the evenings, we sat outdoors to watch the sunset, and the distant toothed profile of Jay Peak.

For decades that place haunted my dreams, also. When R’s passion to own and control our space resulted in our move to a log cabin without a view, just woods around us, the big old farmhouse visited me at night. Or I visited there, somehow. The many rooms of the old farmhouse extended themselves, as I laid out more beds in my nighttime imaginings, made more guests welcome, savored the moonlight on the hills. Rolling over, half awake, to feed or change a baby, I’d do what was needed, then slide back into those night visions and their tenderness.