Greetings from Vermont

Calliope and I finally seized a moment of perpetual inactivity from the bank and snuck away from Brooklyn to Vermont, where my sister is renting a house for two weeks. As much as you can "sneak" with an older baby and the enormous amount of crap that comes along with her... especially when her mother leaves less than twenty four hours after formulating the plan to leave in the first place.

It's wonderful to be here. I've spent eleven summers up here at my old summer camp, as both camper and staff, and this is more my "home," in some ways, than anywhere else on earth. Certainly it's sacred to me. My last summer sucked horribly, and I'm still trying to figure out how to process that. Regardless, it's wonderful to be here, but fifteen miles from camp, and just around as a alumni and aunty (because my younger niece is going to the day camp at my old camp... which is technically a collection of six camps).

It's just so quiet and green and clean and airy here. A person can feel herself breathe. I feel like I'm finally on vacation. And yesterday, I got to go on a run all by myself. Heavenly. It's crazy to believe that coupled parents get to have these sorts of experiences all the time. A shower without audience participation? Shocking!

It's also surprisingly wonderful being with family. It's just my older sister and younger niece -- her husband is in Florida, holding down the home base and going to work every day, and her older daughter is at sleepaway camp at the same group of camps. My younger niece, Eliana, is seven years old and adores Calliope. They have a wonderful time together. Yesterday Eliana was playing Follow The Leader with Calliope, and it was so sweet to see her crawling after Calliope and to hear them jabbering away in baby talk together.

It's times like these that I question my SMC life just a little, and even the American model of family life. It seems clear to me that Calliope would be happier if we lived in a big house with lots of extended family (or friends!) around, the more people to love on her.

Oh well.

Unfortunately, I got the news that I have to scurry back to Brooklyn tomorrow to deal with some emergency real estate paperwork. It's too boring (and stressful) to describe the situation I am in. Suffice it to say: I hope we never move because I can't bear the thought of ever enduring this again.