Yermont: Hearts On Ice

It’s December, and time to reflect on 2009. This month, I’ll be participating in Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. This post was written in response to the daily prompt for December 1.

What was your best trip in 2009?*

If you know me, you know I love Vermont. Love it. It just seems like, when I’m there, I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m pretty sure my Scottish skin was never meant to endure the rotting death that is Texas in August, but that’s only the tiniest part of it. Vermont is just different. This is really a post for another day, but just understand that this is the context within which I am writing: Vermont is different.

Brad and the kids and I went for a week at the end of 2007. Griffy was just a wee one, almost exactly Archer’s age now. We arrived late Christmas Day and spent the New Year holiday there.

The week was nothing short of magical.

At the time, we were considering very seriously moving to Vermont (Anneke called it “Yermont,” a mix of “your” and “Vermont,” which was cuter than seemed possible for a human being). We had decided we would either move there, or, if I got the job for which I was scheduled to interview in Austin two days after we returned from our trip, we’d think about moving there instead.

Everything about that decision felt deathly important. We knew we wouldn’t want to move again because Kieran was in first grade then and was getting to an age at which it would be very disruptive and emotionally stressful for him to move. We knew this would only get more difficult over time for all the kids.

On the 2007-08 trip, then, we checked out schools for the kids and graduate programs for Brad, visited different towns, looked at houses, scouted out jobs… We were very much on a fact-finding mission. It was beyond exciting.

In fact, I was so in love with the idea of moving there that I remember telling Brad I’d never been so conflicted about an interview, the one I had coming up when we returned. I kinda didn’t even want to get the job because, if I didn’t, the decision would be made for us: we’d return to Vermont and live happily ever after.

But, of course, that’s not what happened. I *did* get the job, and in the end, the certainty of a great job in Austin won out over the uncertainty of any job in Vermont.

Fast forward one year.

Nostalgic for the experiences of the 2007-08 trip, I planned Yermont REMIX for the last week of 2008 and first few days of 2009. Brad, the three olds, and I (plus Archer, if you count mah belleh, heh)

walked Church Street,

toured the Vermont Teddy Bear factory,

spent a day at ECHO,

played in the snow in Montpelier,

and froze our asses off watching fireworks over Burlington on New Year’s Eve.

We returned to Austin the day before the one-year anniversary of the job interview that essentially kept us from moving there.

We won’t be ringing in the New Year in Vermont this year, and I can’t say my soul isn’t a little dead about it. I feel like my heart is more alive, and my family happier and more loving, when we’re there. Maybe it’s all that ice: dripping from rocks, crashing onto the pavement from trees, falling out of the sky. Or the dark nights when just breathing makes your lungs feel like they might burst.

Everything is more real in Yermont.