Witnesses

Usually H and I post  on different days, but today is not a usual day. Tonight, the man I married will arrive home. I expect to greet him with champagne. I expected to pull a few of the last bottles from the supply left from the wedding, but alas those are buried beneath boxes of paraphernalia in the garage. At least they will be on the top when everything above them is released to its new home. In the meantime, it seems reason enough to drive into the "big" town of Rutland to get a few more bottles to celebrate our anniversary, tomorrow's closing on the house, and the move at the end of the week.

I will pick up a few more packing boxes while there. I need some odd shapes like boxes for lamps and the parts of the loom. I will wait to pack the plants from the garden into old cat litter buckets, and will do that with help from Lois, Winsome and Judy who are my master gardener friends. They dug and planted here before the wedding.  Hopefully they will also help guide me in learning to know the perennials that Karen has planted.

I was moving the (heavy!) guts of my grandmother's Atwater Kent console model radio yesterday when my friend Coreen came by to invite me to join her at Strawberry Festival on the green in town.  Most of the town was there and I thanked dozens of people for their well-wishes on the house. Many of them know how long I have been looking, and all of them know how wonderful the house we are buying is. I expect some people will come to hep us move, just to see the inside of the house!  Actually, Bobby volunteered the use of his truck, though he will have to be at work on Thursday. "Just take it if you need it," he said.  And Dan and Ellen volunteered to help as well; he is a talented builder of post and beam houses with two new knees to offer up for the cause. And Barby Carr who paints the signs around here and has done some beautiful etchings of the progenitor of the Morgan horse, "Justin Morgan"  may help. And Kimberly our librarian and one of my first friends here. And Patty will come by after work at her bookstore. And Ursula and Linda. And Lois. And Fred. And Emmett. And maybe Patrick and Joey T. And Nan and Judy and Howard will come the next day. And Grazyna and Howard are coming up from NY on the first of July. And I expect I am leaving some people out.  But that's what this town is like. I think back to Herb's move in MA, with only paid movers and me to help. And I realize again, why this town matters so much to us.

I bumped into Karen G at the Strawberry Festival and asked her about raising guinea hens. She will be my guide. And if we get goats instead of a lawnmower, she will help with that too. And Marilyn's son-in-law may help with transporting the remaining fire wood. And Marilyn will be here if she can.

So that's part of the coming week.  I won't discuss the insanity of financing a house purchase and the need to do EVERYTHING at the last minute....We are closing tomorrow, and are just getting the needed dox for review at 2 p.m. today.

But all that is about tomorrow, and today is today. The weather has changed to thundershowers.  I understand (from our lawyer!) that it is raining torrentially (is that an adverb?) in Rutland where I was going for champagne and boxes.  Maybe I will wait. But the rain feels like a good omen to me; the sound of rain on the metal parts of the roof....those are Herb's sounds. And he is in the car on his way "home". I will defrost the remainders of wedding cake. And I will think about a year that came and went in the blink of an eye. There were an enormous number of crises and challenges, but  we have much to celebrate: Mom is here to see the year's anniversary AND the home-coming. We are celebrating the 4th anniversary of Simon's arrival in our lives and of Ed's acquisition of a ferocious and loving little brother. And we are celebrating a year "in-community". When we married, we asked everyone to sign a "witness document" that included a quote from Susan Sarandon.

“We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.”

H and I thank you for every note played, letter written, hug (or as mom would say "embrace"), every offer of a truck, prosthetic knee, mini-van, shasta daisy, lesson on chicken coops, and your witness to a beloved year.