Happy Scars

I am building a new crop of scars as I write--a half moon on my inside left calf, with a series of oozing constellations mirrored on both legs. Poison ivy designed the scene, aided and abetted by my eventual inability to resist the overwhelming urge to apply long fingernails to the blisters. I have rarely felt anything as glorious as those brief seconds of relief from the infernal itching! Besides, since I encountered the ivy to begin with in the midst of an absolutely perfect family vacation, I can hardly complain. I scar easily, it seems, and the scars leave a map of my life on my skin, prompting memories, odd snapshots of random moments frozen in time.

Not far from the emerging constellations rests the scar of a small hole in my shin. I was five, running down the street with my friend Jenny in Vermilion, South Dakota. Jenny was my first best friend, and we played together whenever our mothers met for church functions. That day, while our mothers chatted or baked bread or planned some now long-forgotten event, we took Jenny's little sister for a dash in her stroller. The stroller hit a bump, stopped dead, and up in the air I flew, only to land quite precisely on a small, pointy rock. Jenny moved a year or two later, but I think of her now and again and wonder what sidewalks she has jogged since that 1970s summer afternoon.

My ring finger sports a battle scar from a round lost to a small pot of startlingly hot tea water. College summers found me working in some of America's most beautiful vacation spots. I cooked Rocky Mountain oysters for drunken lodge guests near Yellowstone, brewed endless pots of coffee to welcome wealthy fisherfolk to the brilliance of early June mornings in the Alaskan bush, and served tea to the more sedate guests at a Vermont country inn on the lakeshore. Truth be told, I was a rather terrible waitress. Still, I loved the scenery and the people I met. On misty mornings, Brenda and I brewed our own steaming cups of herb tea and settled into Adirondack chairs on the wide porch to contemplate the waves lapping the beach and the splendid freedom of the early blush of adult life.

Other scars tell perfectly mundane stories of trays of chocolate chip cookies placed a little too close to the top rack of the oven or the new (to us) television Brad and I carried up a flight of stairs. Only a few scars, like the white cross on my forehead, bring the memory of pain. The rest remind me of a rich life filled with the laughter of family game nights, breathtaking discoveries of beauty, and the warmth of friendships. I thank God for the sweet memories, made all the sweeter by lessons of the white cross.

Backward Glancing

The upcoming weekend finds me traveling back to Vermont for the first time since we moved to the Midwest two years ago. My somewhat nomadic lifestyle left me in Vermont far longer than any other place I have called "home" over the years. I left readily; Lot's wife and I have little in common. And yet, the thought of New England air sends me looking back fondly.

I picture rolling green hills and lakes clean enough for swimming. I feel the magnetic pull of the stretch of meadow at Fays Corner in Richmond and the early morning mist over Lake Champlain. My feet itch for a walk along Burlington's Church Street, past the usual crowd of 21st century New England hippies. We will have just missed the Jazz Festival on the waterfront, but perhaps we can stop by the Ben & Jerry's scoop shop for a double scoop of Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Cherry Garcia (frozen yogurt if I feel like being healthy, ice cream if I feel like walking on the wild side).

I find myself picturing favorite spots with layers of memories. For instance, I remember shopping on Church Street 25 years ago. I was a young college student, playing my way through the summer as the maitre d' at a country inn on North Hero Island. With a day off and my roommate's car, I drove in to Burlington to soak up the summer crowds along the cobblestone street of the marketplace.

Seven years later, I returned to Church Street. I bypassed What Ale's You and the Skirack this time in favor of street vendors and the Discovery Channel Store. Along with my two-year-old son, we embraced life with gusto. Devin turned heads with his blond curls, his movie star sunglasses, and a heart-stopping smile. We paused to climb every boulder between the Unitarian Church at the head of Church Street to Sweetwater's Restaurant near the bottom.

Over the next eighteen years, we returned to the cobblestones on frigid New Year's Eves for the annual First Night Dancing Dragons Parade, on humid summer afternoons for Italian sausage from Bookie's street cart, and occasionally for sumptuous desserts at Leunig's Bistro.

I miss the feel of Vermont, from the taste of the air on the first full-blown summer day in June to the unapologetically tree-hugging politics. I miss the bluntness of native Vermonters (although one has to search harder and harder to find them these days) and the eccentricities of my fellow church members there. I miss the music, from Mozart on the shores of Lake Champlain to the hot summer day we spent at the Vermont Reggae Festival in a rolling meadow up north. I dream of a day beginning on the Sunset Ridge trail on Mount Mansfield and ending in the charm of a tiny theatre in Waitsfield.

July will find me once again contentedly roaring past endless cornfields on the motorcycle and anticipating the glory of Friday night football underneath the lights. For this slice of early summer, however, my heart returns to an earlier home.