We arrived in Vermont late last night. It was -3. Negative fucking 3! It has been a minute since I felt temps like that. It was snowing when we landed. Which felt like a grand welcome from the great state of Vermont.
So much happened here. So many things in my life happened in Vermont, that without of which, I would not be here today. It is a strange thing to be linked to this state, of which I know almost nothing, but know that once upon a time, shit went down here that had it not happened exactly as it did that I and likely millions of other people would not be here today.
So I drove into the night last night, snow falling. Mesmerized by the blurring snow. We took no highways. There were no overpasses. Only rolling farm land, that stretched out towards higher mountains in the distance. The moon was brilliant and waning. It looked as if a small child, disturbed by the moon’s audacity, took safety scissors and lopped off the top, but at an angle, diminishing only its wholeness but taking nothing from its luminosity. It hung there precariously in a black sky...altering the landscape with sheer audacious brilliance.
It was a long day. Very. Filled with the gifts of seeing my old gang, two of them really. I had lunch with my old sober pals. So good to see everyone again. All of us aging, and happy. All well settled into our lives and families. It was heartening. It was good. It was life affirming to be in their presence. People who have loved each other for more than twenty five years.
Then, kind of out of the blue, an old friend from high school reached out and on a whim, invited me to meet up. I haven’t seen her since high school I am sure. And him, I haven’t seen in almost as many years. Almost. It was so good to see them, together, happy. Lives initially started with other partners, but now lovingly blended and thriving. There is something about seeing people who you started life with thrive. It is so life affirming. To see your former childhood friends happy and living their best lives, most especially when your own childhood was such a shitshow and addicted. To see all of you come full circle, having survived it all and found a way to make a life. And then to go on and do the even harder work to make it happy!
Two difference sets of friends. Separated by history and circumstance. Connected momentarily but cemented in time and heart and love and historical significance. It all felt kind of like a dream.
It was like snow falling on me. On all the me’s I used to be. I resemble that person only a little, at least that is the way it seems to me. I wonder how I appear to them...still the me they used to know? Or can they see how much I am rearranged and altered?
Snow fell yesterday on my body and heart. Not chilling it, but instead dazzling it with beauty and grace. Each snowflake landing gently with a memory from the past. Each tiny molecule of frozen air, landing to remind me that the past wasn’t all bad, I have always been loved, even when I lived in a form and manner that was far more crass, crazy and difficult. There has always been love and my life has been dusted with it always. Swirling about me in frenzied flurries of connection, landing sometimes only briefly and then fading. I suppose fire would be a more apt descriptor than frozen snow. But I am not so sure.
Since snow is such a novelty for me, it has magic and allure. A blanketing of peace and silent reflection that fire could never produce. It covers over the past with beauty, grace and stillness allowing the past to once more change itself into something else all together.
Snow falling...lightly on my shoulders, flurrying before me with a heady pace. Blanketing me and my life, my memories and my past with a coating that alters nothing that lies beneath but changes the surface quite a bit.
And to a moment, I am there. Found beneath all the layers of living that exist beneath the snowy crust. I have always been here, and so have they, but the snow falling present provided a new opportunity for connection, for forgiveness and for grace. A new amazing layer to this life.
Again...still.
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