The first day of rain has come — it’s arrived with full force and vengeance.  We had to turn on our heat last night – it was just too much to take, with cold little toes we walked across our stone floors wearing wool socks and house slippers.  I was complaining too much perhaps about the coldness, but I generally can’t help it.  I have poor circulation, my body needs warmer climates and my mind needs the cold, the rain, the fall and winter air that give it some kind of mystic medicine to help me think, writer, put words down on paper, in digital form, coming and flowing from my head to the outside world.  It reminds a constant battle between my body and mind, cold, warm, sun, clouds, mountains, beach.  What to chose and where to go?  I long for both and the continued change of seasons, but at what point do I give into the ways of the older generation going to the desert in the winter.  Is this the Mediterranean?  At times it feels more like England.  But alas, it is time for me to stop complaining, and think about a few things.
I think that tonight she will make some onion soup, which nourishes my soul on days like this.  It gives me thoughts of sitting by a fire, watching snow fall outside in Vermont.  I think that is where we first had this soup, and it was spring time, but snowing and we had a fire going.  We made it with Guiness, because it was St. Patrick’s Day, yes, I remember it well now.

Vermont for us represented a place of thoughtful reflection on our lives, together and separate because it was a test.  A test for us both on living with the other.  We become very much ourselves there, very much and via that experience and that time, our relationship grew, like the roots of a tree that slowly take root in one place, we have roots stuck in the Vermont soil, waiting for us to return at some point in time to keep growing, because we know, she and I that when we go back there, things will happen, people will be met, food and drink like no other will be had.  We will walk down the road, around the lake, and eat muffins, lentils and drink the highest quality better we could possibly hope for in this lifetime.  Vermont, oh Vermont, stuck in our hearts with a little bit bleeding out of my mind.  Drop by drop it comes flowing from my brain, those memories and images.

Coffee.  Tea. Fire. Snow. Mud.

Poor but happy, we realize it now, but not then. But we were.  Poor but happy, how glorious to be those two things at the same time, thinking about nothing but the moment, the immediate moment, about lunch and dinner.  Those were the moments.  Those were the pieces of time where we spent our free brain space.  Constantly taking advantage of the kitchen, it was abused in all forms of cooking, baking, cleaning, not-cleaning, broiling, sauteing, etc. etc. etc. my list goes on in my head but I’m unable to keep writing it.

I miss it, Vermont, our home for a short time.  We miss it.  A true home it was.  Comfort gave way to experience gave way to love.