Roots

It still feels like I'm going home.  I've since called a lot of places "home" - Doylestown,  State College, Phnom Penh - but Vermont has a claim on my heart that they haven't been able to sway.  After all, my parents moved there right after they married, so I was there from birth until almost thirteen.  My family pulled off a trip there a few weeks ago, straight from my grandparents' celebration in Lancaster.  It was all 6 of us plus Lucas' girlfriend Audrey, quite a feat given five people's work schedules.  Though it was my first time back in 8 years, our visit was a sweet, sweet time for us all.

Very typical VT bumper stickers.  It's not a typical VT car because it's too new to have rust from all the snow and salt.  Just give it a few years...

I was trying not to get my hopes up as we drove across the New York-Vermont border.  Sure, I remember Vermont's beauty, but it can't ALL be as gorgeous as my memories.  I must be idealizing it.  But the whole way in along Routes 7 and 100 featured the streams, lush hills, and charming small towns I had pictured.  I love that Vermont outlaws billboards and fights to keep chains like McDonald's and Wal-Mart few and unobtrusive.  Route 100 took us along the river that flooded worst during last summer's Hurricane Irene, Vermont's most devastating storm in a century.  We could still see the debris and stones scattered far up along the riverbanks, as well as some of the homes and bridges that had been destroyed.

A house near our cabin

A couple days were spent in local scenic areas like the Quechee Gorge, and one day back in Waterbury.   Our first stop in Waterbury was the Cold Hollow Cider Mill, right next to my dad's former employer.  I'd forgotten how overwhelmingly amazing it smells, and how crisp and sweet their cider doughnuts are.  They still had the same video on how a cider press works, and the same free samples of cider in tiny Dixie cups next to a huge vat of cider.

Thus fortified, we hiked the Pinnacle, between Waterbury and Stowe.  The weather was perfect: we got a bit warm on the way up, but the crisp wind at the top left us cool and refreshed.  Afterwards, we drove by our old house in Waterbury Center and stopped at the pond that we remembered so fondly.  I wandered off into the field next to it, hunting unsuccessfully for the wild blackberries and raspberries that my mom and Julia and I used to collect for pies and jam.

The view from the Pinnacle in the direction of Waterbury.
I used to go swimming in the reservoir that you can glimpse on the top left.

Julia and I took Audrey around the Ben & Jerry's factory, but we didn't actually eat there because we knew we'd be getting ice cream twice that evening.  Anyway, the factory is fun even without paying for ice cream or the official tour: you can visit the Flavor Graveyard with elegies for bygone flavors, make free spin art, and browse their fun souvenirs.

Lucas rediscovers the pond by our old house.  The bottom was as slimy as ever!

That evening, we went to visit two different families that have been close to us for as long as I can remember.  Emmett and Dee Hughletts live way up on Camel's Hump, Vermont's second-tallest mountain, in a house they built.  They and their neighbors are too far up to have a landline telephone.  Emmett used to work with my dad, and Dee got to know my mom 25 years ago, when Dee was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and wanted someone to help her find meaning in her pain.  Once a cynical atheist, she became a Christian through my mom, and says that her faith has anchored her as her health has degenerated to the point that she can no longer do stairs and needs a walker to get around.  (Emmett soon followed her, slowly returning to his Christian heritage.)

Julia and me...just call me Jerry.

Dee and Emmett adopted three kids around the ages of my younger siblings.  We used to play with them all the time...it's been forever since we've seen them, and none of them live at home now.  But the Hughletts might have first inspired my long-lasting dream of adopting.  I knew they were fun people, but I forgot that Dee has such a great "crotchety New Yorker old lady" imitation, or that she laughs hysterically at Emmett's stories that she's heard a thousand times.  He DOES have some excellent stories, I must say.  They spent a few years in Philly before we ever got to PA, and they're still die-hard Phillies fans.  They don't own a TV, but they haven't missed a game on the radio all season.

Lucas rides in Emmett's newly purchased bulldozer, bought from an elderly neighbor.  Emmett says it's a huge help in clearing fallen trees, for his own home and for neighbors, and moving firewood for their woodstove.

The Hodgdons, Brad and Pauline, were fun to see too.  Their daughter Kayla was one of my closest friends growing up, and we did many an art project together.  Now she's an accomplished graphic designer, and her younger brother Andrew just graduated film school, so clearly the art stuck better in her family than in mine.  Kayla lives half an hour away, but Andrew is home for the summer and was there with us.  I remember him as a goofy little 9-year-old with pale skin, dark hair, and bright blue eyes, running around the yard with my brothers.  Now he's 6'2", quite outgoing, a beer connaisseur moving to Massachusetts to be near his girlfriend.  It was really fun talking with him - I wish I could've watched the indie film that he and his friends just finished.  They told us more about the Hurricane Irene flooding and its impact on downtown Waterbury, less than a mile from their house.  Waterbury, like other nearby towns, has really united to rebuild and to take care of those hit hardest.  I saw "Vermont Strong" bumper stickers everywhere, even on sale at Ben & Jerry's, as a fund-raiser for flood victims.

A Ben & Jerry's flavor gravestone

Our last day, July 4, Julia and Austin had to leave for work, but the rest of us enjoyed the peaceful ambiance of the cabin to read and lay low.  After dinner, we headed to a local Independence Day celebration at Woodstock High School, eager for a reminder of small-town get-togethers.  My dad was peeved because we were running late for the bluegrass concert and we got lost on the way there.  As it turns out, we hadn't missed much - the next bluegrass band started shortly after we arrived, and the whole event was so tiny, there were about 8 booths and 60 total attendees.  Two high school girls gave us a free magazine published by their environmental protection club and told us about their trip to the Costa Rican rainforest.  I watched a tiny girl in a yellow sundress twirl around, dancing with her daddy.  We hung out for a while at the concert, waiting for the fireworks, but the band was nothing special and it looked like there was a storm brewing.  It was barely 8 PM and wouldn't be completely dark for fireworks until probably 9:30.   Just as we were making our way back to the car, the band made an announcement: in light of the impending storm, fireworks would begin in just minutes.  We were soon settled down on the blanket, watching fireworks go off against the backdrop of sunset and storm clouds.  It was pretty neat, actually, especially with the boom of the fireworks echoing against the surrounding mountains.

When I was in seventh grade, I thought I'd stay in Vermont forever, I loved it there so much.  When I found out that spring that we were moving away, it marked my transition from childhood to adolescence.  I never imagined staying in Pennsylvania forever, and within two years, I'd made up my mind that I wanted to go overseas.  Leaving Vermont freed me in some ways to think bigger, but cutting roots is never comfortable, and I realized in the next few years that my sense of identity was still tied to Vermont's values: close-knit community, protecting the environment, valuing the unusual and the creative.  Though I've spent the second half of my life far from those Green Mountains, I'm glad to still feel welcomed back, and to feel as though they've nourished me from my roots to my core.

Congrats Mamaw and Papaw!

"Waller and Nancy 60 years - what a journey!"  We made little signs to put along the road, marking kids, grandkids, hometowns, and other milestones in my grandparents' lives.  There were a lot to fit on!

Everyone wore these buttons in their honor.

Jonathan, Lucas, and Audrey sport their buttons.

Nancy (I call her "Mamaw"), an only child, grew up in St. Louis during the Great Depression with her mom, grandma, and uncle after her dad passed away when she was just two.  She dreamed of running off to New York City to join the Rockettes, but that was out of the question for "good girls."  Instead, she settled for studying at Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a degree in modern languages: French, Spanish, and Italian.  She might have gone on as a translator for the UN if she hadn't met my grandpa and "settled down," relatively speaking.  She DID have a pretty cool job that she won't tell me much about.  Once she became a mom, she quit her job, but remained active in everything from belly dancing to quilting to the local DAR chapter, even performing a tap dance number well into her seventies at a Christmas program.

Papaw's wearing a shirt from our "Re-Cooper-Ation"
family reunion in 1992.

Waller (or "Papaw") grew up in rural Kentucky on a pig farm - it was little more than subsistence farming.  He had a pretty tough childhood, heightened by his younger brother's death, leaving just him and his sister.  But he made it to med school at Washington University, where he graduated as an anesthesiologist.  He worked for the military for a while, so they were constantly moving while their four sons were being born - Illinois, Iowa, California, finally settling down in Evansville, Indiana.  He worked loooong hours and saw enough on the job to develop a deep aversion to hospitalization.  It almost cost him his life: around age 60, he suffered a massive heart attack and waited almost 24 hours to tell anyone, out of pure stubbornness.  Nobody expected him to recover fully after his near-death experience, but a quarter-century later, while he's slowing down physically, mentally he's sharp as a tack.

We all gathered together in late June from far and near to celebrate their big day: 4 sons, 3 daughters-in-law, 9 grandchildren, and 3 grandchildren's significant others.  (A few people couldn't join us, due to their location in California, Japan, Yemen, etc.  Lame excuse, I know.)  We crammed into the "Country View Tourist Home" near their retirement community in Lancaster, PA, run by a woman named Dorothy whose copious notes on the workings of the house brought us endless amusement.  The home was replete with floral wallpaper, Bible verse plaques, and articles and photos about generations of her Mennonite relatives who had grown up in the area.  It felt like a piece of history.

We celebrated in traditional Cooper style - sarcastic joking, storytelling, and playing Frisbee, speed scrabble, and telephone pictionary - as well as with a formal dinner in Mamaw and Papaw's honor.  The dinner featured their four boys singing barbershop on an adapted version of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" as well as an uproarious game of the Not-So-Newlywed Game, which my cousin Katie emceed.  The meal was so tasty and plentiful that over half the cake was left over - a rarity in this family, since sugar is practically a Cooper family value.  Since Mamaw was so sick on her wedding day that she could barely stomach the forkful of cake Papaw fed her, they reenacted it for us - this time in better health.

Uncle Kirk and Aunt Sally score a point for agreeing on Uncle Kirk's least favorite chore.

The weekend was over in a flash, but it was enough to remind me how blessed I am that my family loves each other.  A friend says my family is like the Cleavers from "Leave It to Beaver" - everyone is still married to their first spouse, all the adults get along with each other, and we always have fun together.  Not that my relatives haven't faced tough times, but we truly have been such a happy family by any standard.  Last week I visited Mamaw and Papaw on my own, without the chaos of swarming Coopers.  They said through sixty years, they've always loved each other and never considered ending their marriage.  That's quite a statement in today's culture, and one that I hope all of us grandkids can one day echo.  Thanks, Mamaw and Papaw, for giving your children and grandchildren a strong foundation in following God and loving your family well!

Feeding each other cake, 60 years later