Packing

Our day began, as it often does in Vermont, with the sounds of birdsongs mixed with internal combustion engines. It wasn't yet 7:30 am when I looked out the upstairs windows onto the street, but the neighbor's lawn service guy, wearing large white protective headphones, was striding up and down the street, swinging a loud industrial string-trimmer against the fence. From our kitchen window, on the other side, I gazed at the blooming William Baffin roses and Siberian iris, the drops of rain on the leaves of the big blue-green hosta, and thought how deceptively peaceful it all looked. In Montreal there are ordinances against noise in the early morning or late at night, so the city mowers never start in the park before 8:30, and even airplane flight paths are regulated for the least disturbance to residential areas. Of course, it's a city, with a constant whirr of traffic, and I'm quite unlikely to see an oriole swaying in the peonies in the park. But the general attitude, a legacy of the French heritage that prizes the protection of privacy, personal space, and community interest over productivity and efficiency, is entirely different. Firetrucks and police blast their horns at intersections only, and for as short a time as possible, while here the neighbors have been complaining about the new night train whose conductor lays into the whistle for long minutes in the middle of the night. The problem is the creep of suburbia, and the dependence on all things that can be filled with gasoline and used to make tasks faster, easier, and - so some think - more thrilling. It used to be rural and quiet here, with hermit thrushes and deer under our apple trees in the evening, but they, like the hippies and the native Vermonters, have retreated further and further into the woods as developments creep up the hillsides and valley towns sprawl beyond their old borders. Gone is the sound of wood being chopped by hand, early morning roosters, or cows lowing in the distance -- all of which were common when I first lived here, thirty years ago. Now we have leaf-blowers, chain saws, and ATVs.

A few weeks ago we signed a sales agreement for our house, and are beginning the final cleaning-out process as we wait to hear if the prospective buyers have been approved for financing. Last week there was a house inspection by an engineer, and at 7:45 this morning, a camera entered our sewer line, looking for roots and collapsed walls. We stood in the basement with the real estate agent, the buyer, and two men from the sewer inspection service, watching this architectural colonoscopy on a video monitor. Everything seemed in order: we saw only water, and the disordered webs of blind spiders who've been living in this tubular darkness for years.

The day turned bright and sunny; I spent the morning writing and placing classified ads and fielding phone calls. If I sound grumpy, I'm really not: if the deal comes through it will be a great relief to us both, even though leaving a house we've called home for three decades has its inevitable wrenching aspects. The process, of course, brings up a certain amount of reflection on the past, and I can't help but remember what this neighborhood, village, and state were like when I first came here to live.  Growth, always growth: there will be more jobs, more money, a better lifestyle if we build these roads, this shopping center, convert this old farm to offices and condominiums. By and large, that's true: there is more money here now, but the values that have come with that money are not those of a cohesive community responsible itself and for each other.  Positions once filled by local volunteers are now paid; trained administrators run everything from the libraries to the town governments, and "the people" are relegated to grumbling tax-payers who feel they have very little say and very little control. We can drive ten miles and buy nectarines imported from Chile, Mexican cilantro, and plastic everything from China, but the local hardware stores and fabric shops are all gone, as are the local doctor's offices and local elementary schools. Are we happier? I honestly don't think so.

But I also realize these are the concerns of someone getting older, looking back from the illusory height of years stacked like so many unshelved books. I'm wary of the criticism of the present that seems to come with age and the way it can turn so quickly into bitterness. I'm also quite aware that young people, like the excited couple who seem thrilled with the prospect of building their lives together in this house, don't see things this way at all.

Out in the garden, the sun-warmed air is heavy with the scent of roses: wild ones, ferns, and other shrubs are taking over the perennial garden and giving it a touseled beauty. I stand in the sun surveying this collaboration between myself and Nature, thinking what a fascinating artwork-in-progress we'll be leaving to the next gardener, who may or may not impose him or herself on these beds that once were cow pasture and chicken shed.

Comments

[Marja-Leena]

I'm so pleased for you that you have a buyer for your house, Beth, especially an excited young couple. It's hard to say goodbye to 30 years of living there but you've obviously already made the physical move to Montreal. It's the stuff, the garden, the memories, the town, isn't it? Though as you say the latter has changed with growth. I hate being a pessimist but that growth will stop one day not far into the future when we run out of oil. Maybe then we'll go back to local market gardens and farms and a communities making do and people helping each other? That young couple may well be part of that new movement.

[Anne Gibert]

Thirty years is a long time, but even if you had stayed, it hasn't stayed the same place. Things change, and when you get really old, like me, nothing is the same and you just live in the moment. Actually, that's not such a bad way to live. I know you love Montreal, and will have more stories to tell about it. Your memories of Vermont were lovely.

[Anna]

What you say in this post is very true, Beth. A world run by accountants, and change-management and time-management experts truly is an increasingly bleak one.

[Vivian]

I thought I was content, Beth, to have seen your home in person, but I am equally content and feel more privileged to know a writer who can capture in words the intersection of place and time, inner and outer reflection, with the freshness you bring to it. So I am less afraid of what is happening to the world. Your sentences are from the quiet. They are chopped by hand.

[beth]

Marja-Leena,you're right. I do find it's much easier to leave this place knowing that the next owners are excited and happy, wanting to build their life here much as we did. In Vermont there is a gradual movement back toward the local, it's just that the relationship is of consumer and grower, tax-payer and hired town manager. People have no background in pitching in and building their own community; they barely have time to cook for themselves these days. It's very different and I too hope it will change, but it's going to take a near-disaster for that to happen.

Anne G.: thank you for your wisdom. I hope I can gradually come to terms with the fact that I have no control, and that being in the moment is kinder to myself.

Anna, it's good to hear from you, and I agree completely with what you say.

Vivian, what a comforting and generous thing to tell me. Thank you.

[Bill]

That's just wonderful writing, beth, broadly considered, sensitive and well made. Just read it aloud to my wife.

[Deb]

I appreciate so much here -- "architectural colonoscopy" is brilliant, wish I'd though of it! -- especially your angle of view through the years. I think it could/should be cross-posted to The Clade.

[beth]

Thanks, Bill, that means a lot to me.

Good idea, Deb - it hadn't occurred to me to cross-post this entry to The Clade but now that you mention it, maybe I will.

[-s]

For every moment given to remembering the past, another opens to a future of yet untold possibilities...

[Martine]

Félicitations pour la vente de votre maison! Je comprends que ce soit pour vous deux un sentiment doux-amer mais pour nous, ça veut dire que nous vous verrons plus souvent à Montréal et nous nous en réjouissons.

Five years ago, Ed and I were one of these excited (but scared!) couples who bought a house from people who had built it and lived in it for 20 years. I wished that I could have had a sense of them passing on the house to us - and their love of it - but they arranged to not be at the notary's office at the same time as us and didn't talk to us at all, except through the agents. Your buyers will feel a lot of good vibes from your place. I'm really happy I got to see it before you move. And if you need help with the move, let us know!