We’re in Burlington!

Found one of our favorite vintage stores ever. Amazing finds, the kind that used to be common only 15 years ago. Though we ixnayed several things we loved but didn’t absolutely love, it was an all-time haul:

Waxed canvas hunting jacket in tan and orange, a long strong white dress that fits Kelsey exquisitely, a red cotton cozy shirt, a charmingly floppy buttonable-up red bucket hat, a wonderfully strange lighthouse needlepoint jacket with silver anchor buttons, a white doilied purse, a strawberry-like sweater at half off, a neon green frog button Mandarin shirt, this blue dress that makes it difficult to breathe, looking at her. A Boston Red Sox cap from the sixties, fitted, wool, made in the USA if not Boston itself. A french scarf, simple and bright. For me, a thick khaki cotton canvas WWII or just-after shirt, with epaulets and badges still.

I think we’re set for a good long while, now.

We’ll be traveling by EV across Vermont to my old stomping grounds, then Stockbridge where Kripalu and Norman Rockwell live, then Boston for cycling and fun and Fenway and Isabella Stewart Gardner and friends.

After landing in little Burlington Airport, bussing in an all-windowed bus with a kind helpful driver, we settled into our historic BnB (support local, not Airbnb unless the owner is on the premises). Our room was the turret room.

Burlington is full of turrets, slate roofs, gorgeous architecture on a grand scale–far more than Boulder, though it’s less than half the size. And yet there’s no Trident, Boulder Book Store, Sanitas and other hikes.

We’re wide open to each other, all the way. Vulnerability is frightening and yet Kelsey loves me with humor, kindness returned, stability, grace, caring about our world.

Long talk with a local shop owner about the often violent homeless situation. Long bike ride along the causeway, algae everywhere, a white heron exploring the tall reeds in a lush island across the water near our once railline, now bike path, encircled by Lake Champlain (that never freezes, anymore) and the distant mountains layering one another in shadow. Lunch at old school hippie yummy healthy Stone Soup, with hand-coppered/wood-crafted furniture and a big mostly vegan buffet, baked goods. Kelsey tried on a wedding dress at a vintage shop yesterday, and though her blue-striped white French tee shirt showed through, the sight of her gave me shivers of joy. A stop for dark romantic coffee in a funky arty cafe, live jazzfest everywhere, old bookshop, dinner in an unfriendily-ice-cold charming diner, lots of vegan icecream at Ben & Jerry’s and lots of taking time to smell the lush flowers. Friend-making and friend-reuniting.

A lot of good things are ahead for us on this trip, and in life, though challenges persist–suffering, Trump and the fall of democracy, rights of the vulnerable, and much of the peaceful world order, climate crisis felt everywhere.

True love’s got to encompass it all—the hard parts of our past, the joy and wholesome curiosities, the everyday decisions and delights and complaints.

There is no perfect love and there is no perfect place—true love is better than that; it’s grounded in real.