Toni Stone
401 Buck Hollow Rd
Fairfax, VT 05454
February 18, 2005
on Beeman Street
the man across the street is Greg Beeman. he is a Gemini. he moved like me from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Vermont, a good number of years ago. a few years ago, he told me, “Toni, it takes 15 years to get any of your family up here.” it was at the point i felt like giving up on asking my family tl move up here. Greg said they laugh at you. they laugh at Vermont. they say it’s too cold, too remote, too rural. they say things like, “why the hell would anyone in their right mind want to shovel snow eight months a year?” invitations for holidays are refused, mostly. when they do come, return visits take a while, like years. . .we were in our fourteenth year of living in Vermont.
Greg told me all this one night while Melissa, Steve and i were having dinner. we were at their house. the candles were dripping wax at the table. the wine was good. it ws black outside the winter windows. the dinner was excellent. their dog was polite. he told us that last year his entire family moved “in mass” to the hills of Vermont. he said he was shocked. although he never stopped inviting them, he said it was really the last thing he expected, based on how it sounded and what the evidence looked like. the moving trucks came anyway last year, with their furniture and all the kids.
we were laughing just hearing about it all, late last year. then three weeks ago, my Brother purchased a house in Fairfax, two minutes away on Beeman Street, of all places. last week, my Mother rented a unit at an apartment building in Williston, twenty five minutes from our house.
don’t give up on what you are asking. . .some things are just inevitable. . .like moving to Vermont.
