Greetings Dear ones!

Well, I’m disappointed. Here it is April first, and the “April Showers” are arriving as scheduled but March has failed to deliver its lambs. I go to the barn this morning and find the ewes curled up in their bedding, perched on their sternums, looking very much like those plastic sheep one sees in manger scenes at Christmas time—like legs are not included. Their bellies splay out on each side like they are shoplifting basketballs under their wool. They look at me and smile, get slowly to their tiny feet and stretch. No swollen ankles or stretch marks for these ladies. “Where’s breakfast?” they want to know with all the tact and patience of New Yorkers in line at the DMV.

“Where are the lambs?” I want to know.

“We have no idea what you are talking about,” they say.

“Am I the only one so excited about the lambs?” I wonder.

“The lambs, if there are any such things as lambs, will be here when they are here and not before,” they say brusquely. “Right Now, it’s breakfast!” They have no Past—no recollections or regrets about a certain Mr. Someone they might have cavorted with in the fall. They have no future. Such is the nature of The Sinless.

I bustle about serving what we call their “cereal and salad” which I describe to them as if I am a snooty waiter in a posh restaurant. “And for Madam? Will you be having the Producer’s Pride All-Stock pellets du jour? No, I’m sorry the portions are indeed regulated by the management. We don’t serve that by the fifty-pound bag, Madam… And a petite summer salad, hold the vinaigrette and olives? Oh, NOT petite? Very well madam…” I look down my nose at their appalling trough manners as they dive bomb each other’s bowls and climb over each other’s backs to grab more than their share, sometimes yanking it right out of each other’s mouths. My snooty inner waiter rolls his eyes and tuts in despair. “This is almost as bad as lunch hour at that all-you-can-eat-buffet in a certain town in Massachusetts,” he grumbles insolently.

I take a wander through the orchard on my way to the house. The tiniest buds at the very tip tell me which limbs are coming back to life and which dry sticks still need to be pruned. I want to take off everything dead—no matter how weird it makes the trees look. They have not been tended for so many years and there is a lot of damage that must be cut away. This is also how it is for people surveying their own wardrobes in the wake of twelve months of confinement during which pantaloons were strictly optional. The dead must be consigned or culled.

This week, I’ve had three customers reschedule appointments due to Mud. Vermont has roughly 8,700 miles of dirt roads, according to the Vermont Agency of Transportation. That's roughly 55 percent of our streets, lanes, thoroughfares, boulevards, driveways, avenues, and ... roads. And this time of the year, that's 8,700 miles of axel-stripping, wheel-gripping MUD.

“I’ll see you in the Spring,” says one man, hanging up. I am left wondering…the birds, the crocus buds, the fact that I no longer have to smash ice out of water buckets on a daily basis…This isn’t Spring? Apparently not. Seasons don’t work here quite like they do in other parts of the country. Here, it seems we have three: Ski Season, Mud Season, and Creemee Season. (Creemees are soft-serve ice creams made locally from maple syrup and the incredibly high-in-butter-fat cream from native cows.) We are deep into mud season now. It’s a crap shoot each day as I venture down my driveway and try to blast through the three to five sink holes that lurk between me and a paved road. I have had to spread used sheep bedding on the muddy slope between the house and the barn so that I can climb safely. I had tried to drag a heavy cart up the hill and my feet went out from under me so swiftly, I was (BANG!) face-down in muck, looking like a biscuit that had been half dipped, longitudinally, in chocolate before I knew it. (Only, what I was spitting out didn’t taste too much like chocolate!)

So! Here we are, in a lurching sort of delicately poised equilibrium: the desire, means, and necessity of attaining balance are the focus of each day as we eagerly await Changes and avoid getting stuck. We aren’t getting to go anywhere; we are Here, in this luminal space--what Horace Walpole might have called “Between-ity.” Who knows what he actually meant by the term but ever since a friend posted about it on her Facebook page, I have been obsessed with the notion. It’s the perfect description for this space I seem to be inhabiting—where I must grapple with the release of the old and the embrace of the new and yet neither is yet within the reach of my grasp.

“Betweenity” seems like the perfect union of the words eternity and between. It makes me think of Yo-Yo Ma’s statement that the music happens “between the notes” in the length of the Silence between the beats. It is that place where nothing can be said but so much is communicated. It’s about dreaming and also about waiting for those dreams to manifest. It is the space that separates and defines two entities or elements. Polarity is required, or we might use the word “Among” or “Among-ity” to indicate that there are more than two options.

“Betweenwhiles” is something my Nana Kennedy might have said, as she measured time in “whiles.” When we would part, she would say “I’ll see you in a few whiles,” whether I was going to the grocery store and would be back the same day or leaving for Scotland and wouldn’t be back until I was married. She seems to have had the same sense of timing as the sheep.

In the forests that border the mud, the sap is running. Warm days pull it up from the roots; cold nights make it sink back. Only in Transitional times, when the weather is shifting from warm to cold or cold to warm, does the sap run and the sweetness that is hidden from us at other times of year become available.

“It’s good to enjoy this Pause—this (ahem)…Pregnant… pause,” says the oldest ewe in the flock, fixing me with her calm and steady gaze. “Enjoy the great magic in Betwixity. You feel the pressure of Time scratching at you with her claws but remember—Souls are things with no deadlines. ”

She’s right. In the evenings, I sit on my milk crate in the sheep fold and watch for signs of early labor before I turn, extinguish all the lights, and trudge the mud before bed. I enjoy the reverie and the peaceful interlude. Interlude—literally means “between plays,” from inter (between) and ludus (play). There is not a lot of play going on at the moment. (Incidentally, ludus is also the root for “ludicrous” which explains a lot about the month of Mud, and how things have been going lately.) I think about Horace Walpole and his use of the suffix “-ity” The inner English Professor loves finding out that it comes through Middle English –ite and Old French –ete directly from Latin itatem and denotes “the state or condition of…” So “anonymity” is the condition of being anonymous; “timidity” is the state of being timid; and so on. Unfortunately, the rule breaks with “serendipity,” which, it turns out is NOT the condition of a woman who has misplaced her wallet and car keys somewhere between here and the hardware store. Serendipity (according to someone’s nauseatingly cheery Pinterest board) is “when we go out to look for something and find instead the thing we were not looking for, only to realize it’s what we wanted all along.” Sometimes, this brings us great joy, as in the case of the middle-aged woman who went to her car to retrieve a bag of chicken feed, realized it was covering a forgotten freezer bag of cold groceries that also contained her wallet. (Bonus: She did not have to wait for Creemee season for her ice cream to be a beverage.)

I want to rush the lambs and tell them to hurry up. But I don’t want to hasten away the last season of an aged, tottering, three-legged dog who is deaf, blind, totally incontinent but still willing to eat his brother’s food and chase a tennis ball. To rush some things is to rush all things. As we wait…wait…wait… for vaccines, for open markets, for sunshine and freedom and hugs and whatever New Life we have promised ourselves in which we will blossom but not age, grow but not change, live and not complain... the Spring peepers start their chorus in a pond still edged with ice. Another Moment has begun: A Moment as eternal as the years themselves are swift.

Luckily, a soul is a thing without a deadline. As the Byrds remind us---“To everything, (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (be it ski, Mud or Creemee) and a time to every Purpose under Heaven.” There is no penalty for taking our time to do the work we must do. Our Time is here. Our Purpose is This. Endure and Let the Mending continue!

Thanks for reading, commenting, sharing and subscribing. We’ll all be together again in “a few whiles.” Meanwhile, I love you dearly—Betwixity, Betweenity, and Always.

Yours aye,

Nancy