I sing with the choir at Champlain Valley Unitarian Church (CVUUS) as of this year. We have the good fortune to have a twenty-six-year-old, gifted beyond measure, music director, Ronnie Romano, who is also one of the most exuberant and kind people I have ever met. It is a joy to sing with this choir and I look forward to every rehearsal and every Sunday that we sing. I also sing under Ronnie’s direction in a hospice singing group named Wellspring.

Last Sunday at CVUUS we sang an anthem entitled “Choose to Bless the World.” It has stayed with me, the melodies, and the words. They live in my head, or sometimes I just sing them out loud.

You who light the world,

Oh, you who love the world,

Be the light today.

Be the love today.

Choose to bless the world.

What is happening in our world in Gaza, in Ukraine, at our southern border, in our country, with our changing, warming climate…is heart breaking and crushing.

Yesterday’s service and the anthem helped us to love the world, all of it. To resist becoming crushed and shattered, and instead, offer our light and love in any way that we can, through our talents, our smiles, our gestures, our kindness.

New baby Liv, her mother Lei, and her brothers, Jack and Alden

The last week has been full of blessings in our house. We have a brand-new granddaughter, born March 14th, named Liv Louise Cadwell. She has two older brothers, Jack and Alden. We will be lucky enough to spend Easter weekend with them in New Jersey.

Last Friday, I picked blooming snow drops to bring inside because on Saturday it snowed all day until there was over a foot of new white snow. And as the day broke on Sunday, the world filled with light and sparkles and a deep blue sky.

And last night, there was an almost full moon that stayed in the western sky until early this morning so that we could watch it set over the hill in between the branches of bare maple trees.

Hiking and Skiing the Middlebury College Snowbowl

And today, we will go put on our climbing skis and hike up the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, and ski down. No lifts running today so very few people. Just the crunch of our skis climbing and gliding on snow, the breeze through the spruce trees, and birdsong. The cardinal now singing his bright spring song.

This poem was also read at the service last Sunday,, “Snowdrops,” by Louise Gluck.

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

May we all risk joy. May we all nurture our capacious hearts to hold both the pain of the world and the joy. And may we bring our joy and kindness to others in the raw wind of the new world.

Jack labeling his block construction buildings on a photo of his town

Our grandson, Jack, visited with his dad for Washington’s birthday week to ski. However his dad, our son, was starting a new job that very week! So, we spent a lot of time with Jack, waiting for his dad to be finished with work so that we could all go skiing.

Note to encourage his dad to get ready to ski!

This was a week away from preschool for Jack who turned five last December. Well, really four days away from school, after the Presidents Day holiday.

I put out good quality paper in a 9 by 12 inch notebook, and pencils and pens, and colored pencils, and a variety of good quality markers. In the past, Jack has dedicated hours to drawing all kinds of games, animals, scenarios. He worked at the kitchen island most of the time. And, for the most part, I followed him. By that I mean, I made available what he asked me for; I was his secretary; I was his assistant.

He wanted to write a lot. When I showed him Swahili words for animals, he wanted to write them. (We had just returned from an epic and long dreamed of trip to Tanzania which I wrote about last month.)

Names of animals in Swahili …do you know them?

When he was getting antsy and wanted to go skiing, he wanted to write his dad notes about that. When he built a town of buildings that he knows, he wanted to label them on a photo/map of his town. When he wanted to design a stuffy for us to make, he wanted to draw step by step instructions.

Instructions for designing and sewing a ghost stuffy

In many ways, this was a week of school for me, with Jack being my teacher. I have written several blog posts about time with Jack. One post when he was around two years old and was living down the road during the pandemic. I was lucky enough to spend two days a week with him then. And just last fall, when I visited his school, A Child’s Place, in New Jersey and, again, was lucky enough to be able to work with him and some of his friends with natural materials.

So here he is again, star of the show. Making school for himself learning, practicing what he knows and stretching into new forms, inventing, building, writing, drawing, making all kinds of things.

And we did ski. And he is a good skier, mostly because of the year that he spent learning to ski when he was two, the year he lived in Vermont during the pandemic. So, during the week that they were here, I followed him down the mountain as well.