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At the end of an idyllic college reunion weekend, a friend said three words as we watched a classmate loading his car become morose. “Transitions are hard,” she whispered.
Truer words never spoken. I wish someone had said them to me decades ago.
Because emotions are more dealable when you know why you’re feeling them. Such as: “I’m despondent because I’m going through a transition.” Not: “I’m overreacting.” Or “I’m losing my mind for no apparent reason.” At reunion, it was this: “I had the best time this weekend. I love my funny, smart college friends. Now I have to go home.”
Transitioning seasons is a hard one for many. Some lament the end of summer, particularly the gardeners and the sun- and water- lovers. Myself, I welcome fall. Summer drags on too long for me. When the sun shines, we feel obligated to make hay. When we have a summer with little rain, that’s a lot of haymaking. Read: outdoorsy work, socializing, exercising. There’s not much time to … reflect. It feels to me like a lot of “racing around,” as my mother would put it.
Fall’s shorter days heighten our more introspective inclinations, for good or bad. I savor the colors and the smells of autumn (if not the Leafer traffic), the harvest, the stews, the cooler temps, the colder waters. Stick season delights me, while it sends others spiraling downwards. A few weeks ago was monarch butterfly season. Then, termite season. Now: wasps-looking-to get-in-the-house season. Some geese already heading south. Boom boom boom, one after the other. Change.
The longer you live, more change. With each season, an anniversary: we remember something – or someone – now gone. Family and friends who have died. The houses loved, with so many memories, sold. My pal I used to take to the summer fried clam shacks or the fall apple festivals now unable to leave his residence! Nieces and nephews I rarely see! Who, when small, had inventive costumes for Halloween. (One Halloween the youngest declared she would be: “a marshmallow on a stick”. And she was). Little them, all running up and down streets for tricks and treats. I’m terribly nostalgic for those times. I am gladdened when anyone says they miss when their kids were young. Then I’m not alone.
I asked a college friend, what change was hard about becoming an empty nester? Was it that the house grew quiet, that you missed your daughter’s presence, that three was now two? He said, “All of it … and just … where did 20 years go?”
There’s that – the growing up of the youth below us – sometimes as the people above us, who took care of us, now need caretaking. And when the once-capable parents die, as a sage friend put it, “It’s like losing a roof over your head that you never even knew was there.” Heck, it’s hard enough for me when friends move away.
Nostalgia is an odd thing, defined by Merriam-Webster as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” The American Heritage Dictionary takes it one further: “Homesickness; esp., a severe and sometimes fatal form of melancholia, due to homesickness.” Yipes! I hope I don’t have the fatal kind. I do hate change. Except for a change of heart. That I like.
I think we’re born with a degree of nostalgia, and life circumstances make it grow more for some people. Some of us are barely nostalgic at all (I envy you), and some are what I call “nostalgia monsters.” A scientist might call us “superstalgics”.
A niece and I are both that. We’ll talk about things we miss, and bawl. When I suggested that we are both nostalgia monsters, she said, “I’m so nostalgic that once I rearranged my room and immediately cried because I missed the way it ‘used to be’ an hour earlier.” (One advantage to kids’ growing up: their self-awareness and humor become more sophisticated.)
I’m not sure what function nostalgia serves. It’s mostly just painful. Perhaps, in the way spiritual and artistic and carpentry gatherings connect people within a community, nostalgia connects time within ourselves. It connects our present to our past in a mostly good way. There might be some biological survival-of-the-species value in this. I don’t know. All I know is I couldn’t bear saying goodbye to my elementary school teachers at year-end and I haven’t changed a bit.
It doesn’t matter how logically superstalgics think. We can’t embrace change when our heart is throbbing with sorrow.
Back to fall. Stick season was at one time, for me, a harbinger of the noisy, wonderful family gatherings of Thanksgiving. But my family doesn’t have those any more. My mommy was the center of them, as a mother so often is. Maybe, with age, you have less to look forward to in general. For yourself. You can be happy for the pivotal events in the lives of those younger, but for you, not that much is happening. Maybe you can’t get off work for holidays, or traveling has become difficult. Maybe money is tight, and you can’t visit your people. I get it all.
So if you wax gloomy as the leaves fall, I feel your pain. I won’t say, “Let us embrace change!” any more than I’d say, “Let us wrap barbed wire around hot dogs and eat them!” But I for one can and must distract myself from nostalgia. “Life is for the living,” my sage friend says.
I yank myself into the present. I help others as able, attend the New World Festival, the Tunbridge Fair, the Morrill Homestead Apple and Cheese Festival, consider crafting holiday gifts. I ponder the Covid-19 test called BinaxNOW and wonder if the NOW indicates urgency, or if it’s an acronym (No Organisms Within?), and whether NOW should be applied to other products, such as TortillasNOW, Old SpiceNOW, or – definitely – ImmodiumNOW. Needs an exclamation point. Good day.
Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find bookshops at annaikens.com; her blog is uppervalleygirl.com.
Given the increasingly maddening state of global affairs, the New Climate rollercoaster, plus whatever you’re going through personally, I imagine that Dear Reader is somewhat terrified. Or, at the least, dismayed. Bewildered?
I get it, and offer here some tips. My own life a basketful of paralyzing worries on a daily basis, I’ve had to actively endeavor not to go crackers. So I consider myself, if sadly, an expert at digging myself out of the hole. Here’s this. Hope it not silly pablum, but something of use.
Help where you can. Then: There are so many terrible things happening on earth — all being reported in exquisite detail — we simply must turn down the volume. Decide against reading past a panic-inducing headline even if it kills you. Turn off some alerts – or people. Turn off your notifications and tune in to Tight Pants Dance Party on Pandora (Pandora’s free, if you can stand the occasional ads) and go scrub the bathtub. Then get in?
Ah yes, real physical exercise, as much as you can muster. That and getting in water just kick the stuffing out of anxiety. You’ll sleep better. What, you’re not getting good sleep? Haha! Who is? I want to meet these people. What is their secret? Oh wait, they lack empathy. Goody for them.
When this world is alarming, check out and go to other worlds. If you can afford it, travel. Meditation (always free on the excellent Insight Timer app), contemplative prayer, lovely scenery set to music on Youtube (a superb use of drones), napping, forest bathing, earthing, swimming, reading spiritual books or those with happy endings…I’m doing all those things, plus watching pro tennis (I enjoy the inaudible muttering) and — of course — the Olympics. You have your own jones. Fishing? Boating? Zip-lining? Drive-in movies? Go! Other worlds, I tell you.
Subscribe to good news. Thankfully, there is in fact good news out there. See a list of IG recommendations at the end of this column.
Dear Reader may have a physical situation exacerbating your outlook. Who needs that? Low thyroid, blood sugar, and hormonal issues can wreak havoc. See a doctor or alternative medicine practitioner recommended by someone you actually know. Try something new, like reiki, EMDR, hypnotism – could intrigue and boost. At the least, distract!
Laugh out loud. I saw a book at the annual Barnard Fire & Rescue tag sale, Bread Machine Magic. Others laughed heartily at their own finds. Mere laughter makes others laugh.
Make music or art. Dust off that accordion or your vocal cords … get craft supplies at your local purveyor … take a class … and steep yourself in sane-making pleasures.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. A kind friend recently said I was too hard on myself. My unspoken reaction was, “Our parents were hard on us, so that makes sense.” The last thing you need when things are difficult is you being your own adversary.
Spend some money, by crikey. We’ve all become so tight-fisted that I think it’s making us contract physically and spiritually. Eat out! Get something you’ve badly needed for months or years (yes, the price went up, and it’s not going down). Or just some frippery that elevates you. Buy a gift for someone worse off than you. And I don’t mean on the Amazon. Post-COVID Burl, post-flood Montpelier, and your very own town can use the biz — and uplift. Watch the proprietor’s face light right up. Customers! By buying something, you’re gifting to your friend or self an object or service, and the gifts of cheer and hope to the seller. The world could use a whole lot more of those. Money talks. Hello, it says, I’m here for the trading.
As promised: Hot Instagram tips from lifelong friend COL.
The Dogist: He goes around NYC taking photos of people’s dogs, talking briefly to the owners.
Outta Puff Daddys: Middle-aged British dudes who formed a little dance company; it morphed into advocating for men’s mental health. So dear.
Funkanometry: Two young Canadian guys who do hip-hop type dance to all different kinds of music.
This chick named Jen I couldn’t find, who post things positive every day, as she says at the end, apparently.
Dan Harris: Anchorman had a panic attack on TV, then wrote the bestseller Ten Percent Happier… like a Buddhist Zen for current times. No candy coating. He gives little snippets and then ends little each one with: “Inner peace, m—–f—–‘s“
The self-help people: Mel Robbins, Jay Shetty, many others.
The dancing and art ones. Just search.
The PS22 Chorus! Not-privileged fifth graders in NYC public school. They sing with total heart and a young, funny, energetic leader. I dare you not to cry.
Nathan Clark Wildlife… He had the coolest photos and videos of a little owl family at the top of a dead tree.
Soul Seeds for All: Uplifting nuggets. Break out the Kleenex.
Surely something up there is your bag? By all means send me your own faves. Regardless: Don’t go down without a fight! Take steps to feel UP! Then spread the wealth, as able. Good day.
Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. See ww.uppervalleygirl.com and www.annaikens.com.
I had the honor of speaking to high school seniors in Lebanon, NH at the annual Senior Girls Tea, hosted with excellence by the Lebanon Woman’s Group at a cool historic home. The girls got quite dressed up, some in sneakers. Gen Z is practical. Great article on them in the Stanford News. I post my very abbreviated talk here. It is true that, “While we teach, we learn,” per Roman philosopher Seneca. I myself am reminded of the important things whenever I suggest them to the YPs (young people). As well might be Dear Reader?
Good day, Seniors. Today is 42424. Seems meaningful.
I wrote a book of darkly funny – but true! – advice for young women, which I called a “Cautionary Tale” because I wanted to advise the YPs what NOT to do. It’s truly horrifying some of the things I did. I figured a book could save the YPs years of bad feelings and wasted time. But today I mostly address what TO do.
I didn’t do things wrongly because I was stupid. I wasn’t. But because nobody warned us. Adults didn’t know how to, because the world was changing fast. Plus, our parents were different from yours. As were theirs before them. As will be you … whether you become parents or, like me, an aunt. A sacred role, that!
Gen Z is 70 million strong in the US alone. Think of your POWER. Power to the people, right on. That’s John Lennon. I’ll give you ideas today to mull over – four major points.
I say all the time: people are herd animals. You know that dogs and horses are terrified of being cut off from the herd, as it could mean certain death. Same for humans. Scientists say that people who live in groups are happiest. I believe it. I’m all for dormitories and group housing — with decent bathrooms.
So if you’re feeling lonely, get the heck off social media (“anti-social media”). Get with humans. Join a music or theater group, chess club, community garden, bowling league, anything. I joined a chorus in January that saved me psychologically. It sure beat crying at home in my PJs watching Hallmark movies, eating a bag of Funyons.
A Vermonter once told me, “Do the things you like to do and you will meet people who like to do the things you like to do.” Yes! I made new friends in chorus. At my advanced age!
Important: if you see someone else seemingly cut off from the herd, very shy or self-isolating, invite them in. Say, “Hey, would you have lunch with my group? Or take a walk with me? If today’s not good, ask me any time.” You could change someone’s entire life. Guess what: They could change yours.
Today, anxiety and depression are going through the roof. I’m no stranger to either. Dwelling in bad moods will sicken you. So: get happy if it kills you. Also, your moods are contagious. If you’re in a foul mood, you’re likely passing it on. Boost yourself by saying something nice to a stranger or two, and they just might pay it forward. You and they will feel better.
Luckily, I’ve never been a procrastinator. I see procrastinator friends torturing themselves. My secret has been this: Just get started. When you receive a school or work assignment, stop somewhere before your next obligation. Sketch an outline. Title it? Draw it. Sing it. Why start now?
1. It’s way, WAY easier to pick up where you left off than to start something you’ve been putting off for weeks. You just … glide back into it.
2. It’ll turn out 100 times better than if you had started it last-minute. You’ve had time for it to marinate, and for the Forces, as I call them, to deliver ideas unto you. It’s a little mystical how that happens. I believe in serendipity and synchronicity and information being imparted to us from the ether.
Other Idea: Make a list of the high points in your life. Our pasts weren’t all cupcakes and rainbows; this list makes you feel good about the past.
Feeling good is important. Endeavors tend not to turn out well if you don’t feel good while doing them. It’s some energetic law of the universe. As for fun, do feel-good things besides drugs, booze, overeating, etc., which I highly un-recommend because addictions are super addicting and hard as holy hell to break. Addictions mess with your entire being, and exact a price. Feel good in other ways. Exercise. Stretch. Meditate. Get in water. Write a nice letter. Make music or art. Read. Do a good deed! Watch a funny movie. With other humans. Feel good!
As you move onto your next phase, whether a job, college, trade school, the military, gap year, Peace Corps, internship … think about building your life resume. That’s what I call experiences that wouldn’t go on a career resume. Plan adventure. Trips need not be expensive. Take classes that appeal, maybe free. Public libraries are increasingly fantastic resources of things to learn and do and borrow (Snow shoes! Park passes!). Volunteer? Your life resume is every bit as important as your career resume.
Opportunities could arise that you’ve never dreamed of. Don’t fear an opportunity that seems daunting, like, “I don’t know if I could do all that.” Because as Madeleine Albright put it (former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, and ambassador to the UN — all this after her husband left her): “An exciting position replenishes the energy it consumes.”
Life could take you somewhere magical if you allow it. You could do, be, have, give more that you ever thought possible. You could: solve a problem facing people, creatures, or Mother Earth; invent or cure something; make art that touches people; write a book (!); or just … spread joy. You don’t have to be a big deal. Or a billionaire.
In closing, everything humankind has ever accomplished started as a thought. Thoughts have power. So I leave you with an assignment. As you drift off to sleep tonight, think about what could happen. Think about what you could be, what you might create. Thoughts have power. They do. So: Ponder what you’re good at. What you’d like to do. Send loving thoughts to your friends and frenemies. Consider what changes you could make in your behavior or thinking. Envision good deeds. A kind act is love in action! Some of my kind acts I don’t even remember. But I bet the recipients do, as I recall every kindness ever done unto me.
I’ll be thinking about you. Report in as able? Contact me any time. I’ll write you back. Thank you, and good day!
Ann Aikens’ book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, is at Amazon, Barnes & Noble & Vermont shops. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find shops & events at annaikens.com.
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Oshe Bunny has been a lot of places, but in the path of Totality viewing was one of his top faves of all time. Because his eyeballs are glass, he was able to sneak a peek beneath his safety goggles. Because he is sentient, he wept uncontrollably when the mind-blowing corona appeared.
He was lucky enough to have fantastic Eclipse hosts in Burlington, lakeside. He cheered and bawled and cheered, and had a lot of local beezers and gluten-free, vegan Bitchin’ Sauce.
So much happs, Dear Reader, where to start?
With snow of course. This week’s unexpected dumping was the usual: exciting, beautiful, good for some, bad for others, a source of pre-storm grocery store pandemonium, and a ton of work. Those that made it to the Maple Open House Weekend during the prior storm had a gas. People got there by foot, snowshoe, truck, or with snow tires still on their car. Yo, don’t try to keep us from our maple, Mother Nature.
A local plowing guy casually tossed off, in passing, how his rig had gone sliding sideways down a road, with him at the wheel. This reminded me of when snowboarding was brand new. My friend Harry and I were on skis at Okemo and a posse of young snowboarders flew around and past us, wicked close, like paparazzi. One ran over my skis. “Sorry,” he murmured. Harry said, “Ann, I just saw your whole life flash before my eyes.”
So I asked the plow guy if his life had flashed before his eyes. He replied, “No. I spend a lot of time in this truck. I pretty much know what it can do.” And if that’s not a Vermonty sentiment, I don’t know what is.
Because I got snowed in with shoveling to do, I had time to question the usefulness of my sad old bod, which used to shovel snow like a human windmill. Those days are gone, alas. Aging in Vermont is not easy. But then, living here offers basically a free gym membership, so there’s that. We take the good with the bad.
Post-storm sun on the sparkling blanket of white cheers us greatly. Articles in The Atlantic and elsewhere are asking why everyone seems so down lately, when statistics are solid in the US in terms of unemployment, the stock market, interest rates, and many changes under way for the general good. One answer is that we’re all unaware of how badly COVID affected us. And as a local merchant put it, “There seems to be a general sense of malaise. I’m not young and I feel like I lost two years of my life to COVID. Plus, people started treating each other badly before that whole mess, and haven’t reverted back to good manners.”
I couldn’t agree more. My grandparents would be appalled at the way people speak to workers in stores and restaurants, to customer service on the phone, to their neighbors, teachers, employees, bosses—you name it.
A friend blamed social media, calling it “antisocial media.” Which is a disgrace. At times it’s like a virtual boxing ring with people slugging away at each other to no good end. Why? Why bother? Do you think the person you’re pounding is going to change their mind? Spit a tooth out and go, “Wait, Carol. By God, you’re right!” Do you think the like-minded spectators hanging onto the ropes, cheering you on, will think highly of you for more than the 4 seconds it takes to read your assault? I don’t get it, man.
Because I wrote a book, I have no choice but to be on Social. I just took a reprieve for a month – bliss! Back in it while snowed in, I found “doom scrolling” an utter chore.
Except for … the reasons people went into there in the first place: video of a backcountry skier wearing a GoPro who happens upon a lone snowboarder literally buried alive, and frantically digs him out. What are the odds?! A monkey hears a trapped kitten’s cries and does its damnedest to rescue it from a drainpipe. Then lovingly grooms and hugs it! Interspecies love in all its forms: delicious.
It’s ironic to me that a skier saves the life of a snowboarder and animals of all kinds care for each other on the same page as one Facebooker hammers away another (lit. or fig.). I guess we just have to, again, take the good with the bad.
There are at least four good reasons, in addition to The New Rudeness, why people are down. But if I list them, they will only distress Dear Reader. You know them anyway. They are why I avoid the news, beyond startling headlines that materialize on my phone. I’d much rather read Ski Chatter online and learn hilarious lingo, such as “beaver balls” and “death cookies.” I’d rather laugh than cry — or fight. Wouldn’t you? The Interweb: good and bad.
Shortly, Mud Season (“Mud VI”) kicks in anew. Just hoping everyone can make it to maple shacks and the other treasures that are the Good of mud season. I remain hopeful. As well might you? Good (with the bad) day.
You’ll never guess what this is, so I’ll just tell you.
Years ago, a neighbor kid was practicing casting his fishing rod out in the yard. The fishing hook got caught way up, in a dead tree branch. He got his line free by yanking hard enough to break the brittle branch. Since, a little piece of that broken branch has hung from a piece of fishing line attached to a higher branch.
I do not understand the dynamics of what happened. But I do welcome unsolved mysteries in nature. Whenever I see the broken branch twirling on the invisible fishing line, seemingly hovering in the air, it cracks me up. It really cracked me up after yesterday’s storm — the snow piled high upon it, the fishing line invisible as always. I may be the only person who knows it exists. I’m definitely the one that appreciates it most.
This is the second one I’ve seen this winter. The snow recedes and leaves a … creature. This one is about 3″ high. If you know what it’s called, please report in.
I know what a snow devil is. That ethereal being, hard to capture on camera, is similarly rare and magical.
If you photograph it at the right angle, it looks like it’s floating. Maybe it is. I think it’s going to your house. This one is a bit of a Rorschach test. Tell me what you see?
Another solid dumping, two feet expected by 2 a.m.!
Or maybe you’re a birder. Git your binos on?
If you look closely, you will see 3 birds frozen in flight — always weird.
Oddly, this photo was not converted to B&W.
Also of note: this article in The Atlantic says crows are moving to the city.
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