January 2013
2 posts
3 tags
From 2 to 3
2 tags
He's 3
Today you are three. This year brought many changes for you…[[MORE]] The end of diapers, your very own legitimate bed, the start of preschool, a baby brother. You’ve embraced the changes beautifully and sometimes I think watching you go through these big transitions is harder for me than it is for you to go through them. When Indi was born I missed you so. You seemed to grow up in an...
September 2012
4 posts
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The Camp Letters: 7
One night at dinner, Mrs. D came to me at my cabin’s assigned table and told me I had a phone call. I followed her back into the kitchen, sat at a little table, and picked up the black receiver.
“Jess, it’s Mom and Dad. We got all your letters and we decided it’s time for us to come for you.”
Apparently, they had received a bunch of the letters on the same day.
“No, it’s OK. I’m good, I want to...
2 tags
The Camp Letters: 6
Things change after this one, I promise…
July 4, 1987
Dear Mom,
You’re just telling me to try harder because you don’t know what it’s like. I lost my flashlight, Innie’s* head is very wobbly probably because I dropped her on the floor 3 times while I was sleeping. I am really worried her head neck might give in altogether. And there is this girl in my bunk. Her...
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The Camp Letters: 5
“It’s not like I’m going to be in the Olympics…”
Dear Mom + Dad,
It’s not fair what you are doing to me. I feel like I am in a jail. You’re making me stay here to the point of making me even more homesick. I don’t want to work really, really, really, really, really hard at swimming. I am already in swimmers. It’s not like I’m going to...
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The Camp Letters: 4
In the thick of it now…
July 4
Dear Mom + Dad,
This is to tell you how I feel and what is wrong.[[MORE]]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How I feel
1) Very very very, very very homesick
2) Mad at you cause you won’t let me come home
3) Confused because I don’t know if you want me to come home in other words I don’t know if you care enough about how...
August 2012
3 posts
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The Camp Letters: 3
Here we go…
Dear Mom and Dad,
Please let me come home! I don’t like it here. The horses are yucky and anyway riding makes me homesick. I want to come home!! Just let me come home. I don’t care about all the stuff you told me. I am crying right now ‘cause you won’t let me come home. You just don’t understand how I feel. Please! I mis Montpelier. (E....
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The Camp Letters: 2
It’s early on in the first week at Camp Betsy Cox and I’m still doing fine.
Saturday
Dear Mom,
You’re right! Camp is cozy and friendly. So far I a haveing a very wonderful time. I did get homesick but I am alright now.
In riding I had to ride the trouble pony because he was being bad. He started bucking but I swear I wasn’t that scared!
Today is Space Day. To save me...
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The Camp Letters
We thought these were lost. A bundle of letters I wrote to my parents from Camp Betsy Cox in 1987 when I was 11. But they’ve been found.
In reading them, I was taken aback by the voice and self reflection of this little girl.
This is the first letter. I’ve settled into my cabin, Horrid Hamlet, I’m looking for friends, and searching for my place.
Friday
Dear Mom, Dad, and...
January 2012
1 post
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A Day of Travel and a Day of Thanks
Thank you parents (who are amazing grandparents), thank you JetBlue for the good seats, thank you patrons of JFK’s restroom at Gate 20 for only offering me encouragement as my son had a tantrum on the floor, and then fell asleep there, thank you row mates for being so AMAZING and for sticking up for me when my son woke up abruptly during take off and had (yet another) 45 minute meltdown, NO...
December 2011
1 post
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Winter Walk
I’m in Vermont.
October 2011
1 post
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Horse Cool
As I waited for the guy to haul my two bales of alfalfa to the car, I stood in the shade by the paddock, giddy that places like these exist in Burbank. The smell of hay and manure, the way I imagined it would feel to trudge through it, right then, in mucking boots. Grain buckets, lead lines, tack shop leather. The horses themselves, perfectly beautiful beasts, the way their forelocks feather...
September 2011
1 post
Sometimes I Yell
Today on my way home I stopped off in the village of Echo Park for some fresh eggs from Cookbook (the loveliest little grocery store around). I parked in front of a small low-income housing settlement and as I emerged from my car, I heard the notorious yell of a mother. She yelled, “NO, you CAN’T have that!!” And her yell roared down the sidewalk, to me, and I cringed. Because,...
July 2011
2 posts
2 tags
True Home
O Vermont how I love you. Your roads lined with wild flower bouquets, your woodsy smell, your green, quiet, gentle sun, gentle rain. How everything one needs is less than 7 minutes away. How everyone waves. How will I leave…
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Home, Now
This morning I woke up in our house to singing birds and a cool breeze. I had a coffee from FIX, and fresh farm eggs from Cookbook, fetched and fried by Isaiah. I drank fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, from our tree. I sat at the top of our little hill and talked to both my parents while Asa climbed around like a goat. I contemplated bougainvillea. I bought a lemonade from a little girl’s...
February 2011
1 post
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The Project: October, November and December 1997
I easily settled into a routine at school. I played my last season of field hockey. I wasn’t a captain, but I did win an achievement award and my name is etched onto a plaque somewhere. All of my classes were directly related to my art major so my days of camping out in the library were thankfully over. We took study breaks at the Goose, the adored hole in the wall bar close to campus. We...
January 2011
5 posts
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The Project: September 1997
We were all a little apprehensive to go back to school that fall, for one final year. We couldn’t imagine life there without our beloved friends who graduated in the spring. Maybe it was a certain configuration of rooms and roommates in Page Hall when we were freshmen and sophomores, or a certain dynamic on a soccer field, or the shared magnetism of a french teacher (rest in peace Prof....
3 tags
The Project: August 1997
By the end of that summer in Maine I had fully settled into a routine of life, just in time to leave it for my final year of college.
I worked at the bakery, but also for Elmer and Allison who owned a restaurant called The Burning Tree. To eat there was an experience of flavors and textures, and a constant effort not to ooh and ahh and mmm too much. It was the best. I was the errand girl. In the...
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The Project: July 1997
I got a job in Bar Harbor, at the Morning Glory Bakery. I was the front girl, second shift. Kate worked the first morning shift and she had lots of regulars and a jar full of tips. Sometimes we would overlap and listen to the Beatles and I would admire the lovely patina of her leather clogs (and her in general), but mostly it was just Ralph and me, two of us riding nowhere… Ralph owned the...
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The Project: June 1997
I left Italy without much of a plan. I flew in to Boston and went straight up to school, to be there for my boyfriend’s graduation. A couple of weeks later he broke up with me, which wasn’t surprising, but painful nonetheless. My closest school friends Alex, Annie and Matt were staying in Maine for the summer, near Bar Harbor, and I decided to join them. We lived with our friend Kate...
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The Project: May 1997
The last thing I did in college was an independent study in photography. It was during the beloved Short Term, when for the month of May students take only one class and spend the rest of the time, as I did, in a constant state of anxious celebration, gathered around kegs of beer, embracing soon to be long lost friends, frolicking on the Maine coast, in total denial that four years of living in...
December 2010
1 post
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When There Were Three
In the 2nd grade Sarah moved to Cabot and so ended my safe and sound two person best friendship with Carrie (not to be mistaken with Keri). This was a pivotal time. These were early lessons in human behavior, and early displays of my most inner little self. Grooves were set and emotional memories made.
Carrie lived on a dairy farm. She lived in an old brick farmhouse with more than one living...
November 2010
1 post
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Thoughts on Family
A scene from the nest
When I was little I worried that I might never grow up. I wanted to grow up but things like paying taxes, scheduled car maintenance, and health insurance seemed intensely complex. The idea of meeting a man, getting married, and having kids was terrifying yet I hoped very much to someday be ready for those things. I hoped one day I would feel ready to leave the nest. The...
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In The Beginning: Part II
I started having an interest in meditation and buddhism, going to places like Spirit Rock, and public talks with teachers like Sogyal Rinpoche. I was searching for a connection, an understanding, but I didn’t know to who or to what. Isaiah was sitting in on classes in Buddhist philosophy with Steven Goodman at CIIS and he would come home and I would sit in his room on his futon couch, his...
October 2010
3 posts
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In The Beginning: Part I
That first year in San Francisco was magical. And it was not easy. It was the beginning of a lot of things. If college was about trying to fit in, that year was about acceptance, and working out how to accept acceptance. We were all just finding our way, navigating through our early 20’s searching for questions to ask. What will we do? And with who? You bring yourself where ever you go, so I...
2 tags
Broderick Street
The house (after it was painted). Ours was the door on the left. Courtesy of Google Earth.
The apartment on Broderick Street was cold. There was a long hallway leading from the front door all the way to the back of the house where Isaiah’s room and the kitchen were, and it seemed to funnel the foggy street air right in....
September 2010
2 posts
3 tags
California Comin' Home
On the Hilo Beach
I think on some level I always knew I would live in California. As a small girl growing up in Vermont I was drawn to the state, even beyond the appeal of Malibu Barbie. I can remember gazing at those big classroom maps of the United States, the kind that roll down in front of the chalk board. There was little Vermont in the corner, and way over on the other side was California...
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Signs of Home
It was the eve of our departure from France and I was sitting in the 300 year old Chateau de Siregand not far from Toulouse. In times past I might have been sad on such a night. But on this night a steady realization rose up in me instead, and besides there’s not a lot of time for sadness or any other extreme emotion these days. It’s kind of nice…
The chateau is owned by our...
August 2010
2 posts
3 tags
I Am A Pack Rat
I’ve been going through my old stashes. I am a pack rat, it’s in my blood. These are some of the things I’ve found:
~ A doll that I made when I was around 12. Her jumpsuit is made from an old thermal shirt. A likes to play with her now.
~ My first bra. In 7th grade I was desperate for a bra. When I asked my mom to take me downtown to shop for one I was hoping for...
3 tags
A Walk in the Woods
We went for a walk in the woods. We walked down the long driveway and out to the main road, hopped a stone wall and cut through a field into the woods to the shady trails. The August crickets were singing their hazy song. We walked under the maples and along the fern lined paths. No one else was there. We saw a fuzzy white caterpillar, stylish with its black details. We saw a deep red-orange...
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To Whom It May Concern
My mom has pulled out all the boxes of family letters, papers and notebooks. I don’t have the time anymore to get lost in them like I used to, but I skimmed the surface and this is what I found. Mom is Jenny, and she was nine.
October 29, 1960
To Whom It May Concern,
My name is JENNY BOYER.
I live at Teatown Road, Croton-on-Hudson, New York. My telephone number there is Croton 1-4457.
...
July 2010
6 posts
4 tags
A Page From Granny's Planner
A drawing of my mom by Granny. They were on their way to The River from Westchester County. It was a long drive in a van crowded with bags and dogs.
The other side of the page. Cheevers for dinner, New Years’ Eve 1962.
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The Camp Letters
Leaving for camp. June 1987.
I went away to summer camp when I was ten and got really homesick. It was a heart wrenching, all encompassing, sticky grip of sadness. I remember lying in my top bunk in my dark blue sleeping bag which smelled like home, hugging tightly my only friend, Innie the doll, looking out into the brisk darkness of the cabin, sobbing, just wanting so badly to be back home.
...
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Lily and Herschal
Harold and Lillian on their Honeymoon, Miami, 1939.
Lily and Harry grew up in the same tenement building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They were both the youngest of their large immigrant families, and the only ones born in America. They met at the age of five.
Lily’s mother, a smart and headstrong woman, died when Lily was around 8. Her father was an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi. He...
3 tags
Longing For A Swim On A Summer Day
Christmas, 1965
These bottles were found in the St. Lawrence Rincer, in from 6 to 10 feet of water, during the late summer of 1965 by Jenny Boyer and her cousins. It is believed that originally the bottles contained Perrier water, and that they were kept in an upright position by being placed in silver receptacles. The occupants of Grindstone, Papoose, Whiskey and Club Islands disposed of...
3 tags
Homesick
My Mom’s garden.
It would be fair to say that I carry around some degree of homesickness with me, at all times. I’ve learned to live with it for the most part, but sometimes I am struck by an overwhelming feeling of wrongness. It could be news of an old friend moving back, or a certain smell like cut grass, or even someone else’s struggle with their own notion of...
June 2010
6 posts
1 tag
Yosemite
A November field, Vermont.
Growing up in Vermont I have high standards for what a pretty place is, but also a remarkable sensitivity for the details. I only just came to this realization in the past few years, when on a walk I was struck by the quiet gorgeousness of a dead stalk of Queen Anne’s Lace, against a brown field. A cold and fading day in November, in Vermont, may not appeal to...
2 tags
The India Journals: Comfort and Discomfort
View from our Calcutta room.
June 27, 2001
Calcutta
My call for drama was answered by way of a ‘super-delux’ bus from Siliguri to Calcutta. Hot sticky long cramped dusty bumpy ride through the night watching late night poor Indian village activity as the moon crescent hung above us. Or, the epic Hindi film on the small screen (this was a super-delux after all). Super-delux also...
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The Cheever Letters
Persephone (or Sephie, left), John, Bridey, Granny, Ezekial (or Zekey, who was Cassie’s pup), Josh. On Whiskey Island around 1964.
My grandparents were very good friends with John Cheever. They all lived in Westchester County, New York in the fifties and sixties. They spent many a cocktail hour together, they all loved labrador retrievers, and were prolific and loyal letter writers. At a...
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The India Journals: Gangtok to Kalimpong, Longing...
Ginger in Kalimpong.
June 19, 2001 Kalimpong
We went to visit Khandro again before leaving Gangtok for Kalimpong. This time we just sat for a short while in her room which is even more lovely than I remembered from the time before. The walls are a dark jade green with intricately painted details. We went back again the next day to offer her khatas and some good nuts but she wasn’t in so we...
1 tag
My Old Friend: Part II, A Summer On Our Own
The “camp” on Lake Dunmore.
After high school Keri and I parted ways for college, but time and space would bring us back together again, even living together on a few occasions.
The summer after our sophomore year of college, we lived in my family’s little ”camp” (as summer houses are called in Vermont) on Lake Dunmore. It was a short drive to Middlebury...
1 tag
My Old Friend: Part I
Keri and Me, age 12
Keri and I met at Lotus Lake Camp when we were about 7. We started this cool trend of hanging out in the same sweatshirt, our heads in the neck hole, my left arm in one sleeve, her right arm in the other. It was the 80’s, big sweatshirts were the thing. We were exactly the same height. It was easy.
We didn’t reconnect again until we left our respective elementary...
May 2010
11 posts
3 tags
The Highs and Lows and Highs of High School
This one’s sad and personal…
Me, at about 17
My mom once told me that because of her children she has felt her highest highs, and her lowest lows. It took having one of my own to begin to really understand what she meant. Now I’m looking back at some of my own lowest lows…
High school was a rocky road for me. Maybe from a distance it wouldn’t appear so. I lived in...
3 tags
The India Journals: The Leeches of Geyzing
Isaiah and the monks of Pemayangtse with the Handicam.
June 14, 2001 Geyzing
The small monks in dusty robes at Pemayangtse have bitten ankles.
The prayer flags ripple in misty gusts.
Yesterday was one of the strangest days…
Having decided to leave Pelling we headed east to Geyzing. We took a jeep as far as we could but had to walk the rest of the way. It rained. We walked for about...
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Reasons to like LA: The Huntington Botanical...
In keeping with tradition, my parents bought us a membership to the Huntington Botanical Gardens and that little membership card is like my ticket out of here when I need it. I’m a country girl really and on top of that I moved here from San Francisco where 99% of the population loathes Los Angeles. So, it took me a while to get used to this place and even longer to admit what I’m...
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When I Was Five
Me, age 5.
When I was five I got easily frustrated. If I couldn’t draw the mountain as well as my mom, or if I messed up a sewing project, or if my pony tail was too bumpy, or if the tie for my Charlie Chaplin costume was not tied just so, well watch out. I could be a storm. I could tear everything out of my closet and throw it through the interior window in...
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The Time Capsule
Brother (in our grandpa’s hat) and Dad at the new house. Grandma is in the background. East Montpelier, 1986.
The 5th grade was a good year for me. I was old enough for my first “boyfriend” but young enough to still be tucked into bed. We had moved the year before but by then I was fully settled into my new school, new house, new “urban life.” By urban I mean I got...
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The India Journals: First Impressions
Khandro Tsering, as a young woman
The first time I went to India I was 24. Reading back on it all, I felt quite unsure of myself and my place in this new world I was observing. If only I could go back and tell myself not to worry so much, it would all fall in to place exactly. IS left three months ahead of me. We met up in Delhi.
June 6, 2001 Gangtok, Sikkim,
Arrival...
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Entry From The Red Journal: The Senlis House
Granny
Granny’s red journal was discovered during our last summer on Whiskey. She wrote in it as a teenager, and then again in her 20’s.
Granny grew up in Senlis, a small medieval town outside of Paris. Her younger brother’s family still lives in the house, St. Nicolas. When she wrote this entry, she was probably around 20 and staying in London with her Aunt Mimi. It is my...
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The Last Summer at The River
Granny and Grandpa
The last summer that I spent at The River was bitter sweet. Granny had died earlier that year, leaving Whiskey Island to my mom. The rational part of my mind understands why my parents needed to sell it. But my heart yells at them even now, as I type it. Despite the excruciating reality that we were going there one final time to clear it out, I was excited to spend an ...
