Many years ago I met Chloe, we never knew much about her or how old she was but the one thing that we did know was that she was French and very fussy about her food, specifically her cheeses. Chloe would arrive at the strike of 9 in the morning just as our store was opening for the first of the days baguettes and then off to the cheese case she would run. If you had a wild unexpected racy little french cheese she would relax and tell you a story. If not, she would get a slice of Conte and retreat with her hot baguette till the next week.
Over the years we learned that she was a war bride and had been relocated to a very small town in Maine. She had a lackluster relationship with her husband, bore one son who moved away after high school to become an engineer in Connecticut and he was very busy and visited rarely. She was pencil thin with the most gorgeous out of place red hair, she could be very tender or she could cut glass with her disapproving stare. After many years she started bringing us a “very small” jar of apricot jam in the early summer. With no fanfare she would just reach into her oversized pocketbook and take out a tissue wrapped jar after she had checked out, hand it to my sister or me and leave with any further communication. The thank you’s would have to wait till next weeks visit.
Most people go to Vermont to watch the leaves change colors in the fall but I like it in the spring when the leaves on the trees are green, 67 colors of green, so that the bonnets of the trees look like a jigsaw puzzle and the tulips are in bloom and the geraniums and the cherry blossom trees – there’s nothing fancy about Vermont, it’s all straight up plain flowers plainly blooming everywhere, as if the earth is starting fresh again after winter and toward the end of May it hits an optimum equilibrium even if it does rain every other day which if you’re only there for a day and a half isn’t very good odds, at least not of skipping the rain. But people in Vermont don’t mind, they just take out their umbrellas and keep on truckin’….