Today would have been my Grandmother Rosemary’s birthday. It is my belief that one of the reasons she was so enthusiastic about Christianity, with her life’s calling to be a minister’s wife, was because her birthday falls the day after Christmas. You were always to keep your thoughts of Christ in Christmas, and then think of Rosemary the day after. The last time I was in Vermont with my Grandma Rosie, I skipped out on church and went snowboarding. When I returned, she asked me if I had made any “lasting connections.”
The day I found out my other Grandmother, Bernice Helgesen nee Forsberg, my Nanny, had passed, I was snowboarding at this mountain. I knew that it had happened when a raven flew in front of me while riding the Slide Brook lift to Mount Ellen.
My love for these Vermont hills is because my Grandmothers are in these hills.
Even so, I still miss them both deeply today.