Letter from Vermont

That appointment we had to keep early last week was Olya’s US citizenship test.  We have had a blessedly smooth experience with Immigration, especially since moving to Vermont.  The office in St Albans is small and easy to find, you park at the front door, it is quiet inside, and things generally run as they ought to.  Quite refreshing in comparison to our interminable days going by crowded train to the crowded JFK building in crowded Boston back when we lived in crowded Massachusetts. 

It is very easy to take for granted the quality of life here in Vermont.  All the “normal” difficulties of life in 21st century America are just not present.  The big ones and the little ones.  There is no such thing as traffic.  It’s rare to have your restaurant meal interrupted by a cellphone ringing at a nearby table.  There is no urban crime to speak of.  There’s very little urban to speak of.  The air is clean.  It’s quiet. 

Sometimes I believe Vermonters don’t fully grasp how good we’ve got it living in this sparsely populated state.  One of our repeat guests has this great line that he likes to come to ride his bicycle around Vermont because “the whole state is like a National Park.”  Which is true.  And to Vermont’s credit, most Vermonters seem to realize that the part our state plays in the American story is a unique one, the gift of stunning geography and splendid isolation, all within an easy drive of Boston and New York.  Without constant visitors from which places, Vermont as it knows itself would quickly cease to be.

So how about that visitor from Siberia and her test?  Well, of course she passed, and I am so proud of her.  Next month right here at the grade school a mile west of us, Olya will take her oath as an American citizen.  At the end of her interview, the immigration officer congratulated Olya and presented her with a gift which brought tears to my eyes.  What moved me so?  Some other time, perhaps.