There has been a global pandemic which has interrupted many things including our “year end review” of our lives. We looked back and the last time we posted/sent a letter was 2018 so we only have 4 years to catch you up on. Sit down, grab your favorite beverage and enjoy. Sarah Rodney and Sofy
… and just in case you don't make it to the end may we wish you and your loved ones a very merry Xmas and an even happier New Year.
2019 was the last “normal” year we had pre-pandemic. We had settled into our lives in Burlington Vermont. Rodney spending a few hours a day at his art studio, a 10 minute walk from the condo (he also had three pieces in the EYE SPY exhibit in Barre), going to the Y regularly to keep healthy and especially ward off the impending knee replacements, trying not to get too busy with church stuff and generally enjoying living in Vermont.
Sarah is involved in lots of groups both in our UU church and in the community. Water aerobics and yoga at our Local Y, the Coffee Ladies, Mah Jongg, book group and weekly zoom with life long friends. She joined the Membership Committee at the UU and continues to be involved in that. Both Rodney and Sarah took our UU Youth Group to NYC for a Service Trip with YSOP.
In March we rented a SUV, packed all of Bethany’s possessions left with us and did a road trip via Selma, Birmingham and Montgomery. We think everyone should go spend three days at the museums in that area. We are still deeply moved by what we saw there and recommend that everyone visit there. We were in New Orleans for the actual Mardi Gras (by accident, we don’t plan that well). We spent time in Houston at NASA and their wonderful natural history museum.
We took a trip to visit Rodney’s family in the UK and promised ourselves that we would try and make it an annual event since his sisters’ ages were starting to make it less likely that they would be visiting the US regularly as they had done for the prior three decades. We also took in the Red Sox Yankees games in London combining this with Rod’s family visit. Sat in Yankees section thanks to Suzy and Laird.
Despite having a one bedroom condo we decided to host a Japanese ESL student who was visiting with a group of other students who were mostly staying elsewhere in Burlington. Thankfully our student spoke pretty good English and we ended up having a lot of fun with her and her group as they did their stuff in Burlington.
Our big trip was with Sarah’s cousin Nan and her husband Rex for a Danube Cruise on a Viking boat from Nuremberg to Budapest with a pre trip to visit a distant relative of Sarah and Nan’s in Feldkirch Austria, Rudolf and Marie-José. We also met Rudy’s sister Gerda, nephew Florian, his wife Ursula, and son Thaddeus and Rudy’s cousin Ursula. It was the start of some wonderful cousin Zoom connections when COVID hit seven months later. In April 2020 we started a monthly deGanahl cousin Zoom call. We discovered some cousins we did not know about on the Walker side.
2020 started off well with Rodney’s “bucket list” trip to the Amazon and the Galapagos for a couple of weeks in January. That was everything he could have expected and more. Sarah went from hating snorkeling to loving it the minute she was swimming among the colorful fish and sea turtles. While on the trip we traveled with Marcia and Cyndy. Marcia who is a doctor, was worried about this weird thing that was going on in Wuhan, China. She was giving us daily updates on developments and by the time of our return trip in early February we were being handed masks in airports and before long of course everyone came to know about what would ultimately be called COVID19.
COVID wasn't the only non vacation thing that was keeping us busy in Ecuador. Days before the trip we had started the sale of our house in South Hero that had been our foothold in Vermont since 2008, Coniston. The purchase & sale and massive freeze up happened while we were away and everything was finalized shortly after we returned to the US. Many thanks to Sarah’s brother, sister-in-law and our real estate agent for making that sale happen while we were in the warm sun.
As everyone else experienced in 2020, this introvert/extrovert pair struggled in the early days of lockdown. Some of the things that got us through it were weekly road trips to visit all of the 100 covered bridges in Vermont, nightly walks through the local neighborhoods and ultimately fostering to adopt a rescue dog. She came to us as Sofie and we named her Sofy after our wonderful guide in Ecuador. Rodney was also an early adopter of Zoom. We had regular Zoom calls with many groups of friends and family to help us keep our sanity. Our pod included Chris, Meg and Zuzu so we would regularly help with Zuzu while both her parents were working and she was out of school. Fortunately Chris and Meg were both able to work from home most of the time. Things improved for us when Rodney’s studio gradually opened up. First, one at a time on a schedule, then two, then more until it was back to normal except for the masks. We also extended our pod to Sarah’s cousin Kit who we persuaded to move up to Vermont from Washington DC during the early days of the pandemic.
Yes, 2020 sucked but both of our extended families made it through largely untouched by COVID, and Sarah and I only lost one friend to the disease in that period. The holidays in 2020 were the worst for Sarah. We were a pod of three with cousin Kit and did not have holidays with any other family because of the concern of COVID transmission pre-vaccines and the advice of the Vermont Health Commissioner.
2021 opened with a great deal of promise. Sarah was vaccinated in February and Rodney took his turn in March. Then Bethany and Bryan gave us a grandson on May 5th. We took advantage of the apparent lull in COVID and paid a short visit to Tucson soon after Otis’s birth. It involved lots of masking, testing, waiting and meeting outdoors until we got to hold him. He was and continues to be a happy little thing (although not too little as of writing this). Before Rodney’s impending knee surgery we fit in another quick trip to Tucson.
Rodney had a RTKR (Right Total Knee Replacement) done in October. Ideally he would have had it done about 18 months earlier but COVID had other ideas. He became a poster child for knee replacement surgery. Everything went very well during the operation and his recovery. LTKR is scheduled for April 2023.
2022 has turned out to be the worst year of the last four for Rodney and his English family. He took three trips this year for sad reasons after a three year COVID enforced hiatus. In March his Brother in Law, Terry (husband of his youngest sister Carole) died and he went over for that funeral. In July he ended up going over again for the funeral of his eldest sister Mavis who had been suffering through several years of declining health. In November he took another trip to visit his middle sister Doreen who had been admitted to hospital and has since been diagnosed with Lymphoma. Doreen has been single and lived alone for almost 60 of her 80 years so this is proving difficult for her. At least the funerals allowed Rodney to see many of his extended English family that he hadn’t seen in many years. He is looking for silver linings wherever he can this year. He is so grateful that Doreen has a niece and nephew close by who are helping with her care.
In January we went to see the lights at the Shelburne Museum with some friends and unfortunately we may have been exposed to COVID so we had to isolate just as Bethany, Bryan and Otis were making a seasonal visit to Vermont.
In February, having been deprived of time with Otis in January, Sarah traveled to San Diego to be with him while Bethany was attending a UU Ministers Conference.
In May we took a short trip to Tucson for Otis’s first birthday. It was also our first experiment leaving Sofy with a dog sitter. Maddie, a local student, has become one of Sofy’s favorite people.
In June Rodney traveled to Portland to childmind while Bethany was at UU GA Ministry Days. Despite having seen lots of videos of Otis enjoying his food over the last year, it took this hands-on experience to realize that the boy cannot be filled up.
Sarah went to the All Star II conference on Star Island for the first time in three years. Unfortunately Rodney missed because of his attendance at Mavis’s funeral in the UK. Also when he returned he brought COVID with him. That once again forced an isolation just when Otis and his parents were visiting Vermont.
This September we made our first “post COVID” OAT trip to Tanzania and Kenya. The wildlife was astounding, the people were amazing, the experience was indescribable. It was good to feel things that are approaching normal again and we are, as always, immensely grateful for the blessings we have that allow us to make this sort of trip.
Our family camp on Lake Champlain has been a place of respite and retreat these 5+ years that we have owned it with 4 of Sarah’s siblings. In 2020 we were there May 1-June 15. Our Zoom calls could be there or 30 minutes away in our condo, which is how all our meetings were in early 2020, remember that time?. Each summer our family gets a high season week and for 2 years we have had some Lexington friends come visit and also a mini-Star Island retreat the year that Star was closed in 2020. The sunsets there are spectacular and the water so inviting from about mid-July through September. Sofy is a water dog and her last swim at camp was in October this year.
Because we felt gypped out of a visit with Otis twice this year we decided to rent a place in Tucson for the holiday season from Thanksgiving through the New Year. That also became a road trip taking Sofy with us. This letter is being written during a rare Tucson rainstorm sheltering in our very nice AirBnB where we will be joined by family and friends for some of the time.
Congratulations on making it to the end. We’ll try to make this an annual letter instead of a quadrennial missive.
Love, Rodney and Sarah
PS So sad to say that since we first wrote our letter, Rod's sister Doreen died so he is traveling tomorrow Dec 20th to the funeral on Dec 22nd and then fingers crossed back to Tucson on Dec 23/24.
