Author: Brett Ann Stanciu

Squill

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

We’re into the third calendar month of the Stay Home order — I know this only by the date and time in the upper corner of my laptop — pretty much my compass to the exterior world these days. That — and an ongoing scrawl in a notebook that lists chores I cross off one by one to keep my paycheck coming. The paycheck I’m immensely grateful for.

These days, the old demons arise  — what am doing with my life? How have I failed my children? Is it normal my youngest wants to go anywhere else (yes, resoundingly, I know that is).

At the end of a rainy afternoon, as the weather parts, my daughters insist I trek through the raspberry and blackberry brambles behind our house. On the other side of the brambles, they show me an apple tree surrounded by emerald grass, and tiny blue squill sprinkled everywhere. They caution me not to step on the flowers.

This is Vermont spring — wet and muddy, largely brown, studded with small radiant flowers. Everyday, the green insistently pushes forward, brighter and stronger. That’s where we are.

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Photo by Gabriela Stanciu

Spring Beauties

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

To combat my lousy mood, my daughter suggests I go for a run. It would be better for everyone if you did, she says.

In week whatever, on day whatever, I run through town, seeing only two older women with masks, walking the standard 6 feet apart, and a few teenagers on bikes. There’s no one else I’ve seen for weeks, it seems. Eerily, I wonder if this is what the end of the world feels like.

In the woods behind the high school, I run up through the sugarbush, where moss greens up the forest floor in places. Then, around a bend, I suddenly see spring beauties — a whole forest field of these tiny, perfect white and pink blossoms.

Later, returning home to play a few more rounds of Uno, I know the run has done its magic. To that field of enchantment, where no one else perhaps has walked that day, I think — thank you, little wildflowers and daughter.

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Kitchen office

Slanted World

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

In the evening, we walk on a narrow footpath through a cedar forest where I’ve never been. In a worn-down kind of fog, short of sleep, I abruptly realize the trees are somewhat slanted. Through the forest, the dwindling light highlights scattered bit of white birch bark.

Ending, we descend backwards through a trail I’ve walked up many times. From this angle, coming down along a hillside, we hear a running stream. Save for the three of us, we see no one else in the town forest.

Someday, of this strange time, I’ll remember the unusual kindness and intimacy of people towards each other. That day, taking photos of our friends’ farm, my friend walked out of her greenhouse, and we stood apart in the road, just talking, sharing pieces of what’s going on in our lives. She asked my daughters’ plans, and what’s going on with them.

In other days, maybe we would have hugged. But over and over, in this time, I find myself exchanging only words — what we’re afraid of, what we’re struggling with, sometimes threads and stories of our past — who we’ve been and who we might want to be again.

It’s a fragile time, these days. We’ll remember these endless, daily walks, too, threading through our lives, stitching us together. Take heart, friends. Day by day.

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Isolation Snippet

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My friend appears at our back glass doors and startles the three of us in the kitchen. She holds up a dozen eggs she’s dropping off and the seventh Harry Potter movie.

My daughter lifts a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

Yes, my friend mouths.

I step out on the deck and suggests she step back as the porch roof is about to dump snow down her back. My daughter hands out cookies while we’re talking about wanting to step into Harry Potter’s world. Maybe the kids are interested in flying, but what we’d really like? To sit in a train car and hang out with your friends.

Until then… this snow is melting today. Bit by bit, spring is emerging here.

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Peepers

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

Across the cemetery from where we live, the teenagers have moved out into a tent. They’re cocooning out the coronavirus.

Not such a bad idea, I think.

My daughter, to keep herself amused while I’m working, creates a scrapbook of her friends, taking her time pasting in gold numbers and colored bits of paper.

I’ve lost track of days, of weeks; we’re somewhere in April, and that’s about the best I can do. Some days my older daughter disappears to work; some days my younger daughter disappears for a virtual version of school.

I keep on working. The squill blooms. The peepers sing.

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Wildlife

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

How many weeks are we into the Stay Home order? Thursday, I let my daughter cut my hair in the kitchen. Delighted, she made her first snip in the back and said, Whoops.

What does it matter, anyway? It’s just hair.

In the evenings, we walk up a nearby dirt road, seeking the sunset. Hardly anyone is out — a few passing pickups, often with a driver wearing a mask. Nearly every night, we see deer in the hayfields that are greening, bit by bit.

Today, kayaking, we saw a bald eagle in a white pine. We paused, watching as the eagle dove over the shallow end, flashing its enormous wingspan above a family of swimming ducks, then swept back into the tree.

One thing I’ll remember most about this time — and perhaps most fondly — are the endless walks. No complaints, because why bother?  This is where we are now.

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

― Jane Hirshfield

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