Vermont Commune Story

February 5, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Writing about summer camp — in February — makes me pause over photographs. How green and gorgeous is Vermont’s summer. The profusion of hydrangeas. The luxury of lying in green grass.

I spent a few hours last week speaking with Peter Gould of Shakespeare Camp fame. But Shakespeare Camp is just an iceberg tip of his fame. A few years back, I heard him read the title story from his collection Horse-Drawn Yogurt at the Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick. The bookstore was packed. The evening may or may not have been snowing, but I remember the night as snowy, because the story, set in winter, is so evocative.

I’ve shared a few lines from this story below. The story is one of the very best stories I’ve read about the countercultural life in Vermont — the energy and enthusiasm and love of Vermont and the sadness, too.

The farm would remain. People would leave. Some would stay, working in town but making their home there, connected to the mythic past but not to the daily work of a farm. New folks would come, with new goals. Soon no one would remember most of what had already been tried, what this antique tool was for, what dream that pile of rotting lumber in the lower pasture represented. We would always plant a little organic garden, but that would not be our excuse for being. We could live off the economy better than we could live off the land.

— Peter Gould, Horse-Drawn Yogurt: Stories from Total Loss Farm

Birth Day

February 3, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Here’s the thing about being pregnant: you just don’t know. Forty weeks, give or take a few (generally), is a long time to wonder, who’s this little baby, anyway?

When my first daughter was born — after a long labor that eventually terminated in a caesarian — the obstetrician held her up in his gloved hands. My first reaction was immediate familiarity: I knew this baby. And that was just the beginning of World with Molly.

From the beginning — with birth’s blood — raising kids often seems like surprise after surprise: oh, you can nurse? you can walk? you can ride a bicycle? make me laugh? make me stay awake all night, worrying about you?

If parenting has taught me one thing, it’s how precious little I know — save, perhaps, the world is unimaginable without our kids.

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.

— James Joyce, Portrait of an Artist

February: Light

February 1, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

Entirely out of keeping with the season, I’m thinking of spring. Save for houseplants, the Vermont world is entirely without a single leaf of tender green leaf — in utter hibernation — but the days are lengthening.

Groundhog’s Day holds no suspense here — that garden-eater always turns around and burrows back down for more winter. In the meantime, a spring haiku.

The spring breeze.
Being pulled by a cow
To the Zenkoji temple.

— Issa

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Little Gummy Bears

January 31, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

Dirty, grubby, road-salt-stained: that’s my midwinter boots.

Walking down Montpelier’s Main Street, on a whim I stop into Delish, the candy store. Not so long ago, my younger daughter eyed their door each time we walked by. Yesterday afternoon, on my way to meet someone for an interview at Capitol Grounds, I impulsively walked in, bought a small white paper bag of chocolate-covered gummy bears, and slid it in my backpack to take home to her.

I’ve been mothering — a mother — for twenty-one years now. Not a single day — and hardly an hour, it seems — has passed when I haven’t been actively or mentally engaged in parenting.

Now, my older daughter is all grown up, busily writing her own narrative about work and college and a complex network of friends. In our house, it feels like all of us are on precipices — of turning 21, of adolescence heading toward young adulthood, and myself. Even the cats are keeping busy. Midwinter? Oh yes.

Happy final day of January, 2020.

Duo Residence

January 28, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

Ooooo, midwinter.

After work, while my daughter memorizes French for an exam, I head out for a walk. A slight snow is falling, just a few lazy flakes as if nothing much is going to happen, just that little bit of snow. It’s my most very favorite snow, just lovely, and in the cone of streetlight I have that enchanting Narnia feeling — as if it’s just me and the lamppost and that snow, and maybe the mysterious White Witch might silently appear. In that twirling-down-slowly snow, Turkish delight might still be an untasted promise in my life, rather than the too-sweet candy I remember.

That’s it, from my end of the world. I’ve been “dividing my time” between desk and couch, finishing up a manuscript. When I submit it Friday, I’m planning to ski out the back door — snow willing — and paint my daughter’s room.

Then, on to the next month.

But land is land, and it’s safer than the stocks and bonds of Wall Street swindlers.

― Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

Vermont, Sometime in January

January 26, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

Midwinter. Need I say more?

I remember a Vermont winter when I was in my twenties where January was sub-sub-zero. 25 below zero, in what seemed like a cold snap that wouldn’t snap.

Not so, this year. Rain, slush, ice. Some sparkling skiing days.

The cats drape on the couches, dreaming of tuna perhaps, their little furry faces rubbing our hands. Midwinter is that particularly good place for work — or at least the kind of work I do, much of it at a laptop and not re-roofing a house. My daughters and I talk about swimming, of wandering in wet sand along the ocean, of ice cream cones (so dull I am, preferring vanilla), but in January that’s all imaginary…. for the moment. In a warm, well-lighted house, that’s just fine.

Let’s pull some blueberries from the freezer and make muffins — and another little silver pot of espresso, too.