Working Days

July 10, 2019July 10, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

At my desk this morning, I realized all three of us are working this week — myself and my older daughter, and the younger sister now, too. At 14, she’s a junior counselor in a camp for a week — a take-it-seriously kind of kid, paired up with a friend she’s known her entire life.

Sure, learning to talk and walk are major milestones, but this? This employment thing turns a bend. Next week, she’ll be back to Kid Land, searching for something to do, and not particularly looking to me for anything, save for a ride and a restock of the larder. But still. For this week? Wow. I’m not quite sure what to think of this.

Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.

― Roald Dahl

Our domestic July world

Under the Hood

July 8, 2019July 8, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

At dinner, my daughter mimics the whine of her car engine. Entranced, the cats stare at her.

After dinner, my youngest, at 14, carries out the Harry Potter she’s reading and the car keys and starts the car. What’s the sound? my oldest asks.

Power steering fluid is low, I answer.

The oldest tells her sister to turn off the car, and I tell my oldest to put away her phone and look for a dipstick and a reservoir. The youngest pulls out the manual, because it’s always a good idea to read the manual, too. We have a little conversation about the index.

The fluid’s low.

Neither girl asks me how I knew that sound corresponded to which fluid. Who taught me that? In an odd kind of way, I silently take this as a parenting compliment. We drive my car downtown to get more fluid. My oldest is annoyed, and I mention what’s doubtlessly irritating: It’s basic maintenance. You know, it wouldn’t kill you to learn a few simple car skills.

What-ever, she says, and flings open the door of the store.

The distant mountains
are reflected in the eye
of the Dragonfly

— Issa

Kitchen Floor Grit

July 6, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

Saturday morning before work finds me with a rag and the vinegar bottle, hands and knees on my kitchen floor, working.

The 10,000 things? The mysteries of the universe? The uncountable varieties of growing things in a Vermont July? Scrubbing the kitchen floor is one of these — as much as exploring waterfalls.

There is
a time to live
and a time to die
but never to reject the moment.

— Lao Tzu

Morrisville, VT

No Liberty for Chickens

July 4, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

On this Independence Day…. I’m reminded that my daughters’ ancestors on the little wooden Mayflower pledged their lives together (well, the men did) in a Civil Body Politic for the general good of the Colony. 399 years later, our neighbor stands on our back porch, clipping our chickens’ wings. History’s great swoop, and our daily fretting. Which, perhaps, is all I can say, as we head into another election season.

We must hang together.

— John Hancock

Living the Dream — and Not.

July 3, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 9 Comments

For four summers running now, my youngest daughter, her very closest friend, and I go camping every summer on Burton Island, far north on Lake Champlain. The lake is noticeably cleaner than it was four years ago; the girls are definitely older. We recount the year the raccoons ate our food and the year I forget the stove. This year became the year we forgot the tent poles. The girls fashioned a tent from a tarp and rope.

Always, this island enchants me with its summertime mystique, the fluff of seeding trees wafting like fairy confetti in the warm breeze. We’re never eaten too badly by bugs. The girls drink a crazy amount of hot chocolate.

I wake up early in the mornings and read by the lake — this chilly year in my jeans — watching the loons and the ducks with their offspring.

It’s both sweetly idyllic — how could such innocent happiness not be? — and simultaneously not idyllic at all. I write this not to draw attention to my own particular family scenario, but because so much of social media pushes families to believe that everyone is living that glossy, idyllic life. So, in my family, we are, and we aren’t. And I’m darn glad for every bit that we are.

Age 14

Peonies

June 29, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

On my walk to the co-op, I stop at a bed of peonies and cup a giant blossom in my hands: perfect white stained with drops of red, like a strange variation of the drops of blood on the snow in the Grimms’ tale. Enchantingly beautiful. And that, perhaps, is metaphor enough for one Saturday morning.