Author: Brett Ann Stanciu

Happy Arkhipov Day

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Two mothers relax on the floor of my library with their babies when my dad sends me an email reminding me that October 27 is Arkhipov Day. Not yet a year old, the babies haven’t begun to walk. Their smiles rise so radiantly joyous you instinctively smile back. Sleet drills against the library windows.

On October 27, 1962, Vasili Arkhipov refused to agree with his fellow Soviet submarine officers and fire a nuclear-tipped torpedo at the USS Randolph, preventing the nuclear holocaust that would have World War III.

The mothers check out children’s books, bundle up their babies again, and head out into the sleet that’s turned to wet snowflakes: everyday Vermont.

World War III was averted not by decisions in the White House or in the Kremlin, but in the sweltering control room of a Soviet submarine. Vasili Arkhipov saved the world. We should celebrate his obedience to humankind, not to the Nation-State, on October 27, Arkhipov Day, a proposed international holiday by students of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

— George Stanciu. For more about Vasili Arkhipov and my dad, read here.

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Stockpiling

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As the garden withers for the winter, I collect seeds — tithonia, marigold, coneflower — pulling the dry seeds with their tufted ends with my fingers, secreting them in my coat pockets.

My daughter takes a handsaw to the mammoth sunflower stalks fencing the garden, their heavy heads picked nearly clean of seeds from marauding birds. From a scant palmful of seeds, what pleasure these beauties have given us this summer. Now, the birds and the scavenging squirrels feast, too.

A friend stops by with a bare peony root, cushioned in paper, transported in a Negra Modela box. I’m out that evening. When I return, my daughter carefully unwraps the root — not merely a stick but a complicated branching — and then lifts another smaller root. Good luck, she says. They may not grow.

Or, they might.

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?

— Galway Kinnell

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Juncos flock the double glass doors in our kitchen, tantalizing our cat.

The Promise

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Beautiful news!

Via email, I’m offered a division of a giant “butter yellow” peony. Oh, in this gray-upon-gray end of October, such a radiant promise of tender blossoms.

A piece of the Bartzella will be coming our way. Roots and dried stalks = creamy petals.

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers…

From Mary Oliver’s “Peonies”

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Okay, not a peony….

 

The Life You Save

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

I don’t want another chicken, but the flock belonging to my daughter’s friend was killed overnight. Eviscerated, to be more technical. A lone barred rock survived.

At cold twilight, I’m in Greensboro Bend with three 13-year-olds chasing the bird.

Chickens are flock animals, I remind myself — the very first thing I learned about chickens.

My daughter’s chickens are this hen’s new flock. In the dark, she holds the cardboard box containing a chicken in her lap. We drop off her other friend, and then it’s just the two of us and the chicken, following Route 15 twisting along the Lamoille River, going home. My daughter’s quiet, with her arms folded around the cardboard box.

When she was much younger, her father was involved in a political protest against an industrial project, beginning with a phone call when someone asked him to be arrested, traversing through the court system, a trial, another arrest, costing our family so much money and so much misery. I was infuriated at the hopeless, poorly conceived mess he had brought into our family, and how my daughters had borne so much of that failed struggle.

And yet, the better part of me knows we’re flock animals, too. My daughter must know this, too.

In the coop, one barred rock flaps at the new arrival and squawks angrily. My daughters and I stand back and watch. What will the flock do?

The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.

— Madeleine L’Engle

 

Digging Deeply, Vermont Cold Soil

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Returning home in the dark, much later in the night than we usually do, my 19-year-old grabs her camera and insists on walking through the dark. She wants a picture of the little white lights she sees from her window at night — where, she’s not exactly sure.

All afternoon, we’ve been in and out of the house and barn in the thin autumn sunlight, shoveling compost and carrying buckets of potatoes and beets. The 13-year-old and I played soccer in bare feet on the cool grass. The 19-year-old baked a cake. Her younger sister gave her curious cat a bath in the kitchen sink.

Like many people I know, my life is jammed with scrawled lists, with dates on the calendar, with attention given to work and money and house and cars — with gardening, with worrying about kids, seeing friends, making sure my desk has a pile of library books. Much of this is pleasant and joy-giving, and some of it — particularly the middle-of-the-night angst of what the hell am I doing with my mortal life — just erodes your soul.

As an antidote, simply this.

In the late afternoon, I snap off kale leaves. Overhead, geese honk — eight birds, followed by five more — calling, arranging themselves in flight, flying so low I hear the whoosh of their wings, as they press on their journey, south and away.

Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.

— Barbara Kingsolver

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Driving, Dancing, Sometime in October

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

The past few days — as though the deepest part of winter has set in early — I come and go in the dark, leaving early while my daughters are sleeping. When I return, I step out of my car and stand for a moment and gaze up at the inky sky, with that sprawling morass of glittering stars.

To break up the interstate’s monotony, I take Route 2 back to Montpelier from working in Burlington. Blue highway Route 2 follows the Winooski River — native name for wild onion — and cuts through small towns and sprawling farm fields. The corn fields, harvested for the year, are harrowed up, open earth against the mountains shouldering this river valley. Autumn opens up the landscape, sheds the leaves from the trees, and reveals more clearly where we are.

Where we are is the first scattering of snow on the ground yesterday morning. Soup simmering on the stove with what I’ve pulled from the garden — carrots, sage, beans, kale. Driving home, I switch off NPR and empty my mind of the day’s talk at work, of midterms and opioid use, of struggling to use writing to make sense of the world.

In our kitchen, my 19-year-old cooks bacon. I ask how the day’s gone. She says her ears are throbbing. The 13-year-olds had a dance party.

Rock on, I think. I close the curtains and ask if the chickens are shut in for the night.

We climbed stiffly out of the car.
The shut-off engine ticked as it cooled.

And then we noticed the pear tree…
and we each took a pear,
and ate, and were grateful.

— Jane Kenyon, “Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer”

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