Milkweed Season

October 17, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Walking through a field on my way to the post office, I find tasseled milkweed seeds, strewn across the trampled grass.

When she was a toddler in a hand-me-down stroller, my now 13-year-old loved to pick apart milkweed pods and let the seeds drift from her tiny fingers.

I doubt she’d remember those windy autumn days, this child who was always so quiet. But I’d like to think, deep inside her, those hours worked their magic, as she watched those seeds rise into the breeze and disappear.

….Two days ago I walked
the empty woods, bent over,
crunching through oak leaves,
asking myself questions
without answers. From somewhere
a froth of seeds drifted by touched
with gold in the last light
of a lost day, going with
the wind as they always did.

— Philip Levine, “Milkweed”

Pink Infatuation

October 16, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

A friend of mine once said she aspired to have everything in her house handmade. She’s a potter, and we were sitting at her table, set with plates she had made, and clay mugs she’d swapped with potter friends. A pink Hello Kitty plate was at her daughter’s place.

I love this goal — and that she didn’t give her daughter any grief about the Hello Kitty infatuation. Her daughters — teenagers now — have left the Loving Pink realm, like my own 19-year-old, once so ecstatic about pink overalls my mother had mailed her.

Pink, she told her friend with reverence, lifting the bib.

We are now out of the Loving Pink realm, too.

… writing is rebellion. Art takes place when we’re unable to accept the boundaries we inherit, when we’re compelled to reimagine what others are willing or even eager to receive.

— Kim Brooks, Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear

Mid-October Garden

October 14, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

In the garden, fat Brussels sprouts nestle against the stalks. My daughter says two words when she sees them: With bacon.

While the light funnels away — every single day, a little less — the remaining flowers in my garden brighten: marigolds, pink and violet hydrangeas, gold calendula, ragged now and past their prime.

None is travelling
Here along this way but I,
This autumn evening.

— Basho

October Gardening

October 13, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

In the garden this late afternoon, a slow-moving bumblebee sways on a Mexican sunflower blossom tucked beneath a great sunflower leaf, its tender orange spared from frost. With a knife, I cut broccoli.

Every bit of sunlight we can get, I take — and urge my daughters to take, too.

The trees are throwing their leaves away. This time of year, some trees hold green canopies, while others have already emptied their branches.

Calligraphy of geese
against the sky —
the moon seals it.

— Buson

Gabriela, Wheelbarrow

Pond Swimming — In October?

October 11, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Rain moved in overnight, but yesterday was a sultry 80 degrees, the school kids running into the library and standing just inside the door, panting, their faces rosy, sweaty. A grandfather and I stood talking in the doorway. About an hour more, you think, this lovely weather will last? I asked. He laughed.

After work, I swam while my daughter sat on the bank with our friend and her old rabbit, stroking the bunny’s white fur and talking. The pond water — when I thought swimming had ended weeks ago — had an initial flash of cold. Then I swam out where the deep, nearly inky water held me, tepid. The dragonflies are gone. I grabbed fallen, floating leaves.

I knew the sun would set before long. I had chores. My friend was leaving. And yet — swimming, October 10, northern Vermont. Mark that.

#10 Pond/Photo by Molly S.

Yes.

October 10, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

When I moved to Vermont, Madeleine Kunin was governor — a particular point of pride for the state. Many years later, as a young mother, I took my small daughter to hear Kunin read at the packed Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick.

Afterward, standing outside on the sidewalk, a female acquaintance remarked unhappily that Kunin emphasized the need for child care and greater economic opportunities for women. I’ve often wondered what my acquaintance wanted instead — this woman whose own family economics were provided by her husband’s salary. Putting bread on our children’s table is neither masculine nor feminine, but the power to determine some tenor of the shape of our lives.

Last night, I heard Kunin, at age 85, speak again — how surprisingly funny and how gracious. At the end, an audience member asked the expected question: what do you think of the world now? Kunin stepped back from the podium and raised her hands, meeting this question with just a fraction of silence, before she answered. Be engaged. Listen. Converse. Be persistent.

At the end, she amended her answer: Make trouble.