mothering

Hardwick Postcard #6: Young Men

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Without much discussion in the hardware store’s parking lot, the girls picked out a tree from the high school’s forestry program, then looked at my small car, the tree, and the car again.

The young man who had sold us the tree said, If you’re not going far, I’ll take your tree home for you. He had been selling trees all day in the cold, and his cheeks were red. Like most of the young men who work in the woods and know how to use tools and their hands, he was polite. He was a young man who would insist on taking off his boots rather than track mud on your kitchen floor.

He put the tree in the back of his truck, followed us home, and carried it to our back porch. I gave him a handful of chocolate chip cookies the girls had made that morning.

Barter economy? Perhaps an illustration. Or maybe just young man decency.

The two great aims of industrialism – replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy – seem close to fulfillment.

– Wendell Berry

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Hardwick Postcard #5: Wear a Hat

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Mexican hero Emiliano Zapata insisted, The land belongs to those who work it with their hands. With the snow here to stay, I’m already dreaming of star-shaped potato blossoms, the first tender snips of garlic shoots, rain-drenched rows of glossy greens.

Meanwhile, my daughter – far more interested in eating than agriculture or politics – claims her territorial lines. At 12, she walks. A few years from now, like all the other rural Vermont kids, she’ll finagle a vehicle or rides from friends – opening up an entirely different landscape for her – but for now, she learns her path to middle school footfall by footfall, first over the cemetery fence. She turns to wave goodbye to me and hurries off to meet her friend.

To reach the school, she and her friend walk down the hill into the valley where Hardwick village lies along the Lamoille River, then up the hillside where the standard brick middle/high school sprawls. The entire walk – past the dead, the elementary school with its crossing guard, two auto parts stores, a busy diner, a few storefronts, a laundromat and a library – takes less than 20 minutes.

December’s lesson: wear a hat and mittens. The walk is cold.

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

– Ernesto Che Guevara

 

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Hazen Union, Hardwick, Vermont

 

 

Hardwick Postcard #4: Jumble of Stuff

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

December’s New England sings monochromatic variations of gray, white, and conifer dark green – except for us, who live here.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, this Hardwick storefront window of used things perpetually enchants my girls. Years ago, I raided a treasure trove on the back shelves, of used anthropology books.

Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.

– Margaret Mead

Here’s an essay of mine recently picked up that begins, When my daughter was 17, she smashed her fist through her dad’s car window in a fit of anger….

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Hardwick, Vermont

Hardwick Postcard #3: Snowy Day, Slower Day

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

In the dark, I open my daughter’s curtain to see snow falling in the streetlamp between our house and the neighbors’, and I wake my daughter as I usually do, talking quietly and setting a purring cat beside her. The cat burrows under the covers.

In the steady snow last night, we visited the library and the librarian, where my daughter opened a box of tinsel and spread a glittery rope over a bookcase and the mantel. Outside, damp flakes fell on our cheeks.

Everything’s slowed down a little, with slush on boots.

In variations of emotion, the conversation repeats, Winter’s here.

For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.

– Vincent van Gogh

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Hardwick Postcard #2: Community Notices

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Outside Hardwick’s food co-op are two boards thumb-tacked with wind-tattered signs, the cultural postings of this small town – free community postings of library and school events, classes offered, a deadbeat father’s rambling missive to his family. I stand in the cold reading the jumble of those scrawled words, thinking how much more his children would have appreciated a loaf of bread.

It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

– Wendell Berry

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Mysterious Memory

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

There’s six years between my daughters – a significant gap. When the littler one was two, she had a habit of raising her arms and saying, Uppy, to her sister. Naturally tall and strong, my older daughter was happy to tote her sister on her hip or back.

Both in adolescence now, those years narrow.

Late yesterday afternoon, while I’m laying phyllo with olive oil, spinach, and feta, my daughter returns from skiing, red-cheeked, happy. Since the morning, she’s braided her hair. She wears a red ski cap of her sister’s, a gift from friends whose son lives in Norway. Across her forehead is VITAL. I loved this cap on her sister, and I love it on this girl, too. VITAL. And again: vital.

Chattering, peeling a clementine, she tells me one of her coaches asked if she has a sister. My girls love this question. With so many years between them, their similar faces serve as reminders of each other – and the hat, now, too, I think.

It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats.

– Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales

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