Vermont

Sunflowers.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

I began planting mammoth sunflowers years ago because I wanted flowers in my garden to tower over my children. There’s an old photo I have of my toddler walking barefoot among enormous stalks. I planted a veritable swath of sunflowers this spring. Late summer is the pay-off season, when the first of these blossoms open. The first head is so enormous it can’t really do its follow-the-sun heliotrope deal — but its flower siblings shift all day.

One fall, a number of years back, I had just two of these beauties, so much taller than myself. After the snow fell and the birds cleaned every scrap of seed, I cut off the dried blossom and propped it on a ceiling beam. The sunflower remained there all winter.

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower…

— Galway Kinnell

Solo.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 21 Comments

Every summer for years now, my daughters and I have gone camping on Burton Island in Lake Champlain. We always bring the same friend of my youngest daughter. Sometimes another friend and sometimes my oldest hasn’t come. This year for all kinds of reasons, I went alone for a night.

I stopped first to visit a friend and meet his friendly sheep. Then I raced to the ferry. Rain and clouds had moved out. The island has no cars, so the atmosphere is particularly sweet. Little kids bike everywhere. A group of teenage boys had set up a small army of tents, bikes, and fishing poles.

I had brought what I needed for the night: a novel, my knitting, a winter hat, the recently printed out version of my manuscript, and a good pair of walking shoes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a single mother, it’s make friends with strangers. Much to my daughters’ annoyance, I often find someone to chat with at soccer games, the co-op, the post office. A kind of survival skill on many levels. But I wasn’t there to chat. I walked around the island on its slate-pebbled shores in the daylight, during the enchanting sunset, and in the dark. As the night fell dark, the tree frogs sang melodiously. I slept dreamlessly under the rising moon. In the morning, I drank coffee and read and read until I packed up my few things and headed back to the ferry.

The island, a state park, is mostly staffed by college kids, who are polite and enthusiastic. The young man on the ferry folded up the wildflower guide he was reading to roll a few bikes on the ferry.

On my way home, I realized next summer I could take my kayak and stay a few nights on Champlain’s islands. I can’t swim to save my life but surely that’s something I could learn.

A few lines from Dan Chaon’s Sleepwalk:

“No doubt, a day of reckoning for mankind is coming, yet even for those of us who accept the inevitability of mass human death, there’s still a cautious hope; we’re waiting to see how Armageddon plays out, keeping an eye open for ways it might turn to our advantage… I’m no evolutionary biologist, but I have faith in our species’ stick-to-it-iveness.”

— Dan Chaon

Rambling Along…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Hot, in the best kind of truly humid summer heat, the heat that brings me back to those endless childhood summers when a summer was endless and not merely a few heartbeats. In a strange kind of way, the heat rejuvenates me. I wake early, work hard, then finish my chores as the day funnels down to swimming.

At a nearby garage, I pick up my car. There’s no one there in the empty building, the side doors rolled all the way up to ceiling. I stand there, listening to traffic and watching shadows from the trees flicker over the cement floor.

Two women come in and tell me they’re limping along a Toyota Rav with a flat tire. One woman wears wool socks and winter boots, and I think, Of course you’re from Maine. They’re both much younger than me, nearly bouncing with excitement, and I ask what brings them here. They’re checking the world out. Their excitement is the brightest thing I’ve seen all day. The woman with the wool socks says with a smile, Could do with some rain.

I answer, It’ll rain. She looks at me as if my assurance is farfetched. I add, Eventually, and then wander behind the garage looking for the man to write a check. The garage is on the riverbank. I look at the shallow water. Get a move on, I think. There’s plenty to do. But I live in Vermont. There aren’t that many days in a year I can wear a sundress and not wish for a sweater.

July 31. Swim.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

The dog is a new thing in our lives. My oldest daughter lives nearby with a sweet and curious dog. Yesterday, we brought the dog into our house to meet our two house cats. One cat remained on the kitchen table in his beloved cardboard box (I know, I know who allows things like this? a cat in a box on the kitchen table not for an hour or a day but for months?), paw crooked over the edge of the box, looking at the dog in the cool disdainful way of felines. Our other cat trembled in the doorway, holding his ground. Curious, cautious, verging on endearing and ridiculous. The dog seemed just happy to be there.

We decided to swim and took a giant floatie shaped like a pineapple that I had bought last year for camping. Jammed in the trunk, the floatie hung over the backseat which bothered the dog, who moved into the passenger seat. My daughters sat in the back under the floatie. I drove and talked to the dog. The wind blew in through the windows, muting my daughters’ voices. So many miles I drove with kids in the back, looking over my hands on the steering wheel. For few miles, I was back in the world of young motherhood.

Despite the heat, the lake wasn’t crowded in the least. A woman walked down the sandy path holding a beer can. She and the group at the far end exclaimed that they hadn’t seen each other in thirty years. My oldest whispered, Thirty years? I answered, What’s thirty years, really, forgetting entirely for a moment my daughter is far younger than thirty.

The drive to the lake was a short one. After swimming, we went up the road to the general store and ate pizza on the deck. We chatted with people we saw all the time, and some we hadn’t seen in years. The dog — good creature — waited patiently.

Clouds.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Saturday morning, I pick up a stack of library books at a town just north of where I live. As I drive away, I see an acquaintance crossing the road with a baby against his shoulder. This is a tiny town with a white-fenced green in its center where a farmers market has sprawled. I stop my Subaru in the middle of the road and jump out. “Let me see your baby!”

The baby is beautiful, its cheeks fat beneath a sunhat, rosebud mouth gnawing on a blanket.

The father and I talk just for a moment. He shares the baby’s name, and I tell him how rarely I seem to see infants these days. A car appears behind us, and I get back in my car. As I’m leaving, the father calls after me that he loved my book.

Driving home, I pass Lake Eligo, a deep glacial cut, all the blues and greens I can think of mixed into this sunlight-glittering beauty. From work, I know the skinny roads around this lake, and I follow a dirt lane to a dead-end. I park and wander down to the wetland shore. I’m thinking of an essay I’m writing about my last pregnancy, puzzling over how to arrange pieces of time. What makes sense? A linear timeframe, but we experience the world beyond the linear timeframe of course.

The lake empties both north and south, an anomaly, too. The planet is burning up, but the edge of this lake is almost cool. A bullfrog bellows in the weeds. I let those words and that writing koan slip away. For this moment, I’m in no rush. Clouds, water, and the reflection where they meet fill my sight.

Water. Sky. Lilies.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

Sunday morning begins hot and out-of-sorts in our house. As antidote, we load the kayaks on the car. We paddle through a passage between floes of waterlilies in a breathtaking landscape — clouds reflected in water and all those perfect flowers. We’re not far from home, but the kayakers and canoeists we pass are all strangers who raise hands in quiet hellos.

In no rush at all, we paddle to the pond’s far end, where we drift for a long while, talking and handing a box of crackers between us. A loon and a single chick bob nearby. The other loon parent appears with a string of lunch in her or his mouth.

Later, we pull our kayaks on a shore and swim out to a raft where we lie in the sun and talk about where we might be five years, ten years, down the line. A man swims out with his two daughters, and we talk a little with him about the raft and the sun and the waterlilies that cover the pond.

I’m reminded of William Blake’s line about seeing the world in a grain of sand as we slowly paddle back to where we began. I’ve walked across sections of this pond in the midwinter around ice fishing holes. A number of years ago, a teenager drowned here, a boy I knew as a baby. His parents were vendors in the same farmers market where my husband and I sold maple syrup and ice cream. We all had little ones in those days. On those hot afternoons, we shared stories while swaying with babies on our backs.

The pond this July day reflects only sweetness and beauty. At the shore, my daughters load our kayaks back on our car. I rinse off my bare feet at the water’s edge. A little boy runs to the end of the dock. His father stands waist deep in the water. He raises his arms and says, Jump. I’ll catch you.