Taking Stock.

September 11, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

The little apple tree that someone planted at our house before I bought it boasts fist-sized apples this year, surprising me. The previous year, the tree produced just a handful of apples. The first year we lived here bore only a single fruit. But this year, one branch bends so low beneath the weight it threatens to break.

On an evening walk, I pick a single apple, its skin tart, the flesh mealy. Enough good for pie. That’s fine news for the day.

I’m honored to participate as an author in CLiF’s Book Club for Grown-Ups. The Children’s Literacy Foundation is an inspiring, give-books-to-kids organization. If you’re interested, you can participate, too. Link included for a free sign-up.

Last, a little Richard Brautigan from Tokyo-Montana Express on this autumn morning:

“There are not too many fables about man’s misuse of sunflower seeds.”

September 1.

September 1, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Geese are bunching together and flying south. They’re hightailing it out of Vermont, following their instinctive, ancient pathways.

My youngest and I eat dinner on the back porch — chard and carrots dumped into noodles, stirred with spoonfuls of a chili garlic sauce. I ask about her first days as a high school junior. As I listen, our littlest cat pushes his nose against the screen. It’s growing late, and there isn’t much daylight remaining. When she leaves for a walk, I wash up our few dishes, listening to a podcast my father emailed.

How utterly complex this world is.

Afterwards, I wander out with the compost bucket and then stand in the garden. The sunflowers are crazy tall this year. Also, utterly amazing.

“The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.”

― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Poetry, For Now.

August 30, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

Talking with friends by the side of a road, I notice a flock of Canada geese in the field across the road.

My friends tell me hunting season is just a few days away. The geese should move along.

My friends leave, too, one by one, and I linger with one woman, talking about farming in Vermont, an acquaintance we believe may have gone down the rat hole of QAnon, our elderly parents who live thousands of miles away. We branch into motherhood and gardening.

At the end of August, my youngest starts 11th grade today. The cats and I are up long before dawn this morning, the days dwindling at each end rapidly now. Next spring, with its promises of coltsfoot and trilliums seems forever away. I stand at our kitchen counter, drinking coffee, reading the New York Times.

Here’s a poem, not offered as an antidote to so many families, all over the globe, just solidarity.

Hope has holes
in its pockets.
It leaves little
crumb trails
so that we,
when anxious,
can follow it.
Hope’s secret:
it doesn’t know
the destination–
it knows only
that all roads
begin with one
foot in front
of the other.”
–Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Vermont Day.

August 20, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

Soccer practice begins. School looms. In the night, I wake and wonder what does any of that mean anymore? What is this strange time? Sleepless, I read The Farm with a cat on my feet. Through the open window, the humid night swallows sound, the crickets’ nighttime singing almost a whimper. Unlike the raucous spring mating season, late summer sounds dwindle.

But the season is fat, full. I dream of delicata squash lying on the ground, beneath their wide leaves.

My youngest sits on the couch beside me, with a bag full of pens and paper that her uncle bought her for school. She snaps open her binder and replaces last year’s ragged dividers with unmarked manila pages for this year. On the tags, she writes CALC, then APUSH, outlining her junior year courses.

I pick up my knitting — yarn I’ve unraveled from a previous sweater I never finished. Maybe this project will remain on the needles forever, too.

Sebastian Junger, one of my favorite writers, collaborated on a documentary, The Last Patrol. Combat veterans take a long foot journey, searching for what’s good about America — particularly relevant these days.

“The public is often accused of being disconnected from its military, but frankly it’s disconnected from just about everything. Farming, mineral extraction, gas and oil production, bulk cargo transport, logging, fishing, infrastructure construction—all the industries that keep the nation going are mostly unacknowledged by the people who depend on them most.”

― Sebastian Junger

So Much Water.

August 16, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

In the chilly August evening, my friend and I swim after dinner, while our families kick sand on the beach. We swim into the sunset, and I’m on the verge of shivering before we hit the ropes that mark off the swimming area.

When we return, the beach has been emptied of everyone except our families, and a little girl who wanders, eating from a bag of potato chips while her mother reads a tablet. The breeze raises goosebumps on my skin, and I pull clothes over my wet swimming suit.

I ride home with my youngest, the seat warmer toasty, the car’s windows filled with the sunset’s iridescent strawberry.

She wants me to trust her driving. Because I am me, I feel all around us the coldness of autumn creeping in, and how that cold whispers its own story. This evening, though, I lean back in her car, my bare feet shedding sand on her floor, and let her drive.

A half moon rises over the hillside, the pearl color of shell’s interior.

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
— Jack Kerouac

August. Somewhere.

August 14, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

In the midday heat, my youngest drives us north, following vague directions, and we hike along two small ponds. The merest wind blows, ruffling sunlight over the water like sparkling scales.

Through the woods, we follow a trail up and then sit on a rocky ledge, admiring the view, drinking water and eating crackers and talking. The humidity reminds me of summers in southern New Hampshire, and how a summer seemed so long as a kid.

The sticky heat spreads out this day, elongates it. There’s plenty more ahead — my daughter heads into work and then goes swimming with a friend; I write on the back porch; my oldest returns from work and attends class on the upstairs porch; our cat catches his claw on the window screen. Rain falls.

But before all that, my youngest and I stop by a farmstead, and eat drippy and creamy-delicious vanilla ice cream cones. As we get into her car to leave, my daughter bites into a fresh peach. A friend pulls up beside us, and we talk for a bit. Our conversation winds quickly to work and misogyny. My friend apologies to my daughter for our conversation flying around.

My daughter asks politely, What? and pauses with that half-eaten peach in her hand.

My friend says, Oh, she’s in that lovely peach world.