Vermont

Red Star

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

I wake from what I suppose is a writer’s nightmare. Inexplicably, someone has altered the pages of the book I’m writing to emoijis — gibberish where I’ve labored so long to string together sense and beauty.

Mid-November, and the nights are long. We play Battleship, Boggle, Trouble. The library books pile up around the couch.

This time of year, I’m reminded of Vermont’s great extremes. By five, dark has set in fully. In summer, we’d be thinking of heading for an after-work swim. Walking yesterday, I thought of the wild forget-me-nots sprinkled along that roadside in summer. White, pale blue, gray, black: winter’s palette. Inside, we bake phyllo with salty cheese and roasted red peppers — not so much habit or tradition, but simply the thing to do.

just when I think nothing is left alive

the bare branches of the trees
rise up, beckoning

— Marilyn Krysl

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Rain, Sleet, Snow, Silence

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Third snow day, and it’s only November. Driving from one side of the state to another, I travel through a landscape of gray — pavement, mountain — flanked by icy trees in that always questionable terrain around Bolton.

Then — the lake. I’m late already to work, with a list of things I absolutely want to do that day, check off, simply be finished with. But I turn around anyway, find a parking space and put an actual nickel in the meter, hoping no reader will be walking by in this snowy day.

The rain by then has turned to lacy snowflakes, the perfect kind for a child to lean back her head and open her mouth to catch a flake on her tongue. There’s no one out at all along the lake — improbably not even the dog walkers. Just all that snow, for just that moment.

A cessation.
You’re not searching.
How nice it is tonight.
Two birds fell asleep in your pocket.

— Yannis Ritsos

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Gold

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

The day’s few hours of sunlight seemed distinctly February-ish — gold wild apples are still frozen to the tree.

November narrows down to the holidays, to that time of Vermont dark. The daughters decide to bake corn muffins — perhaps because of the color.

On impulse, I buy a small jar of raw honey at the co-op. 4:30 now, and the light is that pale pink and blue that reminds me of the sea. We’re warm, we’re well, our house is well-lit with little lights. I’ve stocked up on library books. The daughters are busy with their own stories and studies. I remind myself, It has not always been this way.

Time to close the curtains and start dough for empanadas.

If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant.

— Jane Kenyon

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/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

The full moon gleams in the sky this morning as I head out to start my daughter’s car this pre-dawn morning.

Winter, my familiar friend.

Yesterday, chatting with my neighbor while we’re back to our traditional winter activity — snow shoveling — he said laughingly, Well, what are we going to do? Be mad about it?

Winter, dear friend, I now know you very, very well, in your elegant beauty. This year, I’m going to love you wholly — for at least two weeks.

Here’s a few Rebecca Solnit lines for this impeachment hearing week.

Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world.

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Armistice Day

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 10 Comments

This is the gray time in New England, when even the daylight is dull. Gone are the spring days of blue squill, the early morning birdsong.

After dinner, we walk in the dark.

My daughter and I read for hours. Later, she disappears for a run, while I proceed with my persistent thread of work. In all this, Marlboro College, where I was an undergraduate, appears (truly, this time) on the precipice of closing. All weekend, I follow the alumni FB thread — grief, anger, plotting — while I keep thinking of Marlboro and how much this tiny college gave me. I’m not alone in that, I see, listening to alumni after alumni.

November. Our house is warm. I open the curtains and let in the daylight. At 4 p.m., the noisy cat comes and yowls over my book, demanding his dinner. My daughter puts on her ski boots and walks around the house, listening to snow in the forecast. November: life churns on.

The rain had been falling with a pounding meanness, without ceasing for two days, and then the water rose all at once in the middle of the night, a brutal rush so fast Asher thought at first a dam might have broken somewhere upstream. The ground had simply become so saturated it could not hold any more water.

(The opening lines of Southernmost, by Silas House)

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Red Yarn Quest

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 9 Comments

The thing about winter is its beauty.

Very early this morning, I start my daughter’s car before she heads to work. Beneath the stars, it’s cold, and dawn is pushing away the night. The winter dawn is pale blue, like the edge of the ocean.

Inside, our house is warm, the cats fed and sleeping. I have piles of work to do and that makes me happy because it’s all hard but all worth doing.

My teenager is deeply immersed in a book series — and I’m insanely happy about that, too. She’s lusting after a driver’s license, a relocation to California, but, in the meantime, she’s still here, and, willingly or not, has agreed to come with me on a small expedition I’ve conjured, to discover the headwaters of a local river. Her older sister advises, It’s easier just to do those kind of things…

It’s somewhere in November. Time to knit to red sweater. If I use fingerling yarn, this project could last me months…..

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