Vermont

Prayer for A Little More Kindness

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

This morning at my daughter’s elementary school, the littlest kids shared their work and ended singing a country western song together. I’m no particular fan of country western, but listening to these small kids sing, I realized this song was really a hymn, a prayer for children to retain their sweet and noble natures.

The share had begun with stories the children had written, envisioning their grownup lives, but the song took the children’s stories to a different dimension, mixing qualities of the heart with their written projects. Maybe some of these kids will never remember this song, but my guess is more than a few someday, in the midst of their own unexpected (and hopefully marvelous) adult lives, will remember singing in their kindergarten classroom with real fondness. 

Am I still kind? Humble? Do I yet have the better part of who I am? Then again, maybe this song is really an adult prayer.

…When it’s hot, eat a root beer popsicle
Shut off the AC and roll the windows down
Let that summer sun shine
Always stay humble and kind
Don’t take for granted the love this life gives you…

– Tim McGraw, “Humble and Kind”

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Photo by Molly S.

10,000 Things

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

My math-loving daughter, seeing a page scrawled in my handwriting, asked me what this 10,000 things is all about. I could say infinite multiplicity; I could say maya or phenomena. Or how about something that make might more sense, like September 5th in all its richly earthly Vermont splendor, the seed buds of jewelweed popping between your fingers and the little black crickets singing you to sleep. Watermelon juice on your chin and your sister’s long fingers brushing your hair. Today. Us.

The banana tree
blown by winds pours raindrops
into the bucket

–– Basho

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Summer in All Her Radiant Glow

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Whatever is your life fills up with – be it classes, farming, the bond market, heroin – tends to become the idols you worship. At one point in my life, my attention was often occupied by Sleepy Bunny, a small once-white and once-fuzzy stuffed animal my daughter dearly loved. We didn’t go anywhere without ‘the bunny.’ That bunny remains with us, although my days of preoccupation with stuffed toys and diapers and perpetual snacks have altered considerably.

Raising children often seems to me stepping from one rock to another, and I have to remind myself that the journey itself is the point, stupid, and not some distant end. Watering in the hoop house this late evening, I snipped a handful of basil flowers, pressing the spicy, sweet blossoms to my face, and brought this fragrance into my kitchen. The crickets are chirping now, this final day of July, and the mud is cooling beneath my feet.

OTHERWISE

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love…

But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

– Jane Kenyon

Elmore, Vermont. Evening and girls.

Elmore, Vermont.
Evening and girls.