writing

The Right Thing

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

On a walk my daughters and I often take in the evening, we pass a house where a little black cat trots out to meet us. The cat’s tail is bony, its nose white as if dipped into a saucer of cream.

We always turn down that particular street, saying, Let’s go see the cat, and stop and pet this friendly creature.

In the dark last night, a car followed us, then stopped, as the cat sat in the street. When the cat didn’t move, my daughters and I turned and walked back, to encourage the cat to head along now. The driver pulled up and rolled down the window.

I didn’t recognize this curly-haired woman. She asked me if the cat was mine. When I said no, she wondered aloud why she had kept sitting in the car. I didn’t know what to do, she told me. The cat didn’t move.

I laughed and told her, You did the right thing.

She raised her hands from the steering wheel and began laughing. I did the right thing! she exclaimed.

Walking home in the dark, I kept thinking of what looks to be a long winter ahead. But for a radiant moment, Saturday showed us our VP-elect proudly acknowledging the history and labor of so many nameless others. It’s a historic moment my daughters relish.

“So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The Long Haul

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

After work, it’s too dark to go running, and I’m home in a foul mood while my daughters cook dinner. While cleaning out a closet that afternoon, they discovered a box of photographs and claimed the photos were evidence there was little adult supervision in their early childhood.

I insist there was plenty, but I had always seen wildness as more of a virtue than a vice.

The three of us are wise enough to let that lie, and dinner conversation winds into the details of the day. After, the girls wash the dishes and I carry in firewood. Then my oldest and I walk through town. There’s no one out these days. It’s dark; the cold is beginning to staple down around us.

Coming home, we stand on the knoll outside our house, watching the creamy, waning moon rise. As we stand there talking about hard deep things — how we carry the past around with us — I remember myself as a brand-new mother, believing that the wildness of imagination shapes our lives. I no longer believe that; I know that, but I also know what a long hard haul this life can be.

I call into the house for my youngest to come out and see the moon. She walks barefoot through the snow. We stand there, the moonlight on our faces, soaking up that ethereal light, before we head back in.

Once in a Blue Moon

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 7 Comments

Saturday, we were at a jack o’ lantern walk at the elementary school where my youngest graduated a few years ago.

Because it’s rural Vermont, it was dark, and everyone was spread out. I slipped away from the few kids and walked further along the woods path. I know this path well, and it veers down to the wetlands. There, I leaned against a white pine. The moon was nearly full, and the silvery light skipped over the rippled water.

For the longest time, I stood there, knowing my daughter was happily wandering around in the dark with her friends. In the darkness, I remembered the countless times I had admired this lovely lady moon — over fresh snow and icy backroads, in the muggy heat of summer.

At the beginning of this election week, I woke thinking of our beautiful moon, silently orbiting the globe.

The old man of the temple,
Splitting wood
In the winter moonlight.

— Buson

August flowers

Asking for Good News

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

Every few days or so, a friend and I email back and forth, asking for good news. Occasionally, it’s utterly knock-it-out-of-the-park news — I finished this revision of my book — but more often the meaningful mundaneness of everyday life. A sunny afternoon, plans for a walk, a funny exchange at work.

After one long day, I recently dug down and wrote: we’re all still employed.

But I also forwarded my father’s email about Arkhipov Day.

Although Henry Ford might have once proclaimed that history is bunk, we live in the narrative of history, and continue to create history every day. And that might be a variation of good news, too.

Hello Everyone—

Today, October 27, is Arkhipov Day. We should raise a glass, salute Vasili Arkhipov, and celebrate his obedience to humankind, not to the Nation-State. On this day, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, World War III was averted by his refusal to accede to his two fellow Soviet submarine officers’ decision to fire a nuclear-tipped torpedo at the USS Randolph. 

Peace and love,

George

P.S.: If anyone wishes to read or reread about Vasili Arkhipov, see The New Barbarians.

Vermont, late October 2020

Laughter

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Standing in the rain watching my daughter, behind the socially distanced spaced out row of spectators, I hear a sound through the downpour steadily pummeling my borrowed umbrella. It takes me a moment, but then I realize two women cozied up together beneath their umbrella are laughing.

On the wet field, the girls are playing hard. Their ponytails and masks and uniforms are sodden. Many are covered with mud. Beyond the field, patches of pale gold leaves glow in the misty rain.

For a moment, I have the sense this sums up the pandemic — alone and isolated with my mask and raincoat and umbrella — and yet together. I stand there, happy the girls are playing, listening to the laughter of strangers through the downpour.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

— Ezra Pound, ‘In a Station of the Metro’

Worn Cleats

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Feeding the wood stove before bed, my eyes catch on my daughter’s duct-taped cleats drying beside the wood stove.

Two decades ago, I first became a mother to this girl’s older sister, and an accompanying stream of beloved things have passed through our lives, too.

Beloved Sleepy Bunny — now worn threadbare — colored stacking cups, babydolls, a teddy bear my youngest clutched on her lap as we drove around the Southwest the summer I removed my wedding ring and threw it into the desert. When she was three, this girl draped over a blue swing in the front yard apple tree on her belly and dug her toes in the dirt, dreaming.

Now, she’s 15, teen as teen gets. I study that silent sign of what’s beloved to this girl. Then I turn out the light and go upstairs to read.