Overheard

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Running along the old railroad bed, I pause when I see a couple ahead of me. I know her as an acquaintance, and she’s walking and talking animatedly with a man I don’t know.

I linger behind, breathing deeply, just about near the end of my run anyway. They keep walking. Sunlight filters through the trees over the narrow path.

Then, abruptly, what I realize fascinates me so much is merely the carefree tone of their conversation. They keep at it, talking, their hands gesturing together. Sure, I overhear people; I’m not a shut-in. But I’m mesmerized for these moments by their unmasked and unguarded tone, or maybe I’m just happy to hear their laughter. I live in Vermont, where many people, including myself, are vaccinated and use masks; this makes sense to me. Maybe I’m just enchanted by the warm September sunlight, spilling down through the leaves that are golden and red and beginning to drift earthward.

I linger, following, until they go their way, and I go mine.

In the Wee Hours

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Pulling up dead cucumber vines in my September garden, I realize my main crop this year is a forest of sunflowers. In years past, I’ve verged at times into the maniacal side of gardening. This year, however…. this year, as we all know, has simply been this year.

My oldest wanders out to the garden, her head bent to one side, braiding her hair. She’s begun training on the local volunteer ambulance crew, and tonight is her first overnight shift. She tells me she’s going to stay up all night. Why would I sleep?

My garden soil is dry, hot from the sun beneath my bare feet. The fall greens — kale and Brussels sprouts — are interspersed with brown stalks of dill, seeds drying.

Hidden in my forest of flowers, I remember when I was eighteen and left home. One of the first things I did was stay up all night, wandering around outside in the dark with a friend until the sun came up. It was the first time I realized how long a single night can stretch.

She straightens, and I admire her braids. She’s all grown up, heading out into the world to do her own thing and make her own way. Still, I remember her at four in her pink overalls, determined not to sleep then, either. She hurries away, and I stand there, with my dirty hands, watching.

We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren’t on our lists, people we’ve never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.” 

— Jonathan Safran Foer

Two, Not-So-Random Visitors

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

A young AmeriCorps worker stops by looking for information about how small town Vermont government works and brings a crabapple pie he baked.

The pie is deep-dish, about the size of a dinner plate. He’s tall and cheerful and tells me about his dog named Mindy. Eventually, I give him a paper map and tell him to drive around town. I highlight one section of the map in yellow. Here, I tell him, is one especially beautiful stretch of dirt road, high above a lake. He’s driving his grandmother’s hand-me-down Toyota Corolla.

Good luck, I say as he leaves.

When he’s gone, a friend stops in, looking for town info, too. The sunlight comes through the windows. I offer her a piece of pie. We talk and talk. She finally says, I feel like I haven’t seen anyone in so long.

The strange thing is, I feel that way, too. We keep eating pie. The young baker has peeled the crabapples, one by one, to sweeten the pie. We eat the whole thing, and then I wash up the plates and forks.

There was earth inside them, and they dug.”

— Paul Celan
Hurray for autumn garden.

Good and Hard Place

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Balmy days move into our wedge of Vermont. The leaves are turning colors in scattered spots — some gold, a glimmer of red — but nothing threatening, nothing ominous yet.

Live in Vermont as long as I have (a few eons, perhaps, it feels like some days), and you know winter isn’t far in the offing. But for now, the days and nights when we sleep with the windows open, the air is redolent with sweetness.

If there’s one thing we’ve collectively learned from the pandemic, I suppose it would be that the Here and Now matters immensely. We soak up sweetness, knowing tomorrow may bring an unknown kind of hardness.

Thank you to all who came out last night, in-person, to the Hardwick Town House. The Town House has had so much history, and last night’s audience of listeners in masks — well, that’s the history we’re participating in these days.

I’m now on a mostly virtual book tour. If you can stop in at all, please do.

Finally — I mentioned last night that the original working title for Unstitched was A Good and Hard Place. There’s plenty of hard things in my book, but it’s full of the goodness of life, too. Here’s hoping you have a taste of goodness today, too.

And, a thank you to Literary North for running a short original piece.

So…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Pub date for Unstitched arrives Tuesday. The lovely Galaxy Bookshop and the equally terrific Jeudevine Memorial Library (both in Hardwick) are hosting a reading Tuesday (9.14.2021) at the Hardwick Town House.

If you’re in town and interested in coming out, please do.

I’ll also be chatting virtually with the fantastic poet Kerrin McCadden this Thursday, September 16, at 7:30 p.m., in an evening hosted by Phoenix Books. No charge, of course, for these events.

How much our world has changed since those days when I walked downtown and spent Tuesday evenings in the Galaxy, listening to writers and drinking cider. I hope you’re all well….

Short excerpt…

Like many others, I arrived [in Vermont] as a transplant. As a child and into my twenties, I moved frequently, from deserty New Mexico to New Hampshire’s red-brick mill cities to mountainous western Washington. Gradually, I became smitten with this tight-knit town. I joined the five-member school board and chaperoned walks into the wetlands. Our world was stitched together by carving jack-o’- lanterns, giggling at sleepovers, voting yay or nay on town and school budgets at community meetings, and baking surprise birthday cakes for friends. When I discovered the library had been broken into after hours, what remained was a lingering residue not only of cigarette smoke but also of fear. I began to wonder if maybe this world wasn’t so fine.”

Taking Stock.

/ 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.”