Small Joys

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

Friday afternoon, I knock off work early and stack wood with my youngest.

She’s a far better wood stacker than I am, precise in her ends, creating long tight rows on our porch. About the only thing I have going for me is endurance; I’m determined to stack it all, on this fine sunny day — that endurance, and my utter pleasure to be working outdoors, breathing the sweet smell of sap.

She rakes the piles of bark and the slivers we’ll use for kindling, as we talk about little things, nothing much. Later, she swims with a few friends, the three happy. Seeing her happiness fills me with joy.

On the cusp of school reopening, uncertainty is palpable. Will school open for a week? A month? What kind of crazy plan is this? Like most parents, I’m wondering what’s the way forward? What’s the way to feed her desire for learning and friends — in a pandemic? Who knows?

When I set the rake back in the barn, I find our hatchet. Its head is dull and loosened, in need of repair. Years ago, ax repair would have been my husband’s purview. I hold its hardwood handle. Okay, I think. Find a different solution.

The neighbor’s cat sprawls on our woodpile, gray belly up to the sun, purring.

The cool breeze.
With all his strength
The cricket.

— Issa

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Photo by Gabriela S.

Neighbors

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 12 Comments

I’m listening to a friend I like very much describe her neighbors’ extensive political signs — sizable banners and flags decorate this rural Vermont property. I’m tallying up my book purchase bills for my library when I suddenly pause, listening harder as my friend says she doesn’t think she can walk across the dirt road and be friendly anymore.

A variation of the conversation surface again at dinner, when my oldest says her Instagram posts have been criticized as not political enough, not making a vocal stand against injustice. We’re eating tomatoes and sweet onions my youngest picked from the garden.

Our conversation winds around to the late and great John Lewis, and I remind my daughter of the challenge Lewis posed:

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

My daughter, worn out from a long week at work, struggles — what am I supposed to do? Like anyone, she desires to walk the path of justice and goodness. Then she tells her sister and me the heartbreaking story she witnessed that day at work of a Black woman, white men, and fear. What could I have done? she asks me.

I don’t have the answer for her. Listening, I suddenly think, Fuck Instagram and our human — or perhaps American — compulsion to sum up the story of justice and injustice in a few brief sentences. My daughter leaves for a run, utterly dissatisfied and miserable.

I sympathize with my friend who didn’t want to cross that road to her neighbors’ porch again. I’m as guilty as anyone else of barricading my heart to those I don’t understand. But the world, surely, changes through compassion. There’s nothing glitzy or flashy about compassion — it’s messy and painful. But isn’t that the challenge?

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Photo by Gabriela S.

August Day

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

Awake before dawn, I lie thinking of my friend’s 49th birthday today, remembering that October afternoon we swam in Lake Caspian with our five- and six-year-olds — swimming outdoors in Vermont in October! The leaves around the lake flamed gold and orange. That night, I realized I was pregnant with my second child.

Lying there, I remembered the March morning you didn’t appear for coffee, and I suddenly realized your stepfather had passed. That foggy day we drove for hours, searching for a house for my daughters and me when my marriage had shattered, and the fall we canned sticky quart after quart of peaches and tomatoes? The steady drop-off of eggs this pandemic that has fed my family for so many meals?

Someday — the world willing — we’ll look back at 2020 and, even then, cringe. And yet, your birthday for me has always marked the high holiness of Vermont summer — fatly rich with sunflowers and vegetables gardens escaping their fences. The dew is cold on my bare feet, but the day promises that heat you love so well.

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems?… By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say ‘We loved the earth but could not stay.’

— Ted Kooser

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Van Gogh

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Late Saturday afternoon in the heat, the girls load up the canoe while I’m lying on the porch reading. I’m so tired I’m near to sleeping, but the girls have packed up dinner. On there way there, my 15-year-old, driving, says, Uh-oh, as the canoe slides ever so slowly to the left on the roof of my car.

Again, so near to sleeping in the heat, I say, You could ease the car over to the side of the road. She does. Her sister does some magic (or enough magic) with the straps, and then we’re on our way again.

Fortunately, we’re not going far.

On #10 Pond in Calais, we paddle out, listening to the loons. In the center, we pause and eat dinner. Eventually, the youngest says, Those loons are surrounding us — mama, daddy, teens. For the longest time, we simply sit there, listening. Then the oldest dips in a paddle and breaks the pond’s glassy surface.

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.

— Van Gogh

For lovers of Van Gogh — and who isn’t? — here’s a fascinating NYT piece about his presumed final painting. I recommend the free book.

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Photo by Molly S./Calais, VT

Crickets

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 9 Comments

My daughter’s friend spends the afternoon on our back porch. When I come home from work, the girls are still chatting and doing crafts. The sunlight dapples through the box elders. Around us, tomatoes ripen.

We are ensconced in porch life, our half-covered deck redolent with drying garlic, the nasturtiums dangling their delicate, impossibly beautiful blossoms from hanging baskets. In the mornings, we read Henry IV, Part One aloud with my parents in Santa Fe, my sister and nephews in Virginia, circling back to Falstaff’s words — “A plague of sighing and grief! It blows a man up like a bladder.” Beside me, my 15-year-old rubs a finger over the scraps on her knees from blackberry brambles.

August is the sunshine month in Vermont, the season of wild berries, of warm lakes, of flowers in excess, of lying on the grass as the stars come out, of a great long pause before autumn sets in and winter grinds her teeth.

Our deck, our house, and garden might as well be the whole world, with the turkey vultures silently circling overhead, the wood thrush singing sweetly in the ravine. Before dinner, I toss a withering bouquet of giant zinnias in the compost and cut a fresh handful for our dinner table. August is our rainbow month. I know my daughter’s desire for school, for soccer, for this future none of us seem able to imagine — but long may August last, please.

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.

— E.B. White

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Rain for Dinner

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 11 Comments

In a steady rain, my daughter sets the table for dinner. For months, we’ve eaten on our deck. I suggest, as I’m sautéing onions, that she set the dining room table.

Giggling, she lays plates on the glass table outside, sets out forks, and then digs in the drawer for napkins.

Really? I say, napkins? They’ll get wet.

I don’t mind eating outside by myself, she answers, still giggling.

This has been a long day, a long however many weeks that have widened into months of coronavirus, that will likely be a long year or years. We’d planned to be in Maine these days, soaking up sunlight and the sand, but quarantining upon return isn’t feasible. She knows this; she doesn’t argue.

Still laughing, she takes a jar of pickles and sets it on the table. From inside, I see raindrops bounce off its unopened top. When she comes back, I say, Don’t forget cups. I’m eating outside with you, too.

All who have achieved excellence in art possess one thing in common; that is, a mind to be one with nature, throughout the seasons.

― Matsuo Bashō

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My daughter’s companion