High School in the Time of Covid

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

My daughter’s high school varsity soccer team, the Lady Cats, advanced into the playoffs — local joy against rising Covid rates and the election hurtling along.

I didn’t play sports as a student, the lone wolf who ran long solitary runs — pretty much what I’m doing now, except these are short solitary runs. But to be a kid on a local team who wasn’t expected to do well at all — that’s a big deal.

Friday, I’m home briefly in the middle of the day. My daughter and her friend have finished school for the day. In the living room, they’ve set up this year’s version of high school, each with their notebooks and a school-issued Chromebook, surrounded by piles of my library books, their cleats drying beside the wood stove. The room is sunny and warm, and the girls are intently working at whatever assignment — chemistry or algebra.

I fill my thermos with espresso and ask my daughter’s friend if she’d like a cup. I’m joking, but she happily accepts. I’d love an espresso.

So, in a little china cup painted with blueberries that my daughter once used for milk, I serve this girl an espresso, who thanks me.

Before I head out the door again, I look back at these two. I’m happy to be employed, heading to interesting work, on this sunny autumn day, in my Shire of Vermont. But goodness, I’m grateful for girls and warmth. The whole world matters — disease and political collapse — but this afternoon matters, too.

I open the kitchen door, call I love you, step out into the chilly afternoon, and close the door carefully behind me.

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

Half Moon

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

I step around the barn in the twilight and see the half moon shimmering above the barn’s back corner, like a surprise.

I empty the ash bucket and set it on the cement step, waiting for my daughters and our twilight walk, as the dusk shakes down.

A year ago, my oldest was in New Mexico, visiting my parents and hanging out with my brother and his girlfriend. After a wild wind and rain storm, the power went out, and my youngest and I ate take-out by candlelight. Always, at this time of year, as the days perceptibly shorter, I realize how profoundly cold and dark has wound into my life, spread physically and metaphorically into the life I’ve shaped as a woman and a mother.

What’s different this year is the collective darkness of disease as the rates of Covid increase around our little world, of the unraveling political world relentlessly marching along.

And yet — there’s that ancient silent moon.

My daughters are laughing as they walk towards me.

What? I ask.

They look at each other again, and my oldest says, Nothing, Mom, and then they laugh again.

“I am more convinced than ever that we are shards of others.”

— Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

Photo by Molly S.

Starting Stick Season

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

At the end of our dead-end road, my neighbor and I call to each other, checking in, seeking news.

Their 5-year-old loves kindergarten, cut his own hair, lost his first tooth, and is learning to read.

My neighbor laughs at all this, holding a giant box of diapers. When they came down with a cold, he and his wife had to get a Covid test — negative! hurray! — and daycare has been screwed up as their provider had to get her own Covid test.

The old lilac bushes surrounding our houses turned a particularly pretty shade of gold this year, but those little leaves have fallen now. Across the cemetery from our two houses, one sugar maple determinedly holds its leaves, a shimmering reflective pool for sunlight in the afternoon.

And so life goes on.

The kindergartner jumps down the front porch steps, sees me, and points into his mouth. See!

From my distance, I nod and cheer. And so Saturday goes.

Eagle and Loon

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

I’m at the edge of a pristine lake crouched under an enormous white pine at the place where the owners want to build a boathouse. On the way down, I waved to the carpentry crew working on the house; they’re the hired help as I, a town employee, am a version of hired help, too.

I’m writing a few notes when I hear a rush of wings. A bald eagle swoops out of the white pine so near to me I see its shockingly white tail feathers. The creature is so large its wings are almost oversized, flapping mightily as it turns and heads over the lake, apparently in no particular rush but moving rapidly as its wings bend through the air.

At the same time, as if on cue, a loon calls on the glassy lake. For that moment — in a day I’ve jammed with too much — I’m in no rush to go anywhere. Still crouching, I watch that eagle head across the lake, admiring its enormous wings, while I listen to the loon’s echoing calls.

My daughters and I have been swimming on this lake when loons didn’t nest here. All spring and summer we’ve seen eagles. The wild world — with its greater, wiser plan.

The loon dives and disappears. I wander to the lakeshore and dip my fingers into the cold, clear water. Gray sky, fallen leaves in the water, stones, my boots — and so much more.

A few words

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

In the middle of a rainy morning, I was at the muddy dead-end of a road, listening to a passionate young man who’s taken over the family farm, as he explained an argument he’s had with the road crew and plowing.

Over his shoulder, I stared at a line of tamaracks, their feathery branches ignited autumn gold.

What? he asked, seeing I wasn’t listening.

Tamaracks, I nodded.

He glanced over his shoulder for a moment, and then kept on with his explanation.

Let this be the silent word of the day: tamaracks, and their silent gold.

It should not be denied… that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom…
― Wallace Stegner

Maple and ash, old quarry site, Woodbury, Vermont