Somewhere in Vermont’s February…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 11 Comments

Summers, the dawn is raucous with songbirds. In February, I stand outside in the dark, the cold swirling around my hands and head, hungry, hungry, it seems for my warmth. The icy snow makes the lightest tap against the kitchen window. We’re socked in by sleet and ice and snow in Vermont, the winter wrapping around us. When my daughters were little, how I chafed against those endless winter days. Now, I’m glad to be awake and working while the household sleeps. The cats have wandered downstairs for their breakfast, and curled up for their post-breakfast rest. Our house is warm; the daughters are well; the bills are paid; I have work.

Let the snow pile up. Among those many motherhood lessons is a solid carpe diem — and to log in a few more hours of work before the day drifts along….

Winter solitude—
In a world of one color
The sound of wind.

— Basho

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Vermont Commune Story

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Writing about summer camp — in February — makes me pause over photographs. How green and gorgeous is Vermont’s summer. The profusion of hydrangeas. The luxury of lying in green grass.

I spent a few hours last week speaking with Peter Gould of Shakespeare Camp fame. But Shakespeare Camp is just an iceberg tip of his fame. A few years back, I heard him read the title story from his collection Horse-Drawn Yogurt at the Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick. The bookstore was packed. The evening may or may not have been snowing, but I remember the night as snowy, because the story, set in winter, is so evocative.

I’ve shared a few lines from this story below. The story is one of the very best stories I’ve read about the countercultural life in Vermont — the energy and enthusiasm and love of Vermont and the sadness, too.

The farm would remain. People would leave. Some would stay, working in town but making their home there, connected to the mythic past but not to the daily work of a farm. New folks would come, with new goals. Soon no one would remember most of what had already been tried, what this antique tool was for, what dream that pile of rotting lumber in the lower pasture represented. We would always plant a little organic garden, but that would not be our excuse for being. We could live off the economy better than we could live off the land.

— Peter Gould, Horse-Drawn Yogurt: Stories from Total Loss Farm

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Birth Day

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Here’s the thing about being pregnant: you just don’t know. Forty weeks, give or take a few (generally), is a long time to wonder, who’s this little baby, anyway?

When my first daughter was born — after a long labor that eventually terminated in a caesarian — the obstetrician held her up in his gloved hands. My first reaction was immediate familiarity: I knew this baby. And that was just the beginning of World with Molly.

From the beginning — with birth’s blood — raising kids often seems like surprise after surprise: oh, you can nurse? you can walk? you can ride a bicycle? make me laugh? make me stay awake all night, worrying about you?

If parenting has taught me one thing, it’s how precious little I know — save, perhaps, the world is unimaginable without our kids.

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.

— James Joyce, Portrait of an Artist

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February: Light

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

Entirely out of keeping with the season, I’m thinking of spring. Save for houseplants, the Vermont world is entirely without a single leaf of tender green leaf — in utter hibernation — but the days are lengthening.

Groundhog’s Day holds no suspense here — that garden-eater always turns around and burrows back down for more winter. In the meantime, a spring haiku.

The spring breeze.
Being pulled by a cow
To the Zenkoji temple.

— Issa

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Little Gummy Bears

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

Dirty, grubby, road-salt-stained: that’s my midwinter boots.

Walking down Montpelier’s Main Street, on a whim I stop into Delish, the candy store. Not so long ago, my younger daughter eyed their door each time we walked by. Yesterday afternoon, on my way to meet someone for an interview at Capitol Grounds, I impulsively walked in, bought a small white paper bag of chocolate-covered gummy bears, and slid it in my backpack to take home to her.

I’ve been mothering — a mother — for twenty-one years now. Not a single day — and hardly an hour, it seems — has passed when I haven’t been actively or mentally engaged in parenting.

Now, my older daughter is all grown up, busily writing her own narrative about work and college and a complex network of friends. In our house, it feels like all of us are on precipices — of turning 21, of adolescence heading toward young adulthood, and myself. Even the cats are keeping busy. Midwinter? Oh yes.

Happy final day of January, 2020.

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Duo Residence

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

Ooooo, midwinter.

After work, while my daughter memorizes French for an exam, I head out for a walk. A slight snow is falling, just a few lazy flakes as if nothing much is going to happen, just that little bit of snow. It’s my most very favorite snow, just lovely, and in the cone of streetlight I have that enchanting Narnia feeling — as if it’s just me and the lamppost and that snow, and maybe the mysterious White Witch might silently appear. In that twirling-down-slowly snow, Turkish delight might still be an untasted promise in my life, rather than the too-sweet candy I remember.

That’s it, from my end of the world. I’ve been “dividing my time” between desk and couch, finishing up a manuscript. When I submit it Friday, I’m planning to ski out the back door — snow willing — and paint my daughter’s room.

Then, on to the next month.

But land is land, and it’s safer than the stocks and bonds of Wall Street swindlers.

― Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night


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