Stories From the Past and Present

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

At just a little over zero degrees — the sun shining beautifully — my daughter and I went ice skating at the town’s rink. Set behind the elementary school, in an out-of-the-way field where burdock grow in the summer, the rink is the vision of one woman, coupled with 2″x6″s and a plastic liner and a lot of help.

I slipped off my mittens to pour a cup of hot chocolate. My hands nearly froze.

Small town life is generally cozy. We see each other’s kids grow up. By and large, we look out for each other. But every now and then, the underside, the other, deeper side of small town life appears. That same day, two different people appeared in my life from a long-ago part of my life. One was a woman. She and I exchanged stories. The other was a man who stole from me and my daughters.

My daughter with her red cheeks and I were on our way home. A friend leaned close to me and asked who was the stranger. I whispered to her, and then we left.

Long ago, I crossed out of any Pollyanna view of New England village life and into the realm of Sherwood Anderson and Ray Carver. I’m nearly finished Ensouling Language — a book that unexpectedly arrived in my post office box. I’d never heard of the author, Stephen Harrod Buhner, although the book from its opening lines writes in my familiar world, particularly of Lorca’s duende, of traveling in the wilderness, of baptism with dark waters.

As a woman writer, particularly, I often find myself pushing back against this cultural insistence to “make nice” and pretty things up. We live in an enchanting world, but the world’s waters are often dark, too, populated by saints and by thieves.

My daughter and I took our skates home, hung them up, and ate dinner.

A thousand thanks and more for this book.

Love is nice… but writing is too hard for love alone. Love is crucial for many reasons but it is not enough to get through [writing] the book. And whether you call it hate, or rage, or anger, or irritation, it is all some form of the same thing. You must have this hate, this rage to be a writer for this is one of the hardest professions on the planet and without rage you will never survive it. You will always run out of steam about page 60.

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Photo by Molly S.

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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