My Familiar

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

The past two mornings, a large fisher cat has slunk through my snow-covered garden, scoped out the compost, and wandered back into the woods, with that odd, weasel-esque serpentine back motion. The creature is dark as a rain-sodden forest floor.

My house is for sale now, and strangers have been wandering in and out. Do they admire the blue I’ve painted the windows? Are they as annoyed with the unfinished trim and stair treads as I am, or are they starry-eyed, as I would have been, years ago?

I’ve told none of them of this wild creature wandering in and out, my own particular secret, the wildness I’ll carry with me, no matter where we go.

The truth felt stranger than the myth.

Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: the Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

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fitting reading, these days

Mother

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

One rainy Saturday when I was a kid, my dad drove me and my siblings to the movie Watership Down in Manchester, New Hampshire, in an old green Commando Jeep he drove most of my childhood. On the way there, approaching an intersection, the brakes failed, and he slid through an intersection blaring his horn and flashing his lights. Under a benevolent star that day, we cruised through the red light unharmed, and my dad pulled over, doubtlessly nearly breathless with relief.

For a child, that memory remained as a flashy bit of drama. As a parent at the wheel with three kids, terrible misfortune averted. When I told my 18-year-old daughter to drive safety the other day, heading to high school or work or out with her friends to the movies, she rolled her eyes. I reiterated that I will always be your mother, so bear up, my beloved.

Today is my mother’s 80th birthday, two days after my father’s 80th birthday, both children of the Depression, with their own long lives which have touched so many people.

I think of parenting like the proverb from an old Tom Selleck movie: The ox is slow, but the earth is patient, plodding along with heavy-hooves, but overhead spreads the changing, infinite sky, the eternal constant comfort of the earth beneath our feet.

Best wishes on your birthday, mother.

…Let me congratulate you on
the birthday of your son…
You didn’t make him prosperous or famous,
and fearlessness is his only talent.
Open up his windows,
let in the twittering in the leafy branches…
Give him his notebook and his ink bottle,
give him a drink of milk and watch him go.

– Yevgeny Yevtushenko, from “Birthday”

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Free Stuff

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Freezing rain last night. An acquaintance from years past walks up the icy driveway this morning to inquire about an old claw foot bathtub. We talk for precisely three minutes about one of the most difficult problems I’m facing now. Three minutes, tops. And yet, somehow, that’s all I need. In a better frame of mind, I’ll return the favor to someone else.

It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift. But a child rejoices in presents!

Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water

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A Handful of Words

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Recently, on a freezing afternoon, I was late to a workshop for writing a grant, in an attempt to keep funding my second novel endeavor. Either because I live where parking is usually not a problem, or because I don’t think ahead, I arrived with about a heartbeat to spare, but then couldn’t find parking, and ended up running in my clunky boots and parka a few blocks.

The workshop was held in a dance studio that was hardly heated, and all of crowded around tables in our sweaters and coats and hand-knitted hats. Mainly painters, the other attendees ranged from a young man who seemed to have just rolled out of the sack to elderly folks who asked a lot of good questions. Although I didn’t linger, I knew these were my tenor of people – not all that well-coiffed, intense enough about their passion to seek out sitting for a few cold hours in a shabby end of Burlington.

To get through the first cut, I’ll need to write four paragraphs. I sat there, in my sweater with the unraveling cuffs, and thought, That’s it? Four paragraphs? While the painters asked questions about matting, I started scribbling my answer. Be specific. Be profound. Articulate why literature matters. And, for God’s sake, don’t be afraid of four paragraphs.

Check back in May and see if I’m weeping….

Perfectionism is a particularly evil lure for women, who, I believe, hold themselves to an even higher standard of performance than do men. There are many reasons why women’s voices and visions are not more widely represented today in creative fields. Some of that exclusion is due to regular old misogyny, but it’s also true that—all too often—women are the ones holding themselves back from participating in the first place.

– Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

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Hazen Union, Hardwick, Vermont

Radius of This Afternoon

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

The cold hammers down around us again, returning with March’s powerful jaws, reminding me of all those years when my daughters were little, and we were housebound around the wood stove. Always, I bundled up the baby and walked out into the cold, even in the rawest of days, and the house’s warmth welcomed us on our return.

My friends would bring stacks of Sunday New York Times, and I would read months-old news before the wood stove, children playing with dolls or wooden frying pans, devouring the news aptly while eating popcorn. Such was the world of living with little children…. Today is merely a dip back in my mothering days, a memory when the girls couldn’t zip their coats or read a book.

I’m glad to welcome this reprise from the world-out-there of news I’d rather not hear but will make its way to our door, one way or another, eventually. For now, I’ll shake down the coals, lay on more wood, and brew tea.

March is the in-between season, of library books, knitting, board games. End-of-winter pause.

The light stays longer in the sky, but it’s a cold light,
it brings no relief from winter.
My neighbor stares out the window,
talking to her dog. He’s sniffing the garden,
trying to reach a decision about the dead flowers.
It’s a little early for all this.
Everything’s still very bare—
nevertheless, something’s different today from yesterday.
We can see the mountain: the peak’s glittering where the ice catches the light…..

From Louise Gluck’s “March”

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Melody

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Remember Robert J. Lurtsema and Morning Pro Musica’s sweetly singing birds?

My family had an orange cat named Oliver who would swipe at the window when he heard this opening, searching for birds. We believed that cat brilliant, God rest his feline soul.

Mozart’s music has been gracing our early mornings, these first few days in March. I’ve been skimming through a biography of Wolfgang – until I stopped suddenly at this excerpt from a letter from Mozart himself.

I have now made a habit of being prepared in all affairs of life for the worst. As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank God for graciously granting me the opportunity (you know what I mean) of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that – young as I am – I may not live to see another day. Yet no one of all my acquaintances could say that in company I am morose or disgruntled. For this blessing I daily thank my Creator.

Enough said.

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West Woodbury, Vermont