Saturday. Stories.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

In the classic scenario of Saturday plans waylaid, I end up driving here and there this morning, for errands that may or may not make any difference at all. That seems to be where we are these days — maybe, maybe not.

July has warmed, and I work on the back deck, in the shade of our table umbrella, drinking cold coffee.

An acquaintance I haven’t seen in a while stops by. We stand in the shade of my house, talking. He found my book in a yard shade and bought it. Then he tells me his own story of drinking and how he rose up against it. I’d known a few strands of this story, little bits, here and there, that he’d freely given me before. But his telling and my listening slips me back into that sacred space of stories. The telling. The listening. Nothing maybe about that at all.

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”

— Graham Greene

Mid-July.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 10 Comments

Rain falls again this morning, in this summer of such growth. Yesterday afternoon, between work and evening Selectboard meeting, I wandered in my garden, discovering calendula blooming in the zucchini. This morning, drinking coffee before I head off again, I add to my list. Oh, the list, and how it pales against this fragrant rain and those rose blossoms battling the Japanese beetles.

I’ve lived in New England for nearly all my life, and July is the month that renews my love of this place. Orange tiger lilies, pink cosmos, crimson currents.

All around me, the world stretches and tugs. My daughter grows up. The cats age. I work and spend. The planet spins inexorably on a course all of its own. But July is the month that reminds me the world is far, far larger than my own tiny house and acreage, my own dear family, that the world around me teems with life and thwarted longing and sometimes fulfillment, too.

The neighbors’ boys pedal up and down our dead-end street for hours, learning to ride their bikes, persistent as heck. Determined to master this skill.

Zen pretty much comes down to three things — everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention. 

― Jane Hirshfield

Travels and Home Again.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments
Portland, Maine

In the bit of time my brother and I drove through Portland recently, we talked about a few things — where to find a good cup of coffee and that my family grew up in the pandemic. Like that — and somehow, not like that. The next morning, with real regret, I sweep up the few things we’ve left around the apartment I’ve rented for a few days, gathering cherries from the refrigerator and sandy towels from the entryway.

At home later that evening, I wander through my garden. The hydrangeas and blueberry bushes I planted five years ago have now begun to thrive — or some of them. With my fingers, I slip off Japanese beetles.

July in Vermont is the season of utter growth, the one shot to rocket forward to the sun. Each day dawns with possibility — swim or don’t swim. Work long hours with an aim of working less on sunnier days. This is summer’s calculus. Slow down, slow down.

“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.” 

— Galway Kinnell

Interlude.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 10 Comments

It’s been a long time since my little family and I went anywhere just for fun, to explore coastline or trails. Friday morning finds us sitting beneath an enormous oak tree eating donuts, admiring a salt marsh, and then chatting with a woman about delphiniums in a community garden.

Two years and some into the pandemic, my little family has grown up. We are years past the summer where I took my daughter and a friend canoe camping with a giant teddy bear. Once upon a time, I believed I could keep the chaos of the world distant from my family — impossible, impossible. For these few days, the chaos of the world reigns on while we’ve carved out a small space of Uno and dumplings, rock and sand and ocean, the silliness of leaning over a balcony railing and watching how city folks prize parking spaces.

We’re in a sea of songbirds in these tall maples surrounding our temporary home. As for that chaos — how clearly I remember my own young womanhood and how hungrily I dove into my own share of life, how I embraced the chaos that came my way. I underestimated how hard it would be to shape chaos into creativity; maybe we all misjudges the depths of life. No longer in the Age of Sippy Cups, my daughters beat me at cards. I still win at trivia.

The Wild.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 10 Comments
Barr Hill, Greensboro, Vermont

I take a hurried walk on Nature Conservancy land in a slot of time between working hours and a planning commission meeting. I duck beneath the electric fence and wander up an old farm road and discover the most enchanting sight I’ve seen in a long time.

Bright blue forget-me-nots sprinkle the unmown road. Heifers graze in pasture on the other side of enormous sugar maples. The pasture glows amber in the late afternoon, humid light. It’s cool enough this afternoon that I’ve pulled on jeans beneath my dress, and my sandals have been switched for hiking boots. The woods are deep and lush.

This is Wallace Stegner land. He loved this Vermont town and lies buried in a town cemetery on the other side of the lake. As I walk, I’m reminded of his famous lines.

“We simply need that wild country available to us…. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”

~ Wallace Stegner


This space of wildness wraps all around where I live, winding in and around these Vermont towns. Mighty — these trees and fields — but just as dear are these tiny blossoms, sprinkled all through the forest, far up in the woods where they disappear from sight.

4th on the 2nd.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 7 Comments

In the town’s Funky Fourth parade on July 2, tractors joined with antique cars. A man stood on a tractor with a red I Dissent shirt. I stood at the edge of the town green, watching, filled with my own kind of dissent. And yet… the morning unfolded into an afternoon of free ice cream and cookies, an auction to raise funds for Ukrainian children, and hours of chatting outside.

That, perhaps, sums up where we are now. At the end of the day, I came home with local cheese — gratis — and a fresh list of stories.

Happy Independence Day weekend, for whatever that means these days…