Mooncrazed

September 14, 2019September 14, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Walking beneath the full moon last night, my younger daughter remarks how quickly the moon rises. Our conversation winds into the complexities of the moon phases, and I finally I admit I just don’t know the answer, but my father would.

Although we’re wearing jackets and jeans, the evening’s particularly warm for fall, the moon creamy and luscious. In the dark, flying geese overhead honk.

I mention something about “heavenly bodies,” and — despite my vehemence that this is, indeed, legitimate, these heavenly bodies — my daughters insist that’s too weird.

I don’t use my past reply about common knowledge, because my kids now have this kind of common language that might as well be from some remote Amazonian tribe to my ears. Apparently, I’m one of the last humans in their world to know this term “VSCO girl,” although the subtext beneath the so-called VSCOing activities and accessories remains a little vague to me. Likewise, when I shared some historical lore about the preppy movement (I notice Amazon has helpfully described the official handbook as facetious in case anyone missed that), I’m met with disinterest until I mention the flipped-up collar trend.

That’s just bad taste, both daughters immediately agree.

In 30 years, the full moon will grace Friday the 13 again. Walking along a dirt road in a light breeze, the girls mention how old each of us will be in 30 years. 30 years, I say, is a long time. And then: I was 30 when I became a mother.

Few lights shine in houses along the road. There’s no one else around. Back at our house, the moon is barely creeping over the horizon. We sit on the back porch while the moon rises, quickly. A luminous, heavenly globe.

Drinking Water Beneath the Moon

September 6, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

After a day of one thing after another, we suddenly arrive back at home together — my older daughter returning from a 12-hour shift, my teenager and a friend dropped off by another mother. I stand in the driveway talking with this mother, while my daughter runs in the house and hurries back with a gift of eggs from her chickens.

The little neighbor boys, munching dropped apples, wander over full of pleasure and wonder at seeing us, as only four- and two-year-old are. What are you doing? they ask. An existential question, I whisper to my friend. The teenagers are ravenous and cannot stop talking. Leftovers, I suggest. Put the leftovers in the oven for dinner.

Later, the girls have disappeared into the dark. I leave a sinkfull of dirty dishes and sit outside beneath the crescent moon. The neighbors have put their children to bed. It’s just me and the crickets and that autumn chill creeping in. Over the horizon, the sky turns a dark-turquoise shade of blue to impermeable black. Beneath this, the girls run up the road, out of breath, laughing.

In this autumn,
Why I get older?
The clouds and birds.

—Basho

Photo by Molly S.

Soccer Mom-ing

August 24, 2019August 24, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

My daughter is now six years into soccer — a number that surprises me — as if, for me, each fall is a surprise. You’re playing soccer? How cool is that….

On a hot afternoon, I walk to the high school, in a rush from work, dust from the street blowing into my eyes. On these warm afternoons, there’s always pleasure at the chance to sit on the grass and simply spend an hour, talking with another parent about work and relationships, and the sometimes painful, often laughworthy moments in our parenting lives.

What’s odd is this: standing on the field, I study each player, figuring out which girl is mine. My own daughter. I blame this strange phenomenon on bad eyesight, until another mother confesses the same. The ponytail girls are growing up. I’m unable to recognize this metamorphosis — in my own daughter — but the girls are heading toward young womanhood, body and soul.

The way of the world, my soccer-mom friend says, and offers me some of her seltzer.

I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have-as if it were our duty
to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

— Sharon Olds

Hardwick, Vermont, August 2019

Down Easting

August 7, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Here’s a snapshot of both the easy and hard parts of family: my brother and I — in Acadia with my family and his family — hike The Precipice, scaling a rocky ledge studded with iron hand holds and ladders. Before ascending, I read the profuse warning signs at the bottom. His girlfriend asks me, You’re not frightened of heights, are you?

Naturally, I lie, and follow my daughters up a hike I would never in my rational mind have attempted. The views and the hike were sublime — the enchantment of pink granite, ocean views, an unusual arid climate in New England that reminds my brother and I of hiking in New Mexico. That’s parenting in a nutshell: you head into what can be terrifying terrain, with these incredible, ineffable rewards.

He reminds me where we hiked as kids, where we ate cream scones. But I was never here as a kid with you, I remind him. I think you’re wrong, he counters. We go back and forth, swapping stories, noting where our memories meet up and where they divulge.

And my daughters? What do they think? Are they mesmerized? Irritated? Bored? We hike on and on, until the youngest is beyond ravenous, and then we eat.

Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I love it just the same.

— E. B. White

Single Summer Moment

July 21, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Vermont midsummer in all its glorious stickiness. The towns empty out but for the perpetual delivery trucks and cars with canoes and kayaks on their roofs. In the post office Saturday morning, the buzz is Where are you swimming today? Where’s your spot?

In the late afternoon, we swim at Number 10 Pond, leaving our picnic and sandals on the rocky shore and swimming far out. A smattering of pollen covers the glassine surface.

I linger long in the water while my daughters laugh on shore, taking photos. Before we leave, I click a photo of my girls, too. For a brief moment, looking at this image, I realize even my youngest is just about grown up, too. Someday, I’ll look back and think, Good swimming that day.

At home, before a few sprinkles of rain, the girls pick peas for a snack. I weed and weed. The sun golds are ripe.

stream in summertime—
this joy of wading across
with sandals in hand

— Buson

Calais, Vermont, 2019

Kitchen Floor Grit

July 6, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

Saturday morning before work finds me with a rag and the vinegar bottle, hands and knees on my kitchen floor, working.

The 10,000 things? The mysteries of the universe? The uncountable varieties of growing things in a Vermont July? Scrubbing the kitchen floor is one of these — as much as exploring waterfalls.