Strangers’ sweetness, flying United.

April 21, 2024 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

In a sleepwalking haze, I make my way from Albuquerque’s sunny airport to slushy gray Denver (winter, again?!) On the cross-country flight, I make friends with my seatmate, tossing away the nap option for our conversation about camping at Zion National Park. We part ways at Dulles. Walking through the airport’s chaos, I remember that Zion trip in our green Jeep when I was a girl. We tubed down the river all day. I smacked my hip on a rock. That evening, we devoured sausages roasted over a fire, admired the moonrise. Such happy hours.

Later, descending into Burlington, Vermont, the plane cuts down through the brilliant clouds, the underbelly smoky gray, furled with nascent rain or snow. A crimson blush scrims over the mountains, the merest beginnings of tree buds. Dusk hovers. I think of my daughter waiting for me in the nearly empty airport, all grown up now, car keys in her hand. I’m hungry for whatever food she’s brought and, mostly, for the conversation on our drive home.

As the plane brakes on the tarmac, the young couple with the baby beside me remarks that this was their baby’s first plane trip. Around me, the passengers cheer, “What a baby!” but quietly, so the little one isn’t frightened. The parents glow with happiness, the baby coos contentedly, the crowd keeps on, “Great baby! Great baby!” Such a long journey this has been and will be; so happy I am to hear this joyful mantra.

…. Last, a little more about my mother.

Solo.

August 12, 2022 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 21 Comments

Every summer for years now, my daughters and I have gone camping on Burton Island in Lake Champlain. We always bring the same friend of my youngest daughter. Sometimes another friend and sometimes my oldest hasn’t come. This year for all kinds of reasons, I went alone for a night.

I stopped first to visit a friend and meet his friendly sheep. Then I raced to the ferry. Rain and clouds had moved out. The island has no cars, so the atmosphere is particularly sweet. Little kids bike everywhere. A group of teenage boys had set up a small army of tents, bikes, and fishing poles.

I had brought what I needed for the night: a novel, my knitting, a winter hat, the recently printed out version of my manuscript, and a good pair of walking shoes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a single mother, it’s make friends with strangers. Much to my daughters’ annoyance, I often find someone to chat with at soccer games, the co-op, the post office. A kind of survival skill on many levels. But I wasn’t there to chat. I walked around the island on its slate-pebbled shores in the daylight, during the enchanting sunset, and in the dark. As the night fell dark, the tree frogs sang melodiously. I slept dreamlessly under the rising moon. In the morning, I drank coffee and read and read until I packed up my few things and headed back to the ferry.

The island, a state park, is mostly staffed by college kids, who are polite and enthusiastic. The young man on the ferry folded up the wildflower guide he was reading to roll a few bikes on the ferry.

On my way home, I realized next summer I could take my kayak and stay a few nights on Champlain’s islands. I can’t swim to save my life but surely that’s something I could learn.

A few lines from Dan Chaon’s Sleepwalk:

“No doubt, a day of reckoning for mankind is coming, yet even for those of us who accept the inevitability of mass human death, there’s still a cautious hope; we’re waiting to see how Armageddon plays out, keeping an eye open for ways it might turn to our advantage… I’m no evolutionary biologist, but I have faith in our species’ stick-to-it-iveness.”
— Dan Chaon

Sleeping Outside

June 29, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Lake, rock, sun, rain…. much to my incredible surprise, we actually managed to camp on an island in Lake Champlain this summer. For years, we’ve gone every summer — the girls and I — sleeping in a lean-to and inevitably forgetting something.

This year, we wore masks on the ferry ride there. But for these 48 hours, for this bit, we lay on the rocks, swam in the cold water, ate by the fire, and kids were just kids again.

On our walk around the island, I stopped and talked with a woman sunbathing on the rocky beach. For five minutes, we gushed and talked — and then said goodbye, good luck, and I followed the girls who had already disappeared out of sight.

Interlude of Laughing

July 18, 2018 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Camping on the shore of Lake Champlain this weekend with three enthusiastic 13-year-old girls, we did summer staying-on-an-island things — we biked and we swam for hours (and I mean hours). We walked on the breakwater at sunset. The loons woke us with their crazy calling at night. I read; the girls explored.

And we talked and talked and talked. The girls, giggling, spied on a father camping nearby. He told his two tiny boys, who wore only orange crocs, that Whining and dessert are counter to each other.

Someday, I told the girls, they might hear themselves saying something equally inane as a parent.

The island’s grass, always so lush and cool, had withered brown with lack of rain. The last morning there, rain began just after dawn. I lay in the tent, listening to the welcome patter, and then, just as I believed rain might be settling in for a day, it abruptly ceased, as if shut off.

In the unrelieved humidity, we packed slowly.

A glossy bit of summer in the land of childhood.