#community

Our World.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Last night, I attended a Development Review Board meeting where only I appeared in person. The other participants all dialed in via their laptops. When we finished, I closed the windows and then walked out, standing for a moment on the steps of the two-story building that had originally been built as the town’s high school. The door in the empty building had been open when I appeared. I closed it behind me.

It’s a strange way to hold a meeting. One small bit of strangeness in a year and a half now of utter weirdness.

Driving home, the air is otherworldly with smoke from fires on the other side of the continent. My daughter and I stand in the garden, and she wonders what the air smells like — it’s not the familiar scent of smoke from our chimney, or the neighbor’s stove. Nor is it pestilent, like a house burning down.

I weed a little while she tells me about her day. Dusk moves in. In the sweet, warm evening, we swim.

Moon.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

On her way out last night, my daughter calls back into the house, Come see the moon!

A full moon rises behind our barn — the July Buck Moon. The night is so luminescent I can easily see the lilies along the barn.

I suppose the moon reflects the faraway sun, but the moonlight glows so vibrantly, like living molten gold, that the moon this night seems particularly alive, so close I imagine reaching out and dipping my hands into the round bucket of its beauty.

I know, theoretically, our house on this planet is spinning, too, but from our patch of grass and stone walkway and garden and house, it appears the lovely moon will rise and sail over our house and us sleeping in our bedrooms all night along. A magical thought — one I take comfort from.

“And The Moon and the Stars and the World”

Long walks at night– 
that’s what good for the soul: 
peeking into windows 
watching tired housewives

— Charles Bukowski

Burton Island, Vermont

Family.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

My friend and I spent many hours drinking coffee and watching our (then) little kids play at the edge of Caspian Lake, on colder summer days moving our coffee to the front seat of the car while my daughter’s hair blew over her eyes and lips in the wind. Those little kids are all grown up now, busily figuring out their own lives.

This Saturday, while we’re swimming, my daughters have dressed in heels and dresses and gone to a wedding. Late that night, after a long drive, they return with stories not about the dress or the Inn or the cake, but with stories of people and families and whose lives have gone awry and who is kind. An aunt and uncle of the bride have traded in family participation for a cult. Another family member is wandering out west, immersed in her own story, having cut herself free from any family obligation.

In the midst of this are the young adults, all working hard, scrambling in the severe shortage of housing in Vermont, trading advice about colleges and education. Brushing our teeth, we laugh and laugh. My daughters are no longer young in the way of using sand toys at the beach, but very young at heart, ready to make the world new in their own lives and hearts.

Family, we agree, using this word as both a noun and a verb.

Midsummer. Rain. Snails in the cabbage. Blooming calendula. I wouldn’t trade these obligations for the world.

“I am so far from being a pessimist…on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.” 

― Eugene O’Neill

Cash. Wood. Still Lovely July.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

In my bank account appears $250 from the IRS. I could spend this money six ways to Sunday. What I do is order more firewood. For years, the only expenses we had for firewood were chainsaws and fuel, property taxes, and the our own labor.

Living in town now, I buy firewood. There’s nothing else like the wet-sap scent of freshly cut and split wood. I buy from a man who lives in the next town over. When he delivers, we have an annual check-in about what’s happening, standing beside a great pile of split wood, talking about the weather or what’s happening in Washington or sweeter things, like his baby granddaughter.

The thing about burning wood is all the steps — tree, woodpile, glowing fire and happiness, ash that I spread in my garden.

Last night, as I turned off the lights and headed upstairs, I spied one of our cats lying on the rug before the wood stove, wistfully staring. It’s sultry July, and many days off (I hope) from kneeling before the wood stove.

Hardwick, Vermont

A Little Green.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

An acquaintance stops into work. I’m jammed to the point of frazzled with a list of what needs to be done, but I quit for a bit and shoot the breeze, ask what’s up in his world, and how his very large (by Vermont standards) business is faring.

We’re Vermonters, so our conversation naturally bends towards the weather. We’re dry — not New Mexico dry, where my parents live — but so dry in Vermont wells are going dry. Listening, I think how much of the summer is yet to come. Then he heads off to his day, and I head back into mine.

In the evening, I’m in a meeting at the town offices when the rain begins. The town offices are in a 100-year-old schoolhouse. It’s a well-made building of wood and walls of pressed-tin over, now shabby in places and in need of TLC, but endearing with history and craft. By then, the day has stretched out quite long for me, but I’m happy to be in this building, with jovial people who are doing their community part.

When I step outside in the dark, cold has moved in with the rain. But the rain falls steadily, at least for some amount of time. The next morning, the hillsides are vibrant green in a way I haven’t seen for some time.

We’re dry, but not as dry as we were before.

Lighting the Way

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

On our evening walk in the dark, we pass by a house where a couch, a love seat, and an ottoman have been sitting in the front yard for nearly two months now. Last night, in the rain, passing by the FREE sign that had fallen on the wet ground, I wondered, What’s the plan here?

These evenings, I often stop by the neighboring house. That small house on Winter Street was built for granite workers around 1900, like the house I bought instead. The Winter Street house was dirty and unkempt, the kitchen not really a kitchen; no one seemed to have cooked in that room for a very long time. The woman who bought that house fixed it up, room by room, but now that house appears to be empty again; I’m hoping she’s found true love and moved elsewhere.

From her free pile, I’ve taken little things — a patterned bowl, a small plate with a fish.

Post-Thanksgiving, I walk with my youngest, who imagines a post-Covid world when she’s ready for college and then wonders about her few high school years remaining. What will that look like?

She knows the future is utterly unknown. Post-holiday, we’re in watch-and-wait, partly to see how the virus surges or not, and partly to see how, collectively, how our behavior will unfold. As always, the kids are at the mercy of adult behavior, for good or for ill.

So, when I hear the governor on the radio yesterday urge Vermonters to light up these long early winter nights, I abandon my usual bah-humbug attitude of not running up the electric bill or burning more fuel.

There’s plenty of winter ahead. The plan might be as simple as day-by-day take a walk in the dark, through the mist and beneath a gauzy moon. Walking across our front yard last night, I remembered where I had planted crocuses and daffodils, that the blue squill will return next spring, that night always passes, too.

“I know how hard this pandemic has been, especially as we make our way through the holidays without the ‘normal’ get-togethers and sense of closeness we all want,” said Governor Scott. “So, in celebration of the coming holiday season, I think it’s time to lift our spirits. Let’s get creative and show the world that Vermonters are here for each other and that even through these dark and difficult times, Vermont Lights the Way…. I hope this effort will spread joy and hope, especially for our kids… there are brighter days ahead.”