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Cancer, Election.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 9 Comments

In 2014, my sister was diagnosed with cancer (now healthily in remission), and I read The Emperor of All Maladies: a biography of cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. My marriage also fell apart that year, and I remember reading this fat library book in my car at school pickups, waiting for a job interview in Burlington, on benches waiting for court appearances. It’s a hefty book, with a lot of reading hours.

Three weeks into this flipped-upside-down world, my former life is already receding. I’ve been so surprised and grateful for the effusion of calls and emails, friends stopping by with food and gifts and simply to talk, to share news of their own world and listen to mine. I realize now how carelessly I had ebbed into a cynical place these last few months while the cancer was growing in me, weakening me.

Sure, it’s true that people sometimes give into the uglier strands of lying and cattiness and gossip, of insecurity and strange ways of playing people against each other — and sometimes engage in far worse things. In my Shire of Vermont, I see my decent state struggling with what’s playing out in national politics — and the looming threats. Which made me think, again, as I lay in bed listening to the rain this morning, how our individual lives reflect the greater society. Don’t waste your few days on junk and despair, those adolescent tricks. And thank you, all, for surrounding me with such light.

From Philip Larkin:

What are days for?

Days are where we live.   

They come, they wake us   

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:   

Where can we live but days?

The world, keep on keeping on….

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

The young barista in my coffee shop muses with me about the small pleasures of November: the summer slam of tourists quieted, the sudden simplicity of stillness. On a balmy afternoon, I head out in search of places where I’ve loved and been loved, the sunny afternoon so warm the crickets have struck up their chorus again.

A few days later, I’m in the diner, eating breakfast with a friend whose mind works along my hard-bitten lines. Our booth’s window looks down into the river where the patched-up cement walls have fallen flat. We are in absolute agreement that this shifting world of thoughts and opinions, all the junk fed by media and social media, come to naught. It’s action that shifts the world. And the world, despite our fears, will keep on keeping on.

I put poetry as action, too. Here’s a few lines from the incomparable Mary Ruefle’s “Glory.”

... I met a psychic who told me my position in the universe
but could not find the candy she hid from her grandkids.
The ordinary fear of losing one’s mind. You rinse the sink,
walk out into the October sunshine, and look for it
by beginning to think. That’s when I saw the autumn aster,
the sedum blooming in a purple field. The psychic said
I must see the word glory emblazoned on my chest. Secretly
I was hoping for a better word. I would have chosen for myself
an ordinary one like orchid or paw...

A Handshake and a Promise.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

I leave dinner with neighbors and friends and walk home, down through the village. It’s late enough that the few restaurants in town are closing down, a few lingerers at the bars while the waitstaff wipes down the tables, doubtlessly thinking of their own homes and nights ahead.

Knowing I would savor this walk, I brought my hat and a coat, and the night is warm enough. I’d been offered a ride — “it’s dark!” — but me who is afraid of so many things (rushing semis, rats) has no fear of this autumn dark, this small town. I pass no one, not even a dog walker.

End of October, and I labor through the daily chores, now shoveling ashes from the wood stove, putting away the summer’s chairs and garden tools. My daughter phones with a homework question. Over us, the ineffable holiness of the passing of both of my daughters’ grandmothers this year, the old women who had distanced themselves from their granddaughters. What will this mean for my young women? At dinner, whisperings about the election. Which way will this split?

Just beyond the village, a U-Haul idles, lights on. As I walk nearer, I squint in the brightness. U-Haul, those rental trucks that have appeared intermittently in my life. The last time was that sleety winter day when a couple loaded up barrels of syrup from our sugarhouse driveway. I was in a desperate time in my life then, selling what I could to pull up stakes with my daughters and light out for new territory. I took a chance on this couple, watching them head down the slushy road with our liquid gold with nothing more than a handshake and a promise between us.

As I walk by, the U-Haul driver doesn’t look up, reading his phone, maybe a map, maybe a love note. I keep walking. As for that couple, the handshake and promise were gold. A week later, the check arrived in the mail.

Mechanic talk….

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 7 Comments

The garage I use wasn’t flooded this summer — the river simply swiped away the owner’s land in back, a great chunk, along with his plow truck and two customer cars. A few weeks later, I stood on a bridge, watching a towing company winch the truck free from the lowered river. For weeks, the two cars remained nearly submerged in a muddy wetland along the riverbank, badly beaten. Then one day, the cars had vanished, too.

Friday morning during what suffices as rush hour in Hardwick, Vermont, I park behind his garage. The three bay doors are open. We stand talking for a bit in the shadows of his garage, the autumn sunlight filtering through the great oak trees his great-grandfather had planted along the river, a few lifetimes ago.

I’ve been coming to the garage for years, from the crazed put-on-your-snow-tires season to this kind of September morning where we stand, in no rush, watching the parking lot dust drift in the honeyed sunlight. Curious, I ask about the town’s plans for the river tumbling so near to what remains of his back lot. In these dry autumn days, the river’s low, sunk among the rocks and boulders strewn by July’s flood.

He says simply, A lot of talking, many plans.

Last July, the bank where a motel was built was swept downstream, turned into silt, gone elsewhere. The town owns the property now. The mechanic tells me that people visit every day, fishing or wandering or simply enjoying the river sparkling in the sunlight. Weekends, families picnic.

Much later in the evening, as the moon hangs its three-quarters lamp in the clear sky, I wander there, too. The land slopes down gradually to the river. When the floods come again — and of course the floods will return — the water will rise here, stretching over Joe Pye weed and asters.

Along the river, the oaks and maple leaves splash gold and orange, early change. End of the summer, with its troubled river and kids on the banks, flying box kites.

Keeping On….

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 7 Comments

I drive home from a Selectboard meeting with my friend the moon who hangs over the dark mountain ridge, a creamy misshapen teardrop shot-through with crimson. It’s me and her. The clouds have scrimmed low enough that the Milky Way does not join our duet.

My house glows when I return home. The girls have chopped up the cherry tomatoes I left on the table and added these sweet chunks to couscous they bought in Santa Fe and cooked on their camping trip (and why do I never cook couscous, anyway?) The girls are familiar with the town and the people where I work. I tell stories about who’s there and what’s happening — the nuts-and-bolts of local truckers who’ve appeared for the bid openings, hoping to score more work — a man who lives nearby, has no electricity, comes to use the internet, and wanders in and out, curious, offering a few comments. People are angry about all kinds of things, the sheriff’s there and then not-there, a man yells, the chair regains control, decisions are made, bids are granted, that FEMA word with its trailing uncertainties rises and falls. There’s a pause about a bridge washed out in last year’s flood with a replacement price tag that’s beyond comprehension. A board member and I whisper commiseratingly about the days when we shared homemade cookies at meetings while kicking around decisions. He’s heading fishing this week.

The girls eat up my stories, share their own stories of their day. In the humid night, we stand on the back deck, listening to the foxes bark in the ravine, the crickets sizzle away these final summer days. The girls head out for a walk, in search of the moon and some adventure. My cat follows me as I walk around the house picking up dropped socks and empty bowls, clattering forks in the kitchen sink. Forget about national politics for a bit. It’s the same human stories: the mixture of ego and thrumming anger, a knight-like determination to serve others, the uncertainties of how do we get along?

The foxes keep at it. Eventually, I sleep, too, wake in the murky darkness, fed my cats, and then I keep on, too….

Messy democracy.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 15 Comments

So this whole democracy thing? Since we’re in an election year and all?

I work in a small town for a Selectboard. Monday morning, I pull into work (late, again), and a Selectboard member is eating a blueberry muffin as fast as he can in the parking lot, a muffin I’m certain the town clerk made. I get out and make some comment roughly along the lines of it’s a good thing I don’t do drugs anymore because Your Town….

He counters with, Let’s get serious. What’s your cucumber and zucchini situation? I’m coming back at noon with four full boxes.

Monday morning, it’s revealed that people have stolen signs. People have written letters to the Selectboard and newspapers and the Sheriff about the theft. People arrive in the office with dogs and laptops and questions, eat muffins and disappear. I walk outside with the phone. It’s possible that the thief arrives. It’s also possible there’s some laughter. Or maybe I’m making all this up.

Democracy is messy, chaotic, often brutal. People arrive who look as though they’ve slept in ditches for their entire adult lives and complain about the flood. People complain about their neighbors. People run for election. In all of this, I take off my shoes and walk around barefoot. I do all the things I’m supposed to do and I keep wondering if I’m doing any of these right. I give an old woman a bottle of water. I am always trying to leave, disappearing into the asters around the lake, into the rooms upstairs where it’s just me and the wasps and the open windows. I am always trying to sew the pieces of my life together. Sometimes I crumple paper and throw it at my coworkers, which is not really at all charming or funny.

As a writer, I learned from reading. I learned so much from sugaring — the majesty of the world, the inarguableness of cause and consequence. I learned joy and love as a parent. I learned grief as a broken wife. Working for a small town, I’ve learned the peculiar American craziness of little towns and politics, of gossip. How to spy cowardice and when to lean against the courageous.

There’s not one damn thing perfect about any of this. Here I am as usual, half in, my head and heart filled with my garden gone rampart with rudbeckia and coneflowers. But we’re all that way…. July is the season of joy, January the season of despondence and loneliness. In the heart of midwinter, I leap from the snowy shore to the frozen lake. Far out, I sometimes lie down in the middle of the day, the ice a bed between my bones and the sludgy lightless waters. Overhead, the infinity of the heavens.

But today it’s Good Old July. In the afternoon, I walk with a woman along the forest trails she’s cut. She’s eased white quartz from the soil. The rocks gleam, as if freshly scrubbed with rain.