#familylife

Broken Down, Back on the Road

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Before dawn, a crescent moon greets me silently through my kitchen window, hanging low in the sky, with glittering Venus and Jupiter. I stand there for a moment, imprinting that soundless beauty in my mind, like a talisman I might carry through the day. I leave in the dark, listening to VPR and watching the car’s thermometer dip down, down, as I drive up through the Woodbury Gulf. 14 below zero.

Not all that much later, I’m out of my car in Waterbury, pouring coolant into my overheating car, the water pump shot. It’s so cold the air is misty. I limp along into Waterbury, where I cluster with the other folks in the waiting room, drinking terrible K-cup coffee.

I’m nosy—I completely own up to this—as I “overlook” the woman’s laptop beside me as she books a hotel room in Charlotte. She wears enviably warm and stylish black leather boots. Beside me, I realize a man is somewhat surreptitiously scrutinizing my notebook, but I’m darned sure he can’t read my bad handwriting. Heck, I can hardly read it, and I’m the author. His phone rings, and I actually wonder if he’s speaking Greek. So much for my knowledge of other languages.

It’s that kind of day. By 11:30am, I’m back on the Interstate again—traffic is oddly light at that time—but the day seems basically shot. How much has already happened, and how much more lies ahead.

There’s the moon and those heavenly bodies, though. How much paler the day would have been, without those beauties.

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While I’m at work, the kids send me a photo of their cat’s displeasure with their afternoon snack.

A Little Faith

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

I left a conference in Montpelier yesterday with incredibly nice people, held in unheated rooms (boiler was kaput), and with so much lingo I actually sighed at one point. How would this ever make things even marginally better in Vermont classrooms?

A water main had broken in Montpelier. Streets were closed. Police cars flashed lights.  My favorite coffee shop was locked, lights off.

Light snow fell, just the loveliest, lightest snow. In the public library, I worked furiously on a chair in a corner. When school was out, kids began sneaking around the stacks, giggling. Finally, giving the kids some attention, I realized they were in a complicated game, playing hide and seek, trying very hard not to giggle. I listened to them for a while, the kids in their snowy jackets, wearing backpacks, and then I turned back to my work.

“People expect everything very quickly, but God doesn’t work that way.” She lets go of my hand and drops down to the floor, this squat little woman in a blue housedress and ragged terry-cloth slippers, splays her fingers, and pats the carpet.

“My faith,” she says, “is from here….”

— Sue Halpern, Migrations to Solitude: the quest for privacy in a crowded world

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The back, un-touristy side of Vermont’s capital

My One Good Parenting Tip

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 16 Comments

When I was a school board member, we were asked to participate in a retreat. I had a less than cheery attitude about this. For starters, the retreat was three hours long. The evening, however, ended with us in the school library digging fruit into chocolate and talking. I learned so much from being a school board member; I received so much more than I ever gave. That night, what I took home was this: the facilitator insisted curiosity is a real force of nature — not simply a trait or a habit, but a genuine skill.

When I’m in a saner frame of mothering mind, I lean on this tool. Why? Why are you saying this? What’s the subtext? And then again, simply, why?

When I can hold to coolness — and I frequently fail — the why can carry me through. Send me your parenting tip?

Possible, unthinkable,
the cricket’s tiny back as I lie
on the lawn in the dark, my heart
a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.

― Dorianne Laux

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13-year-old’s baking

Cobweb Sweeping

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

When my daughters suggest a Saturday afternoon skiing with me, I’m immersed in that eternal list of must do, must do, as if the universe’s spin depended on my crossing out whatever rises next on the list.

Maybe I’m simply utterly annoyed at another half day of work I’ll lose again next week — no doubt in vain — seeking child support. But goodness, both teenagers want to cross country ski with me. The younger girl skies ahead, and then loops back. We ski through the woods and over streams, and then a long slow uphill through open fields. We can see all the way to Creek Road, where the bare branches of roadside maples link the sky to the snow-covered earth. Stripping off hats, sweaty, I remember again why I love Vermont’s stark and signified winter beauty, why I love Vermont’s patchwork of small farm and wild forest, why I was certain at 18 that Vermont was the place for me to live.

We ski all afternoon, passing by where our friends once lived, old farmhouse of such merriment. My older daughter talks and talks, about work and about love. At home, we cook dinner together, our cheeks beaming red with cold and happiness.

Pare Everything Down to Almost Nothing

then cut the rest,
and you’ve got
the poem
I’m trying to write.

— David Budbill

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Photo by Molly S.

Hey? Where’d I Park the Honda?

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Not far from our house, a few months ago the neighbors parked an old Honda, circa 1990s, right along the road beside their house, and after the last storm, the Honda completely disappeared in the snow. Between the roof shedding snow and the work of the town plows, only a massive snow bank remained.

This week, the upper edge of the car’s roof returned. I noticed a window in the backseat had been left unrolled, just an inch.

In a weird kind of way, I’m keeping my tabs on the Honda, just out of sheer curiosity or what my kids would call nosiness. I’m pretty darn sure I’m not the only one in the neighborhood who’s interested to see how this story evolves. What’s the plan?

This week, we’ve had a mighty snowfall, a full day of rain, freezing rain, miserable cold, t-shirt balminess. Yesterday morning, I worked at our sunny kitchen table all morning while the cats slept on chairs beside me; in the afternoon, snow squalls surrounded the kids walking home from school.

In our domestic life, we’ve tears, laughter, and rage.

Yesterday afternoon, while the 13-year-olds baked chocolate chip cookies, their snowy clothes hung up to dry, I walked in the blue-hued twilight. And there it was — millions of snowflakes falling, utterly silent, from an origin unknown, steadily going about the work and beauty of winter.

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A Little Levity

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

Draw me a purple chicken, a kid asks me at the library — then adds, as he looks intently at me, please.

I love the kid world: what adult would take magic markering a chicken so seriously?

This might reflect simply my desire for funny things in a world that doesn’t seem particularly funny these days. After a long drive through a snowstorm — there’s a definite Driving in Snowstorms theme to these winter posts, I know, I know this — listening to VPR, I exclaimed about the craziness of makeshift food shelves for TSA workers who were working without pay. With two kids, how long could I go without my paychecks? Not too long.

So for lovers of consummate writing and of laughter, here’s the late Russell Baker’s Francs and Beans column I read early this morning, courtesy of my dad’s email.

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Yahtzee: another fine family January pastime