Stories From the Past and Present

February 9, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

At just a little over zero degrees — the sun shining beautifully — my daughter and I went ice skating at the town’s rink. Set behind the elementary school, in an out-of-the-way field where burdock grow in the summer, the rink is the vision of one woman, coupled with 2″x6″s and a plastic liner and a lot of help.

I slipped off my mittens to pour a cup of hot chocolate. My hands nearly froze.

Small town life is generally cozy. We see each other’s kids grow up. By and large, we look out for each other. But every now and then, the underside, the other, deeper side of small town life appears. That same day, two different people appeared in my life from a long-ago part of my life. One was a woman. She and I exchanged stories. The other was a man who stole from me and my daughters.

My daughter with her red cheeks and I were on our way home. A friend leaned close to me and asked who was the stranger. I whispered to her, and then we left.

Long ago, I crossed out of any Pollyanna view of New England village life and into the realm of Sherwood Anderson and Ray Carver. I’m nearly finished Ensouling Language — a book that unexpectedly arrived in my post office box. I’d never heard of the author, Stephen Harrod Buhner, although the book from its opening lines writes in my familiar world, particularly of Lorca’s duende, of traveling in the wilderness, of baptism with dark waters.

As a woman writer, particularly, I often find myself pushing back against this cultural insistence to “make nice” and pretty things up. We live in an enchanting world, but the world’s waters are often dark, too, populated by saints and by thieves.

My daughter and I took our skates home, hung them up, and ate dinner.

A thousand thanks and more for this book.

Love is nice… but writing is too hard for love alone. Love is crucial for many reasons but it is not enough to get through [writing] the book. And whether you call it hate, or rage, or anger, or irritation, it is all some form of the same thing. You must have this hate, this rage to be a writer for this is one of the hardest professions on the planet and without rage you will never survive it. You will always run out of steam about page 60.

Photo by Molly S.

Birth Day

February 3, 2020 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Here’s the thing about being pregnant: you just don’t know. Forty weeks, give or take a few (generally), is a long time to wonder, who’s this little baby, anyway?

When my first daughter was born — after a long labor that eventually terminated in a caesarian — the obstetrician held her up in his gloved hands. My first reaction was immediate familiarity: I knew this baby. And that was just the beginning of World with Molly.

From the beginning — with birth’s blood — raising kids often seems like surprise after surprise: oh, you can nurse? you can walk? you can ride a bicycle? make me laugh? make me stay awake all night, worrying about you?

If parenting has taught me one thing, it’s how precious little I know — save, perhaps, the world is unimaginable without our kids.

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.

— James Joyce, Portrait of an Artist

A Note From Faraway

December 23, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Via a Christmas card, my younger daughter learns someone has been watching her fall soccer games online. While baking cookies, she watches a game, wondering what they’ve seen. From the kitchen table, I look up from my laptop and see a game filmed at her high school, the fields brilliant green.

The scene is so utterly typical small town Vermont: the cheering parents, the sunshot gorgeous autumn afternoon, the game narrated by a dad who’s clearly taking pleasure in being there. I remember the rush to get to those games, how parents juggle work, rushing to the sidelines, asking how far along is the game? What’s the score? How many of your kids’ soccer games do you get to watch in a lifetime, anyway?

In this zero-degree day, we stand in the kitchen, eating warm gingerbread cookies, watching her team. The game and that sunlight looks too good to be true. What luck, I think.

Parenthood, like death, is an event for which it is nearly impossible to be prepared.

— Rachel Cusk

#10 Pond. Summer swimming currently on hold. Calais, Vermont.

November 13, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

The full moon gleams in the sky this morning as I head out to start my daughter’s car this pre-dawn morning.

Winter, my familiar friend.

Yesterday, chatting with my neighbor while we’re back to our traditional winter activity — snow shoveling — he said laughingly, Well, what are we going to do? Be mad about it?

Winter, dear friend, I now know you very, very well, in your elegant beauty. This year, I’m going to love you wholly — for at least two weeks.

Here’s a few Rebecca Solnit lines for this impeachment hearing week.

Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world.

Silent November News

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

As if there was any lingering doubt, yesterday’s first snowfall marked a definitive end to the swimming season. And a beginning to the Winter Boot Season.

Sitting in a meeting in Burlington, Vermont, I stare through the window at the clouds pressing low over the slate-hued lake, the snow spitting at first — flake by flake — then sprinkling like a giant basket of milkweed seeds and fluff turned upside down.

Already? I think. Winter? And in my next heartbeat, spring oddly feels not so far off. In January, of course, this will be a different story, our house banked in by snow, my hands longing to sink into the earth.

But for now, there’s just that snow silently drifting into the lake, melting.

I don’t know why it made me happy to see the pond ice over in a day,
turning first hazy, then white.

— Jane Kenyon

Pre-snow! Calais, Vermont

Little Cabbages

October 13, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

While spectating my daughter’s soccer game, I surreptitiously watch a little boy dig a small hole in the frost-killed grass. He’s met a new friend, I surmise, another younger sibling, and the two of them make homes for a handful of plastic dinosaurs — nests the boys call them.

On their knees, they’re completely entranced. When the game’s over, they wander away, each to their own family.

In our garden, it’s Brussels sprout season now. Beneath the black edges, the tiny vegetables are perfectly green, tender as spring.

My favourite vegetable, without a doubt,
Is the humble, but holy, Brussels sprout.

— Angela Wybrow

Stony Soil Vermont

Vermont Writing

#grateful