gratitude

Small Town Vermont Connections

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 12 Comments

Rain falls heavily not long after dawn, and I close the windows, the cats in the upstairs hallway watching me silently. The rain pounds on the metal roof. Too hot to sleep in the night, too noisy now — if that’s not a metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.

Three years divorced, I’m back in court, seeking child support — maybe just one payment? — but he’s not there. He’s elsewhere, traveling, his pockets full of under-the-table cash. In the afternoon, I’m in another Vermont county, in another courthouse, for another hearing, having worked in a library between the two, made an interview phone call on a bench beneath two enormous maple trees. Tell me about your farm program for kids and please ignore the ambulance siren whizzing down the street. Hot, hot, I’m barefoot, my hand sweating on my notebook.

In the courthouse — through a metal detector again — I wash my face in the women’s room and admire the high ceiling, the marble tiles. This courthouse — like the one in Orleans County where I’ve also been — were built with such craft, such pride, such respect and belief in law.

While rain crashes on my roof this morning, I remember that courtroom — those who are paid to be there, and those who aren’t — how desire in its myriad forms snakes through all of us. The public defender and I are introduced. A few years back, he was an attorney on a wind tower protest case involving people I knew. He doesn’t look at any of us. Instead, he gathers his files, says, That was in my other lifetime, and leaves. I’ll likely never know, but I can’t help but wonder, What’s his story?….

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention…

— Mary Oliver

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A Creamy Moon…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

… rose over the hillside. Like a surprise, the moon simply appeared.

All day long it often seems, I go about moving things — words, dishes, weeds. Laundry from the line to the basket. My own sometimes tired bones. Then the moon, rising infinitely serene and wise.

After a late soccer game, the girls sat at table outside, the air abruptly cooling as the sun began to sink. The girls kept eating strawberries, shortcake, whipped cream. A forkful dropped on the table.

There you are, my daughter said to the moon, laughing. A hello from her to this heavenly sphere. July.

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White Mountains. Hiking with my brother. Photo by Jess.

Home

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 11 Comments

Nearly two years ago we moved into our house — from the house where my daughters had lived their whole lives. Now, two years in, this new-to-us 100-year-old house, the house has morphed into home, with a particular shade of yellow I painted the dining room, our first chicken buried in the backyard, the front porch filled with piles of library books, Yahtzee score cards marked up, kid sweatshirts.

Infinitely lucky we three females are, to move five miles down the road, from a forest to a town, our cardboard boxes ferried by friends.

Here’s my State 14 postcard.

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The Black Line Within a Tulip

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

While the big fad out there is to number things and experiences — the 10 best things to do with your whining toddler — and important stuff like that, one of my minor goals for the summer is to just soak up experiences as a kind of antidote to the ravages of last winter. By that, I mean the subzero days and nights of blowing snow.

In our house, we’re not going to count the days of summer, either. Why put a number on that?

Saturday morning, the younger sister sees the first of the red tulips we planted last fall has opened. She runs back in the house and demands her sister come out, and look down, into the flower. With the day ahead of us, come hell or high water, we stand there, the three of us, for a long moment, gazing down.

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Brief Water Interlude

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

In the rain, the girls pushed the kayaks into the water. The wind blew up, and I sat on the shore, my plan to lie on the grass and read foiled. Later, I went down to the end of the pond and sat at the edge while the rain washed through and sunlight sprinkled the water. The inky black head of a loon surfaced.

The girls paddled over to me, laughing. A heron cut across the cloudy sky. The peepers chorused busily. A boy appeared with his fishing pole.

This cold May: every day, a little more green, a bit more Technicolor, antidote to That Winter…

…here deep in the mountain
everywhere the sound of the pines.

— Ryōkan

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Teen Somersaults

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

The rain cleared in the early evening, and my daughter and I hung out on her trampoline while she waited for her friend. She’s a pro; I’m a novice. Eventually, I lay back and stared at the clouds breaking apart, and the enormous box elders behind  our house, leafing out.

She, at nearly 14, demonstrated all the moves that can be done on a trampoline. In her face, I could see the sweet impishness of her earliest years.

Rain, rain this May. There’s a kind of rightness to this, the earth and the ponds and the saplings and plants rushing headlong toward green and procreation. May is the season for this, and there’s a sweet satisfaction in the daily discoveries of what’s grown each day. May: bring it on!

Why speak of the use
of poetry? Poetry
is what uses us.

—Hayden Carruth