hope

Rain

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Rain fell yesterday morning. I stood in my dusty garden, thinking, Bring it on.

Halfway through the morning, the light held the thin green translucence, like we moved in a piece of sea glass that was alive.

All afternoon in my library, people wandered by, singly and in pairs — nothing more. Most had tidied up, wearing sundresses and ironed shirts — all with masks — as if swinging by the library was an outing. Which, perhaps, it likely was. We spoke with the same underlying uncertainy and loneliness, and a tender care with each other.

At the very end, I loaded up two bags for a 10-year-old hungry for books — my good deed for the day.

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Yes

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Driving home from work, I see my daughter and her friend walking through town, talking. I pull over, and they run across the road. We stand there for a little while, talking. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this at all. They tell me a little about kicking around a soccer ball that morning, and remark how hot the day has suddenly become.

They finish their walk, then we all go swimming.

These days, I sometimes think of my grandparents, whose lives were marked by the depression. As a kid, when we went out to eat with my grandmother, she’d swipe ketchup packets, because, she said, you never knew when you might need it.

For these teens, the pandemic will mark their lives, too. Someday, I imagine, they’ll be saying, remember when high school stopped, and we all stayed home?

They won’t forget. Sleepovers and cozy breakfast in the kitchen are on permanent hiatus, but summer is back. Sitting on the bank, watching them swim, I’m happy for just for this moment — sunlight and pollen-flecked water, croaking bullfrogs in the weeds, laughter — a little more childhood yet to come.

Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together…

― Tracy Kidder

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Photo by Gabriela Stanciu

Driving Lessons

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

In the evening, as the dusk moves in, we play hearts on the back porch, my feet wet from watering the garden. It’s dry, with no rain in the forecast but thunderstorms possibly moving in this weekend.

After dinner and dishes, before I water, the 15-year-old drives, and I sit in the passenger seat. She’s largely on her own these days while I’m at work. In the high school parking lot, I get out of the car and watch her park and back up and park again, over and over. At last, she stops and leans out the window. She’s taken an extra key and put it on her first key ring, beside our house door.

She grins at me, full of exuberance and joy. “Want a ride?” she asks, then pulls up beside me, leans over, and opens the door. “Let’s take the long way home.”

The world? Moonlit
Drops shaken
From the crane’s bill.

— Eihei Dōgen

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Day by Day

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

In library land — as if the masks aren’t enough — I keep reminding myself that the world isn’t the same. I’m not supposed to say, hey, kick off your shoes and relax. Lie down and read if you want.

In my library, an older woman comes in wearing a mask, looking for a locally written book that apparently no one can find. Maybe she has a copy. Maybe someone else in town has a copy. Do I? I don’t, but I manage to find one copy in a library in southern Vermont. That library, of course, appears to be closed.

A young couple arrives next, excited to print out a copy of their nursery license.

The afternoon passes in fits and starts. While I tackle the backlog of details, I listen to The Daily podcast about George Floyd’s funeral. A friend wanders in and leans against my desk, listening, too. By the end, we’re both weeping. I close my laptop and ask how her life is going. What’s happening? We stand apart, talking.

Shortly before I lock up for the night and head home, a woman and her daughter appear. The daughter shyly tells me, I’m in second grade now.

Goodness! I say.

She’s lost a front tooth.

We move outside, into the breeze and sunlight. I listen to her mother who’s working and in school. While I marvel at how she’s kept what appears to me an impossible life tougher, I keep looking at her little girl, holding a stack of library books. Step by step, I think.

I’ve seen enough things to know that if you just keep on going, if you turn the corner, the sun will be shining.

— Rev. Al Sharpton

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Listening

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Home from work in the late afternoon, I listened to my daughter share about her last day of virtual high school. Good God. I mean, what else can I possibly say to that?

As a writer and a mother, I’m feeling up against the wall these days. Who isn’t, really?

There’s no antidote but to move on, I know, as thoughtfully as possible, while trying to be as decent and kind as possible. In my world, that includes the wordlessness of watering my garden, listening to the geese winging their way over my head from one patch of open water to another. Listening…..

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made…

— Rebecca Solnit

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Photo by Gabriela Stanciu

Step by Step — Unlocking the Library Door

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 14 Comments

10 weeks ago I never imagined closing the little library where I’m the director and chief window washer — and yet, in mid-March, I suddenly taped a sign on the door, locked up, and went home.

Wednesday, I opened the door, the windows, wiped down the desk, and opened. A hummingbird appeared first, darting around the ceiling. Shortly afterward, a couple wearing masks came in. They wanted library cards and novels, and I listened to their story of driving north from Florida. In her house, she had caught hummingbirds with her hands, and stood staring at the crazed bird while her husband and I talked. In April, they had driven north, on interstates that were nearly empty. They were here to stay.

Shortly afterward, a trustee appeared, seeking a novel. Then we stood outside, spread apart on the grass. As a little rain slowly fell, we talked library business and money and raising kids and town gossip, standing near the library garden perpetually in need of weeding.

Another woman pulled into the parking lot, got out, and exclaimed, “You’re open!” Just before I walked back into the library, the hummingbird darted from the building, disappearing into the blooming lilac bush, hungry, beating its wings for dear life.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

― James Baldwin

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Photo by Gabriela Stanciu