#motherhood

Dribbles of Spring

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

Light returns in a rush in these clear sunny days, where the sun has warmth but the shadows are frigid. My daughter abandons her coat.

The days, once so slow with toddlers, spin along, dawn to evening to the night’s constellations, as if the final years of my youngest’s childhood have accelerated. Living on the edge of this small Vermont valley, the sky stretches out as much as it ever does in Vermont, unlike the endless horizons of the west. Come summer, this world will be dense with leaves and gardens, but for now, we’re living in layers of snow and sky, beginning that push-pull of warmth-cold heading toward spring.

What was difficult
was the travel, which,
on arrival, is forgotten.

― Louise Glück
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Teenagers Recite Poems

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Reluctantly, my daughter drags herself to a required high school poetry recitation.

While I chat with parents I haven’t seen in ages, I see her laughing with a boy she’s known since third grade.

Adolescents and poetry — how fun! One boy gives a comedic performance of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” beginning by asking the prompter, Where am I stopping now?

Another boy’s fingers tremble as he reads a particularly beautiful poem. A shy girl comes alive.

Afterwards, talking in the dark on the short drive home from the theater, my daughter tells me about each student, how they chose their two poems, and what their voice was like. My daughter’s second poem was Frost’s Two roads diverged in a narrow road, so familiar, such a beloved poem. Nervous for her first poem, Emily Dickinson, she gained her voice with the second, her eyes on the upper balcony, her voice clear, melodious, utterly her.

Tonight the bear
comes to the orchard and, balancing
on her hind legs, dances under the apple trees,
hanging onto their boughs,
dragging their branches down to earth.
From ‘The Bear” by Susan Mitchell
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Somewhere in Vermont’s February…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 11 Comments

Summers, the dawn is raucous with songbirds. In February, I stand outside in the dark, the cold swirling around my hands and head, hungry, hungry, it seems for my warmth. The icy snow makes the lightest tap against the kitchen window. We’re socked in by sleet and ice and snow in Vermont, the winter wrapping around us. When my daughters were little, how I chafed against those endless winter days. Now, I’m glad to be awake and working while the household sleeps. The cats have wandered downstairs for their breakfast, and curled up for their post-breakfast rest. Our house is warm; the daughters are well; the bills are paid; I have work.

Let the snow pile up. Among those many motherhood lessons is a solid carpe diem — and to log in a few more hours of work before the day drifts along….

Winter solitude—
In a world of one color
The sound of wind.

— Basho

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Birth Day

/ 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

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Little Gummy Bears

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

Dirty, grubby, road-salt-stained: that’s my midwinter boots.

Walking down Montpelier’s Main Street, on a whim I stop into Delish, the candy store. Not so long ago, my younger daughter eyed their door each time we walked by. Yesterday afternoon, on my way to meet someone for an interview at Capitol Grounds, I impulsively walked in, bought a small white paper bag of chocolate-covered gummy bears, and slid it in my backpack to take home to her.

I’ve been mothering — a mother — for twenty-one years now. Not a single day — and hardly an hour, it seems — has passed when I haven’t been actively or mentally engaged in parenting.

Now, my older daughter is all grown up, busily writing her own narrative about work and college and a complex network of friends. In our house, it feels like all of us are on precipices — of turning 21, of adolescence heading toward young adulthood, and myself. Even the cats are keeping busy. Midwinter? Oh yes.

Happy final day of January, 2020.

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Poetry, Philosophy, Piles of Snow

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Snow falls all night.

In the darkness, I lie awake thinking about a line from Karl Marx; “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances.” The line figures predominantly in the book I’m writing — the initial draft nearly finished. More than that, the line is one of the main questions of my life.

In our dark house, the cat and I stand at the back glass door, watching the snow drift down in the cone of the porch light. Upstairs, one daughter reads, the other sleeps. For a little while, the cat and I read on the couch. Just before I turn off the light and head back upstairs, I glance at the pile of index cards penned neatly in my younger daughter’s hand. For school, she has to choose a poem, memorize it, and recite it aloud. I lift the top card and read, Two roads diverged in a yellow wood….

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