travel

Brief Interlude

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

At dusk — after eight, as we’re heading, day by day, towards the solstice — I sit in my daughter’s car with the windows unrolled while my girls are in the grocery store, getting just one thing but likely wandering around. The local police chief, off duty, comes out, and he and I talk about the weather and raising kids. For just a few moments, a kind of normalcy descends through that dusk, as I sit there, holding the car keys, my feet dusty from the garden on the dashboard.

The day has been an exquisite, sun-filled day, of work and gardening and dinner on the back porch. Memorial Day Saturday is generally the very busiest day of the year in our town, with a parade and fair and fireworks, but this year, it’s just the two of us in that otherwise empty parking lot, agreeing at the blessedness of this early summer.

The way I see it, I've got a second wind
and on the radio an all-night country station.
Nothing for me to do on this road
but drive and give thanks:
I'll be home by dawn.

 

From “Rest” by Richard Jones

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Opening….

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

Here’s a strange thing — we had bring-your-own dinner on our lawn last night, around the fire, with two friends — socially distant, with an awful lot of chatting and catch up.

Now, I’m beginning to accept that our world will never return to how I once understood it, even a few months ago. But how, and when, will we begin to understand each other again? Relate to each other? Be with each other? So much uncertainty.

Maybe this is how the world begins to open up again — eating chili on the grass, smoke drifting over the garden, my daughter’s friend bundled in her coat, a hat jammed on her head, laughing.

When you truly understand one thing—a hawk, a juniper tree, a rock—you will begin to understand everything.

― Ellen Meloy, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild

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Squill

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

We’re into the third calendar month of the Stay Home order — I know this only by the date and time in the upper corner of my laptop — pretty much my compass to the exterior world these days. That — and an ongoing scrawl in a notebook that lists chores I cross off one by one to keep my paycheck coming. The paycheck I’m immensely grateful for.

These days, the old demons arise  — what am doing with my life? How have I failed my children? Is it normal my youngest wants to go anywhere else (yes, resoundingly, I know that is).

At the end of a rainy afternoon, as the weather parts, my daughters insist I trek through the raspberry and blackberry brambles behind our house. On the other side of the brambles, they show me an apple tree surrounded by emerald grass, and tiny blue squill sprinkled everywhere. They caution me not to step on the flowers.

This is Vermont spring — wet and muddy, largely brown, studded with small radiant flowers. Everyday, the green insistently pushes forward, brighter and stronger. That’s where we are.

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Photo by Gabriela Stanciu

Spring Beauties

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

To combat my lousy mood, my daughter suggests I go for a run. It would be better for everyone if you did, she says.

In week whatever, on day whatever, I run through town, seeing only two older women with masks, walking the standard 6 feet apart, and a few teenagers on bikes. There’s no one else I’ve seen for weeks, it seems. Eerily, I wonder if this is what the end of the world feels like.

In the woods behind the high school, I run up through the sugarbush, where moss greens up the forest floor in places. Then, around a bend, I suddenly see spring beauties — a whole forest field of these tiny, perfect white and pink blossoms.

Later, returning home to play a few more rounds of Uno, I know the run has done its magic. To that field of enchantment, where no one else perhaps has walked that day, I think — thank you, little wildflowers and daughter.

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Kitchen office

Slanted World

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

In the evening, we walk on a narrow footpath through a cedar forest where I’ve never been. In a worn-down kind of fog, short of sleep, I abruptly realize the trees are somewhat slanted. Through the forest, the dwindling light highlights scattered bit of white birch bark.

Ending, we descend backwards through a trail I’ve walked up many times. From this angle, coming down along a hillside, we hear a running stream. Save for the three of us, we see no one else in the town forest.

Someday, of this strange time, I’ll remember the unusual kindness and intimacy of people towards each other. That day, taking photos of our friends’ farm, my friend walked out of her greenhouse, and we stood apart in the road, just talking, sharing pieces of what’s going on in our lives. She asked my daughters’ plans, and what’s going on with them.

In other days, maybe we would have hugged. But over and over, in this time, I find myself exchanging only words — what we’re afraid of, what we’re struggling with, sometimes threads and stories of our past — who we’ve been and who we might want to be again.

It’s a fragile time, these days. We’ll remember these endless, daily walks, too, threading through our lives, stitching us together. Take heart, friends. Day by day.

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Phone Chat

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

To save some cash, I switch cell phone companies, and I realize,  while I’m on the phone with the representative, that she’s working at home when she talks to her dog.

Knowing this opens up our conversation, and I learn her husband likes to turn down the heat, they’ve been living in Phoenix for two years, and she sought out this job because she likes the company so much. I’m amazed, because I never considered working for a phone company an interesting career option. She insists the people are all just so darn nice. It’s a great job.

While she types in my info, she hums faintly. I hear a screen door squeak open, and her husband’s voice. We chat about the coronavirus, and what it’s like to work only from home, for week after week.

When she’s finished setting up my phones, she wishes me good luck and welcomes me to the company family. I feel weirdly delighted. I don’t even know this woman’s name.

Somewhere along the way, I’ve more or less resigned myself to a kind of lone wolf existence — raising kids and gleaning work hours — and much of the work I do requires solitude. But this coronavirus existence has made me realize how valuable are our slenderest connections.

When I hang up, I step over my daughters who are sprawled on the rug doing a workout in preparation for bikini season. The cat wanders between them, clearly confused, likely wondering, What now? I step out on the back porch. Snowflakes are twirling down. Summer? Hello? I wonder.

Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors… disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected… One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.

― Rebecca Solnit

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