What Are You Saying?

September 22, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

The other day, I let a very pregnant woman and her little daughter who was eating an ice cream sandwich step ahead of me in line at the co-op. Outside, on the street, the woman buckled her child into a carseat. I stepped into the passenger seat of my daughter’s car.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that my daughter — now fully an adult with adult responsibilities — was a little girl, too.

Yesterday, on a rocky hike in the White Mountains, she and I walked down the mountain together, while my younger daughter and my brother outpaced us.

At four, ice cream sandwiches were a very big deal. At four, this daughter was obsessed with snipping up paper with kid-sized scissors. At twenty, we talk about what it’s like to be a woman in this world, about going to school and work, about family and friends, and how things sometimes go awry.

Beneath all this, while we walked from the ridge down into the cool forest where the leaves were just beginning to turn an autumn gold, I kept thinking of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Talking to Strangers. Since she became a teenager, I’ve returned to this thought over and over — what are you really saying? What’s the subtext beneath your words? Some of that subtext I know, some tugs at my own guilt and trepidation, and some is just pure joy, knowing this young woman in a richer way.

What is required of us is restraint and humility.

— Malcolm Gladwell

Woodchuck

September 19, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Geese fly overhead in the dark evening, so near I hear their wings beating. Frost hovers, gathering strength.

Yeah, my daughter says, that’s what geese do. They’re out of here!

The garden’s gone wild at the end of the season, its queen the mightiest and heaviest sunflower head I’ve ever grown. Its stalk might rival a sturdy sapling.

The woodchuck’s gnawing my cabbage heads near the garden gate. In another year, I might have set the trap, but this year…. Gnaw on, chuck. Winter’s coming. The cabbages are profuse.

A touch of cold in the Autumn night –
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

— T. E. Hulme’s “Autumn”

Mooncrazed

September 14, 2019September 14, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Walking beneath the full moon last night, my younger daughter remarks how quickly the moon rises. Our conversation winds into the complexities of the moon phases, and I finally I admit I just don’t know the answer, but my father would.

Although we’re wearing jackets and jeans, the evening’s particularly warm for fall, the moon creamy and luscious. In the dark, flying geese overhead honk.

I mention something about “heavenly bodies,” and — despite my vehemence that this is, indeed, legitimate, these heavenly bodies — my daughters insist that’s too weird.

I don’t use my past reply about common knowledge, because my kids now have this kind of common language that might as well be from some remote Amazonian tribe to my ears. Apparently, I’m one of the last humans in their world to know this term “VSCO girl,” although the subtext beneath the so-called VSCOing activities and accessories remains a little vague to me. Likewise, when I shared some historical lore about the preppy movement (I notice Amazon has helpfully described the official handbook as facetious in case anyone missed that), I’m met with disinterest until I mention the flipped-up collar trend.

That’s just bad taste, both daughters immediately agree.

In 30 years, the full moon will grace Friday the 13 again. Walking along a dirt road in a light breeze, the girls mention how old each of us will be in 30 years. 30 years, I say, is a long time. And then: I was 30 when I became a mother.

Few lights shine in houses along the road. There’s no one else around. Back at our house, the moon is barely creeping over the horizon. We sit on the back porch while the moon rises, quickly. A luminous, heavenly globe.

Ordinary Pick-Up

September 12, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

In the high school parking lot, we stand waiting for the kids to return from a soccer game, the air wet and unexpectedly warm. I remember the sunny crispness of that 9/11 morning when my two-year-old tricycled around the kitchen. There’s none of that, in this day alternately soggy or overly warm.

The bus comes, the kids get off, the bus goes, and still we stand there, talking and laughing, with our girls holding their bags now. The coach drives home.

One girl looks around. “It’s just us,” I say. Overhead, the clouds lift and moonlight shines down. We pause, and the mist ambles in.

Want “meaningless” Zen?
Just look — at anything!

— Old Shōju

Climb a Mountain, Portage a Kayak, Eat Ice Cream

September 10, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

So much for summer. So long, summer, and diving off kayaks and swimming. Hello, autumn.

Here’s a few scenes from exploring glacier-cut Groton, Vermont.

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

— Eihei Dōgen

Drinking Water Beneath the Moon

September 6, 2019 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

After a day of one thing after another, we suddenly arrive back at home together — my older daughter returning from a 12-hour shift, my teenager and a friend dropped off by another mother. I stand in the driveway talking with this mother, while my daughter runs in the house and hurries back with a gift of eggs from her chickens.

The little neighbor boys, munching dropped apples, wander over full of pleasure and wonder at seeing us, as only four- and two-year-old are. What are you doing? they ask. An existential question, I whisper to my friend. The teenagers are ravenous and cannot stop talking. Leftovers, I suggest. Put the leftovers in the oven for dinner.

Later, the girls have disappeared into the dark. I leave a sinkfull of dirty dishes and sit outside beneath the crescent moon. The neighbors have put their children to bed. It’s just me and the crickets and that autumn chill creeping in. Over the horizon, the sky turns a dark-turquoise shade of blue to impermeable black. Beneath this, the girls run up the road, out of breath, laughing.