writing

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

Wild Discoveries

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 9 Comments

Walking through the town woods after dinner, listening to what must be one of the loveliest sounds on the planet — the wood thrush — my younger daughter says quietly, “Cub.”

Just ahead, where we were about step into a hayfield, a small black bear wandered, sniffing. We stood for a moment, admiring, then slowly backed away and headed back through the woods.

Walking, we remarked on the proliferation of wildlife we’ve seen this spring — the cub, bald eagles, a den of enchanting fox cubs just behind our house. While the human world is fragmented, the animal world seems to be filling in those cracks, closer and closer.

In Vermont’s May, every day the world appear more and more alive — the leaves unfurled more, and the dandelions higher. Sure, invasive dandelions have their place — or the curse — in the world, but a field of dandelions? Joy — thank goodness for spring.

Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May…

— James Russell Lowell

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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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State of the World, Here

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

My nearly-15-year-old and I went to Stowe today, so I could be x-rayed for the profoundly awful tooth surgery I had before Christmas last year. We haven’t been anywhere, this daughter and I, for about, oh, a pandemic’s age.

While she went biking, I waited outside, reading beside a blooming apple tree. Afterwards, I walked along the river and through emerald bright fields, and then met her back in town, beside the white congregational church.

For over a decade, I went to Stowe regularly and sold maple syrup and homemade ice cream and root beer at the farmers market, and made what will likely be the most money in my life. Eventually, I just wore out and gave my spot to someone else, and went on to something else….. Stowe’s an incredibly pretty Vermont village, with a river running through its mountain valley. But this closed-up town had changed immensely. Along the bike path, no one met our eyes, no one nodded and said hello — and even my teen noticed. What’s up with that? she asked.

The town where I live struggles with plenty of challenges, but it’s not a tourist destination. I already knew that where you live in Vermont made a difference — that schools in wealthy communities offer more than schools in poorer, rural areas — but we saw a glimmer of a different kind of difference, too. Vermont, for all its loveliness as a place to live, is hardly homogenous. May this suspicion be a passing phase, too.

Meanwhile, the beauty of May reigns — with gold daffodils, red tulips, our grass sprinkled with violets. Asparagus, spinach, mesclun….

Summer afternoon downpour
a flock of sparrows
hanging on to the grass

— Buson

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Photo by Gabriela

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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Not-So-Secret Crush

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, 11 a.m., like clockwork, I turn on Vermont Public Radio for the governor’s address. Sometimes my daughter takes a break from whatever high school endeavor she’s engaged in, and stops in the kitchen.

Are you actually listening? she asks.

Sometimes, raptly. Sometimes, I simply sink back into whatever email or work I’m doing. But I generally listen — and particularly listen to the commissioner of health, whom my daughters have taken to calling That Dr. Levine. Sometimes the press conference is jammed with news I’d rather not hear; the state’s unemployment rate is astronomical; Covid-19 seeped into a state prison.

But sometimes I laugh out loud — such as when Dr. Levine does a weekend shopping spot-check (although not frivolous, as he always buys an undisclosed item) and provides his estimated data about mask compliance by staff and shoppers. How much I’d love to see our state’s health commissioner standing in line with, say, a bag of oatmeal, calmly asking questions and dispersing info to fellow Vermonters.

Laugh on, daughters, but my older daughter shares that the doctors in the clinic where she works are all devoted Levine fans, too. Or maybe simply fans of adherence to science, honesty, calm in the face of despair and near panic, and steadfastness.

Here’s an article about free milk, farmers, and the Secretary of Agriculture — another reason I’m grateful to live in the Green Mountain State — despite the two inches of snow this morning.

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Photo by Gabriela Stanciu.