Brett Ann Stanciu's Blog, page 42

Keep Walking.

The summer people are still summering it up around the lake. In a few more weeks, these noontime walks will be me and the goldenrod. The kids will be back in school, the adults back in the adult world.

Walking, I can’t help but take stock of the summer. In a quiet way, this has been a summer of learning for me. Perhaps more than anything else, I’ve started to let go of how hard I hold onto time. I stop and talk to the gardener who often seems to be mowing under a wooden split rail fence. I see him just as he’s turned off the motor, and we talk for a while about phlox and coreopsis, milkweed and butterflies. He’s been gardening around this lake for over forty years, and he’s in no particular rush for anything.

The day has warmed since the cool of the early morning when I left my house. I’ve had plenty of coffee and there’s a long stretch of day ahead. With the toe of his boot, he brushes grass clippings from the mower. He asks how far I intend to walk.

Not far, I answer.

He says he’ll offer me a piece of advice: go further than my plan. Walk around the next curve in the path.

In his mirrored sunglasses I see myself, a small woman in a blue dress. I agree, All right.

He nods and starts the mower again.

Sunflowers.

I began planting mammoth sunflowers years ago because I wanted flowers in my garden to tower over my children. There’s an old photo I have of my toddler walking barefoot among enormous stalks. I planted a veritable swath of sunflowers this spring. Late summer is the pay-off season, when the first of these blossoms open. The first head is so enormous it can’t really do its follow-the-sun heliotrope deal — but its flower siblings shift all day.

One fall, a number of years back, I had just two of these beauties, so much taller than myself. After the snow fell and the birds cleaned every scrap of seed, I cut off the dried blossom and propped it on a ceiling beam. The sunflower remained there all winter.

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower…

— Galway Kinnell

Solo.

Every summer for years now, my daughters and I have gone camping on Burton Island in Lake Champlain. We always bring the same friend of my youngest daughter. Sometimes another friend and sometimes my oldest hasn’t come. This year for all kinds of reasons, I went alone for a night.

I stopped first to visit a friend and meet his friendly sheep. Then I raced to the ferry. Rain and clouds had moved out. The island has no cars, so the atmosphere is particularly sweet. Little kids bike everywhere. A group of teenage boys had set up a small army of tents, bikes, and fishing poles.

I had brought what I needed for the night: a novel, my knitting, a winter hat, the recently printed out version of my manuscript, and a good pair of walking shoes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a single mother, it’s make friends with strangers. Much to my daughters’ annoyance, I often find someone to chat with at soccer games, the co-op, the post office. A kind of survival skill on many levels. But I wasn’t there to chat. I walked around the island on its slate-pebbled shores in the daylight, during the enchanting sunset, and in the dark. As the night fell dark, the tree frogs sang melodiously. I slept dreamlessly under the rising moon. In the morning, I drank coffee and read and read until I packed up my few things and headed back to the ferry.

The island, a state park, is mostly staffed by college kids, who are polite and enthusiastic. The young man on the ferry folded up the wildflower guide he was reading to roll a few bikes on the ferry.

On my way home, I realized next summer I could take my kayak and stay a few nights on Champlain’s islands. I can’t swim to save my life but surely that’s something I could learn.

A few lines from Dan Chaon’s Sleepwalk:

“No doubt, a day of reckoning for mankind is coming, yet even for those of us who accept the inevitability of mass human death, there’s still a cautious hope; we’re waiting to see how Armageddon plays out, keeping an eye open for ways it might turn to our advantage… I’m no evolutionary biologist, but I have faith in our species’ stick-to-it-iveness.”

— Dan Chaon

August: Complex Fatigue

On this August evening, a sparrow flies out of the wild raspberries along my walk and startles me just the slightest. Stunned a little from its flight through the leaves and small prickles, the sparrow fumbles from foot to foot on the path and then rises up on its wings and disappears. The swifts are out, too.

A downpour has fallen and the humidity has thickened right up again. I walk through the village, and folks are hanging out on porches. A three-quarters moon hangs over the empty high school soccer field, stunning. I’d write that it’s otherworldly in its beauty — but in this slow, sticky night it’s hard to imagine a sweeter world, even this one chockfull with chaos.

In the heat, tempers are either short or silly. Tomorrow is Vermont’s primary, so much fervor, and I wonder what all that might come to. In the evening, I talk to my cat, a tête-à-tête about why he cowers at the slightest noise, as if the house might be under attack by coyotes. You’re a housecat, I remind him, one of the most pampered creatures on the planet. He looks at me, poor ignorant thing that I am, and wisely keeps his ears pressed down and low like a spooked owl.

August. Time to share again one of the loveliest poems.

The world is a 

complex fatigue. The moth tries

once more, wavering desperately

up the screen, beating, insane,

behind the geranium. It is an

immense geranium,

the biggest I’ve ever seen,

with a stem like a small tree

branching, so that the two thick arms

rise against the blackness of

this summer sky, and hold up

ten blossom clusters, bright bursts

of color.

Hayden Carruth, “August First”

Rambling Along…

Hot, in the best kind of truly humid summer heat, the heat that brings me back to those endless childhood summers when a summer was endless and not merely a few heartbeats. In a strange kind of way, the heat rejuvenates me. I wake early, work hard, then finish my chores as the day funnels down to swimming.

At a nearby garage, I pick up my car. There’s no one there in the empty building, the side doors rolled all the way up to ceiling. I stand there, listening to traffic and watching shadows from the trees flicker over the cement floor.

Two women come in and tell me they’re limping along a Toyota Rav with a flat tire. One woman wears wool socks and winter boots, and I think, Of course you’re from Maine. They’re both much younger than me, nearly bouncing with excitement, and I ask what brings them here. They’re checking the world out. Their excitement is the brightest thing I’ve seen all day. The woman with the wool socks says with a smile, Could do with some rain.

I answer, It’ll rain. She looks at me as if my assurance is farfetched. I add, Eventually, and then wander behind the garage looking for the man to write a check. The garage is on the riverbank. I look at the shallow water. Get a move on, I think. There’s plenty to do. But I live in Vermont. There aren’t that many days in a year I can wear a sundress and not wish for a sweater.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

This year, I planted the garden how I was drawn to this patch of earth in spring — not how I thought I should plant it. For years now, I’ve been the most diligent of gardeners — all those tidy rows of beets and broccoli. This year, I ate some radishes and let the rest go to seed and flower. Marigolds run rampart. I duck beneath the sunflowers. Somewhere in the calendula the peppers are hidden.

There’s a definite metaphor here, a clear lesson, but to heck with that. August and flowers. They’ll last little enough as it is.

July 31. Swim.

The dog is a new thing in our lives. My oldest daughter lives nearby with a sweet and curious dog. Yesterday, we brought the dog into our house to meet our two house cats. One cat remained on the kitchen table in his beloved cardboard box (I know, I know who allows things like this? a cat in a box on the kitchen table not for an hour or a day but for months?), paw crooked over the edge of the box, looking at the dog in the cool disdainful way of felines. Our other cat trembled in the doorway, holding his ground. Curious, cautious, verging on endearing and ridiculous. The dog seemed just happy to be there.

We decided to swim and took a giant floatie shaped like a pineapple that I had bought last year for camping. Jammed in the trunk, the floatie hung over the backseat which bothered the dog, who moved into the passenger seat. My daughters sat in the back under the floatie. I drove and talked to the dog. The wind blew in through the windows, muting my daughters’ voices. So many miles I drove with kids in the back, looking over my hands on the steering wheel. For few miles, I was back in the world of young motherhood.

Despite the heat, the lake wasn’t crowded in the least. A woman walked down the sandy path holding a beer can. She and the group at the far end exclaimed that they hadn’t seen each other in thirty years. My oldest whispered, Thirty years? I answered, What’s thirty years, really, forgetting entirely for a moment my daughter is far younger than thirty.

The drive to the lake was a short one. After swimming, we went up the road to the general store and ate pizza on the deck. We chatted with people we saw all the time, and some we hadn’t seen in years. The dog — good creature — waited patiently.

The Ineffable.

About this authenticity question?

I was at a political forum last night where two lead candidates for Peter Welch’s US Rep seat each took their turn answering questions from moderators and the audience. The forum was held at Jenna’s House, an empty church transformed into a community space and recovery center. Naturally, the questions centered on addiction and recovery. The space is beautifully redone, warm and welcoming. I pulled into the parking lot and spoke with a founding family member. He was standing in a warm rain beneath an umbrella, welcoming in guests. He said, I hope you enjoy yourself tonight.

Here’s the thing about the recovery world: all pretense has long ago been stripped away. The recovery world so often is portrayed as the unfortunate, the damaged, the weak, the outsiders. But these people in one way or another have lived through terrible things. Loss is no stranger to anyone here, and that changes the social landscape. I’ve met a generosity and openness and — honestly — kindness here that often seems absent from the take-care-of-your-own-family-first middle class realm.

The church’s inside was well-lit. I sat with a woman I’ve met here and there, and we talked about knitting and cancer and working. All the windows and doors were open. Rain fell. In a little while, a man would speak about the death of his sister when she was 26. I keep returning to this sweet place because I like these people — they’re funny and wry and warm — but I’m also amazed by them. In their own terrible grief, they chose to open their hearts.

Afterwards, I drove back to Hardwick along the river valley — so green in midsummer — listening to the radio and in no particular rush. The rain had passed by the time I was home, and the world sparkled for a bit before the night set down in earnest. Five years into living at this house, the hydrangeas I planted that first summer have finally blossomed magnificently, profoundly here for the duration.

My teenager was eating blueberries and talking on the phone with her sister. In a year, I’ll expect she’ll be shortly headed into her young woman life. But for this evening, I cleaned up the cat’s lettuce vomit and boiled water for tea. I had about ten things that all seemed important. Instead, I walked barefoot through the wet grass to the mint that escaped my herb garden and plucked a few leaves for tea. Washed with rain, the air smelled ineffably sweet.

“But along with the feeling of ineffability, the conviction that some profound objective truth has been disclosed to you is a hallmark of the mystical experience, regardless of whether it has been occasioned by a drug, meditation, fasting, flagellation, or sensory deprivation. William James gave a name to this conviction: the noetic quality. People feel they have been let in on a deep secret of the universe, and they cannot be shaken from that conviction.” 

— Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

Authenticity.

With a stranger, I have a passing conversation regarding a documentary about Gabor Maté. My father recommended the documentary. I originally pointed my father in the direction of Maté when I picked up In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts in a house where my daughters were catsitting. And so it goes…

This stranger, too, has coincidentally just seen the documentary. We’re standing outside the post office, talking, the afternoon sun bright in our eyes. The documentary is about drama and authenticity. I ramble on about authenticity, how I once considered an authentic life something like enjoying cheese, whether it was artisan cheese or Velveeta, just really leaning into life. What an utterly superficial understanding of authenticity, I muse.

What about doubt? What about fear?

This morning, fog lies in the valley, forerunner of fall. Authentic as all get-out.

“You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.” 

― Jane Hirshfield

Clouds.

Saturday morning, I pick up a stack of library books at a town just north of where I live. As I drive away, I see an acquaintance crossing the road with a baby against his shoulder. This is a tiny town with a white-fenced green in its center where a farmers market has sprawled. I stop my Subaru in the middle of the road and jump out. “Let me see your baby!”

The baby is beautiful, its cheeks fat beneath a sunhat, rosebud mouth gnawing on a blanket.

The father and I talk just for a moment. He shares the baby’s name, and I tell him how rarely I seem to see infants these days. A car appears behind us, and I get back in my car. As I’m leaving, the father calls after me that he loved my book.

Driving home, I pass Lake Eligo, a deep glacial cut, all the blues and greens I can think of mixed into this sunlight-glittering beauty. From work, I know the skinny roads around this lake, and I follow a dirt lane to a dead-end. I park and wander down to the wetland shore. I’m thinking of an essay I’m writing about my last pregnancy, puzzling over how to arrange pieces of time. What makes sense? A linear timeframe, but we experience the world beyond the linear timeframe of course.

The lake empties both north and south, an anomaly, too. The planet is burning up, but the edge of this lake is almost cool. A bullfrog bellows in the weeds. I let those words and that writing koan slip away. For this moment, I’m in no rush. Clouds, water, and the reflection where they meet fill my sight.