2.6.13 Adrienne Rich, Across The Lawns

Neighbors in One Small Town

Adele Dawson Conservation Area, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA

Thirty years ago we somehow bought an old farmhouse set smack in the middle of a small working class New England town in Western Massachusetts, across the street from the gossip ridden front yard of the Post Office, kitty corner from the neighborhood grocery store, down the Main Street from the tiny Public Library, open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5-7, and across the street from the ardent Poet and Activist Adrienne Rich.   

In 1979, She and her partner had purchased an historic brick home replete with aged, fern-green double doors, a brick walkway leading from the rumpled sidewalk, and a low wrought iron fence surrounding the front yard shaded by aged Maples.                                                                          

                                                                                               

 In 1982 my not-yet-husband and I bought our three family home with an enormous old barn complete with  a tunnel that allowed cars to drive under the house into a small back yard. Our home was sold to us by Jan Raymond , who at the time was an acquaintance of Rich's, both of them peers with  Audre Lorde, Mary Daly, and many other women working hard to develop clarity-laden  contributions to the developing  feminist dialogue. Ms. Raymond later became well known both for her then vehement opposition to the transgender movement, and what she felt was the grave physical danger from The Morning After Pill. 

 I had, before becoming a parent, been well versed in feminist dialogue, activism and writings, had my socks blown off by ‘Against Our Will’ By Susan Brownmiller, and despite having a partner who studied Race, Class and Gender, had struggled a great deal to find my own ideological and day-to-day way over time. For this reason, we were both amazed to find ourselves living in a town that in some ways could be said to have given birth to the No Nukes movement, which my partner was pivotally involved in, and was this remarkable hotbed of feminist consideration.                

         

Further down the small street held the home of our next-door neighbor, who became a wonderful acquaintance, living and working in her home, quietly editing a Lesbian separatist literary rag that was quite brilliant and thought provoking. Her neighbor was the owner of a small neighborhood business, who delighted in kind Halloween gags for the visiting kids, and disliked people of color. Their neighbors were a friendly couple who were also quietly anti-Semitic, their neighbors Jewish, the father the Principal for a local school, their neighbors an older working class couple who kept their yard up as one would care for one's soul, their neighbors also an older working class couple who had had several children, had each always worked two jobs their entire lives, and gave away produce from an abundant garden to everyone and anyone up and down the street.                   

                                                                                               

In the evenings, when the weather was at all tolerable, all difference seemed pushed aside, as skies darkened, stars gradually revealed themselves, neighborhood bats began their evening ritual of feeding with an occasional curious sweep by the heads of passerbys ,  and the entire neighborhood‘s inhabitants could be seen engaged in the neighborhood ritual of an evening walk around the block.

Today I live next to the town of Amherst, where I frequently pass by Julius Lester, writer, professor, photographer and musician, as he peruses the stacks at the library or goes about his business through this small town, and I try hard not to stare as I recount to myself all of his writings and contemplations, simply imagining how all of those erupted from the older man I see making his way in his day.

             

In this town one would wake, look out the window upon the day, and see Adrienne Rich or her partner or friends wandering out front to get into their cars or walk down the street to the small grocery store, or show up quietly at Montague Old Home Days, where you could dunk the person who serviced your furnace,  or buy cookies from the people who showed up in the middle of the night for your chimney fire.

In a small town, chimney fires are always a popular draw. They are somewhat self contained, and to our surprise there would be this surfeit of firefighters crowding your small home, bonking things down the chimney to dislodge the fiery mass, while surreptitiously examining your living room and kitchen and interior decorating choices, all of which would soon become rabid community fuel the next day,  which occurred continuously in front of the next door Post Office. Our kitchen window was about 10 feet from the site of this social phenomena, and early on we discovered, sitting eating breakfast, that we would be listening to the ever changing crowd discussing what 70 year old Stella had done the night before when riding her bike home, how long it took for Mr. Walsey to catch his once again escaped Beagle, or who was late paying their taxes.           

When Adrienne Rich wandered about her hometown, those of us who actually knew who she was tried hard not to stare, whereas many residents did not realize who she was, or what she had written, or where she had been invited to speak. This small town did afford a degree of anonymity that the events she read at or spoke at did not- events with their predictable crowds pulling close and gazing upon a crone who had made the journey elders make when, alive and awake and aware, they keep up with their traveling and then recount for others the passage of their days; the fruit of their labors.

Adrienne Rich wrote from her blood and her long journeys and her convictions, and then in those days, was found drinking tea in her back yard next door to a dear friend of mine. Most days I would find myself across the broad main street, settled in to help with her youngest or scramble to give all the young ones their afternoon snack, while my own oldest child ran and yelled and played with their small friends.

Here,  I would often lounge with a group of young mothers  upon old rain-weakened wooden chairs, cheerful tablecloths pulled tight across makeshift tables, the elder apple trees shielding us from a bristling summer sun, as we laughed , sharing our own private and socio-political struggles.  Before us, our delighted naked young smashed about in muddened driveway puddles and made boats out of bark and leaf, raced in and out of small plastic pools and rolled about in the tall grasses, crumbs of snacks and dribbles of apple cider streaming down chins and chests, their cheeks sunburnt, their hair invariably stiffened with spewed materials that resulted from playing with a hose and the endless murky creations churned from plants and berries and sand.

There we were, in our mid and late twenties, nursing or done nursing babies, changing nappies, sharing parenting concerns and discussing the world and race and sexual politics in the midst of our own personal evolution.

Across those shaded summer yards sat Adrienne Rich with her partner, a wide variety of friends and a stream of ardent visitors, come to this unique small town she chose to make her own. And there they all were, all of them daily conversing with intensity, no longer interrupted by a child who fell or needed a nap, but rather living, breathing older women, happily laughing, their china teacups perched on small cafe tables, as they leaned close, taking with such earnest intent. In yards side by side, we sat in the gathering dusk, mosquitoes awakening, the predictable simmering fatigue of small ones in one backyard, while there they were, the gathering of elder women, relaxed, leaning back, turning then to smile across the distance of  hedges toward our  screeching young ones and letting their gaze fall upon us, the more recent born females, as we, smitten, shyly glanced back.

It is only now that, at 60, I imagine the possible recollection of their own experience with birth and motherhood and transformation of lives, as they gathered, speaking, arguing and building thought with one another; as they turned toward us, day after day to observe a version of their sometimes younger selves across the shaded yards. It is only now, with the compilation of time, history, their writings and impact upon our history, that I can consider what had become  the gradual un-rending of their day to day lives as they aged, as they grew slowly into an existence that completes itself in whatever way it will.  

Because it seems that over their lifespans, and then our own, the years we have remaining are gradually rescinded, as an essence of each of us grows and solidifies with time, which all can taste and hear and inhale unto another day.