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.
