Sylvia's Journal

We went for a visit to Sita and Jim in their new home in Haydenville, just a little further into rural America after Northampton where droves of students were busy finding their way around town and the Smith College campus.

The village of Haydenville is so small that you could easily miss it when driving through. There is no cell phone coverage, no signal to get any interesting TV or radio, no fast internet connection and in the beginning no phone either. For a couple whose livelihood depends on good and fast internet connections, this made for a slow start. Now they are somewhat connected and living (very) rural at the same time.

They live next to the police station and across from the fire station. An empty lot next door has been turned into a badminton court and no one has complained. There are no fences and gates and little of the ‘me and mine’ attitude that is so present in Manchester. There is a brook down the street with a lovely little beach that includes a bunch of small waterfalls with stone seats beneath them; those are good for upper back and shoulder massages.  Someone told Sita there are water snakes and so she is not using this free offering of Mother Nature.

Their house is lovely, half of an old farmhouse with porches front and back and brightly colored rooms, one yellow, one orange, one pink and a large turquoise and black kitchen. The cats adjusted quickly and seem less neurotic. The yard has a joint vegetable garden, an apparatus that produces sun dried tomatoes and other vegetables, and a little boy on a swing set while his mom, their neighbor, plays the guitar. It is the kind of scene I remember from record album covers of American bands that stood in contrast with the large, fast and big image that I first had of the USA. I fell (then) and still fall now for such a romantic scene.

Sita took us to the Montague Book Mill, a half-hour drive to a most picturesque old mill, next to another brook, and, as the name says, full of books. Their motto: ‘books you don’t need in a place you can’t find.’ It is way off the beaten path, on the Connecticut River and not easy to find if you don’t know about the place. Axel and I happened to know about Montague, or Turner Falls as it is known on the aeronautical map because of its tiny airport, where we landed and picnicked on July 14, 2007, hours before the unhappy ending of that day at Gardner airport.

Axel was the only one who exercised self restraint by not buying any books; Sita and I had no such restraint and we each came home with a few more books ‘we don’t need’ while our mates rolled their eyes.

By the time we got back to the house Jim had returned from his Manchester-by-the-Sea office which is in his dad’s house. He still needs to be there several days a week until he has sorted out how to do his job, which I still don’t understand, from their rural home.  Jim was too pooped to cook or think about dinner at home and so we took everyone out to a sushi fest in Northampton, followed by ice cream and coffee before we parted to our respective homes.

We drove down (East) on the Mass Turnpike while listening to Obama’s acceptance speech. All through it I marveled at this wonder that put the grandson of a Kenyan farmer on a direct road to the White House. It’s a very American story.