Emily Dickinson Returns, with a Rocker’s Mom

It’s Mother’s Day, but this will not a Mother’s Day blog; or at least, not one exactly. The culture that surrounds us spews out more than enough material on this tired theme.

The person I have most on my mind never was a mother in the regular sense, although she left almost 1800 offspring that live on and on. She also spent a fair amount of time thinking about death, not a very celebratory subject, in the Hallmark sense anyway. But I’m here to make the case that she shares a most wonderful characteristic with someone who gave birth to one of our most beloved rock artists.

OK, so since it’s Mother’s Day, I get to take some liberties.

I knew it was just a matter of time before my old pal Emily Dickinson would come swooping back in my life.

She never really left, of course; but when I moved away from her town several years ago, our relationship took on a new kind of distance. No longer was I passing her stately house every day, giving her nods, remembering the days when my toddler son would look in the driveway, sometimes see a car, and proclaim, “Look, she’s home!”

 

 

The first twinge of re-connection came when I went back to Amherst recently for an eye appointment. I had just been re-reading a short biography of the poet, which reminded me that one of the few times she left Amherst as an adult was when she had to spend some months in Boston for treatment for a painful eye condition. How lucky was I, in contrast, to be able to trot down to her hometown for an exam and drops that would continue to ward off potential glaucoma? She should have had it so easy.

 

 

Then, last weekend, I was enjoying the last part of my run, feeling very much alive, when a long line of cars drove by. Each of them had a purple flag fluttering, with a white cross in the center of each one — a funeral procession, no doubt, on the way to a burial. Now there was something to shift my lighthearted, in-the-full-bloom-of-health feeling. Or to make me appreciate that feeling more.

Suddenly Emily Dickinson was by my side, again, gently pointing to the scene with a smile, reminding me that even in the midst of spring, death is always a possibility. Yes, I acknowledged to her and to myself, I hadn’t forgotten that, really. Thank you very much.

Indeed, all around the world, following all kinds of religious traditions, at that very moment people were probably conveying loved ones to their final resting places. Here, for instance, is a glimpse of how a procession looks in Madagascar.

 

 

But of course anyone who has read a good deal of Dickinson’s poetry also knows that she didn’t wallow in the darkness of death. It was a fact of life, yes, and we would do well to face up to it, but how about perceiving the abundance all around us, every day and every moment? Take this poem, for example, known as #1717.

 

Did life’s penurious length

Italicize its sweetness

The men that daily live

Would stand so deep in joy

That it would clog the cogs

Of that revolving reason

Whose esoteric belt

Protects our sanity.

 

Isn’t that wonderful— “italicize its sweetness”? The last image is odd, all right. Here, “revolving reason” is apparently a wheel with a kind of chastity belt, and the fact that it is “esoteric” suggests that we might do better to forsake our sanity in favor of surrounding ourselves with so much joy that we might even lose our balance.

Now to make my leap to modernity, or at least to a hundred years after the Belle of Amherst, when joy might often come in the form of rock ‘n roll. And as we all know, one of the many virtues of rock ‘n roll has been its ability to fly in the face of death.

All rock stars had childhoods, and I’m now reading about Bruce Springsteen’s, in his new memoir Born to Run (Simon & Schuster, New York; 2016). Not surprisingly, he threw himself headlong into listening to all the greats of the early 60’s, and he credits his own mother for helping him to get started on the path that would eventually make him such a phenomenal performer.

 

 

His mom Adele was no Emily Dickinson, that’s for sure; still, when I read his loving description of her in the opening of Chapter Eight, “Radio Days,” in her own way she clearly demonstrated to her kids, by her actions more than her words, just how much of everything was available to them in life. By playing music, in particular, she was able to “italicize its sweetness.”

My mom loved music. Top 40 music; the radio was always on in the car and in the kitchen in the morning. From Elvis on out, my sister and I shuffled out of bed and downstairs to be greeted by the hit records of the day pouring out of the tiny radio that sat on the top of our refrigerator….

Through my mother’s spirit, love and affection, she imparted to me an enthusiasm for life’s complexities, an insistence on joy and good times, and the perseverance to see the hard times though. (p. 44-45)

What else do you need? Going forward with my own young adult kids, I will definitely channel both Adele Springsteen and Emily Dickinson to try to impart “an enthusiasm for life’s complexities” as well as the other two qualities, too.

Maybe this ended up being a kind of Mother’s Day blog after all.