Homecoming

 

Van Gogh's Irises (1890)

          If I returned to the place I felt most at home in my life, I’d unlock the door to a basement apartment on Washington Park in the early 1980s, kitchen open to a private backyard—an extra room for cookouts, gatherings, reading, listening to music—all with the feminist friends who made up family, women who cooked and worked and played together, who kissed and hugged and held each other with love and accountability.  Who do we spend time with?  What is justice and where could we find it or how can we build it?  A Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice is one of many visions we shaped into reality—trial, error, and success within reach while the home oasis softened the journeys we took separately and together, experiments with collective living and problem solving. 

          Can I get more specific?  A joy to come home at work’s end and find messages in the notebook by the telephone—no mobile phones, no texts.  A precious kind of silence and trust. Looks like 5 for dinner.  I make spaghetti with tomato sauce and salad, and put up a pot of lentils for soup, and as guests flow in, they add a wedge of cheese, a loaf of homemade bread, onion and celery for the soup, a jar of salad dressing, halvah desert, and a CD of new music. A wonderful breaking of silence with tales of the day and evening plans, maybe a rehearsal or movie, maybe a meeting at the women’s center.

Each move, we weave new
webs of friends flavored with the
same herbs and spices.

For Sherry's prompt "Homecoming" at What's Going on?

My blog poems are rough drafts.

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© 2024 Susan L. Chast