August 2008

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
--The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939

I am at the garden center’s check-out counter, waiting to pay for my late-season sale plants, when the college kid manning the cash register turns from his computer screen to face me. “Rosslyn Farms,” he says, a question obviously forming in his mind. I know his question before he asks it. Everyone who lives in our small neighborhood knows his question: “Where’s Rosslyn Farms? I know I’ve seen a sign for it somewhere…”

But, instead, the young man takes me by surprise, asking, “What’s it like living there?”

What, indeed? I’m not a small-talk champion under the best of circumstances—too dim-witted and slow of tongue. I need time to formulate sentences, to hone their grammar and spit-shine their syntax, rearranging words and ideas in my head like those machines that polish pebbles by tumbling them around until the hard edges are worn smooth. So when he asks his existential question, I do not expound engagingly on the singular charms of our borough. No, what I do instead, like a panic-stricken deer in headlights, is repeat the answer I’ve given so often before, the answer to that other question: I tell him where Rosslyn Farms is, not what it is like living there. Then I round up the new plants, and hustle back to my car, leaving a puzzled cashier in my wake.

On the drive home, I feel foolish for not being able to tell him what a wonderful place Rosslyn Farms is—all sorts of answers bubble up now that I have time to think. So, Garden Center Guy, this one’s for you:

Living in Rosslyn Farms is like living inside a John Cheever novel, but more forgiving, with architects and musicians, jewelers and accountants, execs and retirees all rubbing elbows at community picnics and council meetings. It’s a place where teenagers spend their summers driving around in beat-up old Volkswagens and Saabs, and where younger kids pedal their bikes furiously in the gloaming, hoping to beat their curfew after a day at the pool or soccer field or park. It’s populated by people who not only own ice buckets, but actually use them for drinks at the close of the day. It’s a neighborhood where couples enjoy those drinks on their patios or porches, and wave to others out for a walk in the cool of the evening, alma mater sweatshirts draped over their shoulders against the chill and dogs pulling excitedly on their leashes.

Living in Rosslyn Farms is like living the quintessential American Experience, where political lawn signs of differing persuasions dot the landscape each spring and fall, but don’t act as fences between neighbors, cutting off civil discourse. Where trees in staggering variety outnumber human residents 50 to one. Where architecturally-significant houses and modest bungalows share equal ground, sitting side by side in a pleasing and appropriate way, and cats watch intently from first floor windows at the birds capering outside. Where the taxes are numbingly high, the squirrels audacious, and the summer seemingly endless.

It is like living on Yeats’ Isle of Innisfree, where a deep yearning draws its inhabitant back—at the end of the workday, at the completion of a college education, at the dawn of a new life together. It is a place of comfort and peace, and although we don’t have the bee hives or linnets or lakeshore of Innisfree, our community exerts its own strong sense of place, and it calls out to me when I am not there—respite from the madness around us.

And that, Mister Sales Clerk, is what it’s like to live in Rosslyn Farms.