Aside from the crepe myrtle, I have no idea what grows in front of my house. Be it wisteria or weeds, it's all a nuisance, threatening to overtake my front steps and suffocate the air conditioning unit. So from time to time I take my Walmart garden shears and do battle.
I cut like a mad woman on a thrill kill spree, attacking the greenery with a savagery and feeling the daily stress and frustration pour out. It's pattern-less and random destruction. Leaves and branches and vines with a life of their own pile up at my feet - a window is exposed, then another and another. I clear through to the a/c unit, chopping and hacking, each cut is a satisfaction. When I'm done and the steps and walkway clear, I'm exhausted, hot, patchy with dirt and bleeding here and there (the greenery is often inclined to fight for its own survival), but well pleased. I was not born with this animosity toward Mother Nature, the feeling developed following my 2nd divorce as I sought an outlet to channel my anger and a safe method to vent. A friend suggested smashing lightbulbs against concrete but I wanted an enemy, someone or something substantial that I could seek out and destroy without causing real harm. Greenery presented the perfect target, garden shears presented the perfect weapon although if I thought I could've managed one, a chain saw would've been my first choice.
My emotions tend to follow an inward path to my gut where they bide their time, layer upon layer, scheming and planning how to make mischief or take their revenge. A nasty, little hurt feeling befriends a flash of temper, they marry and have a houseful of petty resentments, all of which grow until there is no room left in the inn. A spark of loneliness gets together with a leftover slice of self pity, a dull piece of anger runs into a mouthy piece of sarcasm and they gossip and breed until they explode and spill out like a box of toothpicks aimed at the nearest target.
Pinpricks have managed to turn themselves into gaping wounds, and all because I wasn't paying attention. So let others plant their flower beds and trim their yards with roses and pansies. Let others seed, water, mulch, fertilize and lose sleep over the lawns next door or whether the tomato plants will survive. For my part, I will continue to wage war on the vegetation. We all must tend our gardens as we see fit.
Social fever and small talk syndrome are relatively unknown disorders. Few if any study either, grant money is hard to come by, and the interest in such minor afflictions is minimal. I am a victim of both.
Signs are easily recognizable - genetic shyness, hating to be the center of attention in any situation (i.e a birthday), inability to carry on small, insignificant conversations, fear of crowds (even of people you know and like), avoidance of parties (even for people you know and love), an overall wish to find a small space to hide in and/or disappear, a tendency to arrive late and leave early and an oft seen and heard streak of sarcasm. It's not uncommon for victims to be misdiagnosed as unfriendly, cold, distant, or even rude. We are better with paper than people, more comfortable with a handful of friends than a roomful. We don't perform or make scenes or try to stand out. We are quiet and inconsequential people, ordinary to a fault and want no part of any limelight. People who know me well enough realize that it's the main reason I carry a camera - my comfort zone in a social setting is behind the lens - it provides a small but sturdy barrier which frees me and protects me against too much social interaction and it is mostly respected. With camera in hand, I am usually allowed the space I need - people tend to notice it and not me.
No drug or therapy or miracle cure has yet been found for these foolish, quirky flaws. I weave around them by putting on a happy face and a smile and doing the best I can, hoping that no one will notice, hoping that the genuineness of the hugs and smiles I get will relieve my anxiety. It doesn't happen often but I'm grateful for each time I make it through.
I was nailed and I knew it.
I'd been doing nearly 60 in a 45 zone, late getting back to work and frantic at the thought. By the time I saw the two motorcycle cops on either side of the road, it was way too late for anything except to pull over and pray for mercy. The flashing blue lights were, I realized with a sinking feeling, for me. It was my first speeding ticket and I was shattered.
Casually leaning on the driver's side door, the uniformed officer first introduced himself and smiled. I handed over my license and registration before he could even ask, stunned at this turn of events and completely ashamed of my own carelessness. Looking over his sunglasses, he scolded me, made me promise to be more careful and never do it again, then wrote me out the ticket. He was courteous, professional, and friendly and still made me feel like a 5 year old with her hand caught in the cookie jar. It started me thinking in a couple of different directions.
First, I wondered how often we do the right thing out of fear of being caught as opposed to the right thing being the thing to do. Where's the harm in running a red light at a deserted intersection at 3am and who will notice if you slip into the handicapped space for a quick trip to the grocery store or don't give back the extra change the cashier gave you by mistake. It's easy to ignore the telephone and then claim you weren't home or mail that check a little late and blame the post office. Little white lies are harmless in the grand scheme of things and small temptations are everywhere you look. I think most of us avoid them out of basic decency and habit but I'm not altogether sure.
Second, I was raised with the belief that policemen are friends and protectors, a notion I held onto until the 60's and 70's, didn't give much thought to in the 80's and totally discarded in the 90's in light of police corruption and scandal all over the country. Despite the brutality and appalling behavior of some police in some cities, I now think that most are still the friends from my childhood and there to keep me safe - even if they're hiding on a motorcycle with a radar gun.
Sometimes, it's best to own up and just pay the fine.
Next month there is to be a wedding, the daughter of one of my dearest friends, and I will attend with a mixture of awe, confusion, pride and wonder. I was in the hospital waiting room the night she was born and it hardly seems possible that she can be this close to being a bride
We sat, four of us, smoking, stitching, talking in snatches and waiting. It was a huge event, this first born child, and we were anxious and impatient. A child was about to come into the world, lives were about to be changed forever though of that, we had only the dimmest sense. The baby showers were over, the endless conversations over names were finished, the social circle was about to be enlarged and dear friends were about to become parents - the world as we knew it, was in evolution. There was no way to look down the road and see the various changes ahead, even if we could have, we wouldn't have - we had no real concept of the enormity of what was happening or the plan that was in place and would unfold.
She was a beautiful infant and grew first into a precious toddler, then an outgoing little girl, then a bright and popular teenager, then a poised, polite, classically pretty young woman with a ready smile and a generous heart.
She takes after her mother - girly with a love of fashion and shopping, very traditional and aware of southern etiquette, and a taste for the good things in life. She is social and comfortable to be around and has grown into her upbringing with common sense, a touch of satire, a belief in goodness, and a love of family - all the things that will one day make her a good mother. I've watched her struggle with loss beyond words, with pain and the innate unfairness of life, with sisterly quarrels and boyfriends and everyday life, with going off to college and learning to drive. She's made all the transitions and made them smoothly and has become an adult in the blink of an eye and I still can't comprehend how she could've grown so quickly.
I have wishes for her - joy, to make her marriage all that she hopes for, trials to keep her strong, hardships to insure that she avoids complacency, children so that she can pass on the love she has learned, no struggle too hard to overcome, tears when needed and laughter every day to keep her balance. These are the things I will think of as her godfather walks her down the aisle to the man she is marrying, but I will always miss the little girl she used to be. It's nice that the sparkle and mischief in her eyes in her eyes is still there to remind me.
The hardest part of learning new things at my age is breaking old habits and finding memory space to install new ones.
Take typing - looking at the keyboard is second nature to me and I'm finding it next to impossible to remember to return my hands to the starting position. Each day I spent a half hour practicing and it seems that I make no progress. I watch as the words are close to their correct spelling but close only counts in horseshoes and I tend to make the same errors over and over - f's for d's is the most common followed by mixing up the shift and caps keys, followed by trying not to see the tab key as the arch enemy of the keyboard. I watch in awe as friends type with lightning speed, error-less and looking over their shoulder or talking on the 'phone at the same time and again I regret refusing that high school typing class in favor of conversational French. Repetition, they tell me with encouraging smiles, repetition, practice, patience. It will come.
I can't imagine what possible use I thought Conversational French would ever do me but at the time it was romantic and collegiate and only six of us were chosen for the class. English was disallowed from day one - our teacher believed that to learn we had to be emeshed - and he spoke with a liquid fluency and ease that we all envied and tried desperately to emulate. Now I can't remember a single sentence except Dancez avec moi, ma petite chou, a phrase that simply doesn't offer itself up in routine conversations, although it is marginally helpful to be able to comprehend a customer who asks for a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape 1957.
To be intentionally chosen is perhaps all the motivation it takes to make a poor choice, especially if you are young and foolish and have no concept of consequences. Wine and small cabbages aside, the typing class was a far more practical alternative.
She is a fragile child.
It took her mother years and countless procedures and tests to conceive. There were miscarriages and fruitless efforts that took their toll and when at last she came into this world, she was a blessing beyond words. She has been protected, indulged, and loved since before she was born and now she is almost a young woman - tall and slender as a blade of grass, model-beautiful and graceful, a dancer, a determined student, her mother's hearts delight. There is still a childlike quality about her, an innocent, shy vulnerability - her feelings are out on front for anyone to see and are hurt easily. She has never heard a severe word from her parents and she is growing up in a harsh world that I fear will try and harm her. The sheer unfamiliarity of a raised voice or an angry look can bring tears. It can be an unkind world for the fragile people with nothing but goodness and trust for armor. Reality has a way of being cruel to them, trespassing on their upbringing and intruding into their view of things with a bitter force. This beautiful child, so doe-like and gentle, is at risk from all that surrounds her so her mother comforts and shields her, all the while wondering if she is doing right.
Children are not the only fragile people though - as I was driving home from work tonight, I heard screaming and barely avoided running down the man who streaked in front of me, crazed and cursing and howling like an animal.
I stopped at the corner drugstore and as I was leaving, he was being escorted out by a petite but firm cashier with an angry look and a can of mace. A police cruiser met him as he ran toward the intersection and though he resisted and fought like a madman, he was subdued, and still howling, was handcuffed and unceremoniously thrown into the back of the police car. Whether high on drugs on simply out of his mind, he was damaged and fragile though it was, at first glance, not something I recognized. His frailty was hidden beneath madness and fear.
We often try to disguise our fragile side. Arrogance hides insecurity, sarcasm masks uncertainty, coldness is a shield against shyness and schizophrenia a retreat. It might be better if we could all wear "Handle With Care" labels.
Darrell and Jeanmarie had been married a little over twelve years when their daughter was born. Jeanmarie gave birth in their small bedroom one late August night and the midwives attending raved about the precious little child with her daddy's bright blue eyes and her mother's golden hair. She arrived with a minimum of fuss, Jeanmarie was up and about the very next day, as proud a mother as the island had ever seen. They named her Miranda Gail and had no idea that she had been born with what was called the gift of second sight, an eerie ability to foresee the future and make predictions with uncanny accuracy. In exchange, she was also deaf and when she was five, her parents took her to Halifax to see a specialist who determined the hearing loss was irreversible but that being a bright, alert and curious child, she would have no difficulty learning sign language and would lead a relatively normal life. Though shattered by the news, Darrell and Jeanmarie gave it their all - they both learned to sign and spent hours with their child, teaching and being taught, patiently coaxing her to learn to speak and communicate. They even taught other children so that Miranda would not feel alone or isolated and after a few years, her deafness was nothing special and no one gave it much thought. She was included in island life as routinely as any child, got into the same mischief and learned the same games, made friends easily and grew into a pretty, gentle, and sweet natured little girl. She did have an amazing talent for finding things that were lost - a misplaced piece of jewelry or a pair of her mother's glasses and Jeanmarie fell into the habit of asking her daughter where a certain something was without really thinking about it - Miranda would close her eyes for a second or two and then lead her mother straight to whatever had been lost - and soon neighbors began dropping by for help with things they had lost but no one paid much mind, assuming that the child simply paid more attention than the adults and had a better memory. Until the evening that the little Russell boy didn't come home for supper, it was nothing special.
Rusty Russell had been playing with friends on the ballfield in back of the church. When dark came and he wasn't back, his mother sighed and sent his brothers out to look for him but although they looked for well over an hour they found no trace. He had been there and then was gone and as the islanders were prone to do, they gathered and organized and and put out an alarm - a missing child was not uncommon and though everyone was sure he had just wandered off and was fine, there was no sense in taking chances. They called his name, went over every inch of the ballfield and the church, went in groups in the woods, called on everyone, but Rusty was nowhere to be found. Miranda, sitting on her front steps and watching all this activity, closed her eyes and frowned then stood and tugged at her mother's arm, pointing toward the woods and urgently motioning Jeanmarie to follow her. Her mother reluctantly took her hand and let herself be guided into the woods and over the hills, through the back pastures to an abandoned farmhouse where Miranda led her to a boarded up well and an unconscious child at the bottom. Bloody and bruised from the fall, Rusty was pulled out, revived and brought home to his much relieved parents who like Jeanmarie, never thought to ask how Miranda had known about the well. Darrell, hearing the story much later that night, did wonder though and after church on Sunday he sat with Miranda in the bed of his old pickup and signed gently, Honey, how did you know where Rusty was? The little girl shrugged her shoulders and looked away. Honey, were you playing by the old well? he persisted but she only shook her head and climbed into his lap, laying her head on his shoulder. Miranda, he signed firmly, how did you know where he was? His daughter hesitated, then touched her eyes with one small hand and pointed toward the back pastures.
There were more curious events ahead - Jeanmarie was about to hang out the wash on a clear, sunny day and Miranda pointed to the sky and shook her head. By noon, the island was fogged in. Lost things continued to be found - keys, Darrell's pocket watch, a pair of work boots. Miranda predicted unexpected company, pregnancies and two miscarriages, the explosion that cost the factory foreman his leg, who would win baseball games, the very day the seal colony took up residence in one of the coves. The islanders began dropping by to seek her advice and by her teens, word of her gift had spread to the mainland and people began writing for help. Being a well brought up young woman, she always answered as best she could and always tried to help, feeling a responsibility to all who asked. When she was in her early 20's, she married Rusty Russell and spent the remainder of her life raising her own children - none born with her gift but all able to hear - and that was more than enough.
At first glance, you might not know you were looking at an upscale, professional, New York fashion photographer.
He is tall and thin as a matchstick with shiny, perfectly straight 60's hair that flows halfway down his back. He wears a plain, faded tee shirt, bleached out jeans frayed at the cuffs and knees, and Nikes that have seen far better and younger days. Cameras are hung around his neck and over both shoulders and he pulls a worn out suitcase filled with additional lenses, a laptop, and a change of clothes. He smiles shyly and when he speaks it's in broken English with a heavy German accent and while he often has to search for the right word or phrase, he has no trouble being understood. He speaks with his hands and his eyes and the images he captures. Despite his appearance, when you watch him work, it's like watching a magician and you see his gift at once.
The morning is sunny and a little cool for this time of year and he begins immediately. The young, would-be models are anywhere from 6 to 16, self conscious and tightly wound, for many this is their first photo shoot and they are nervous, anxious, and intimidated. They have been dressed and styled and made up, firmly separated from their curious and sometimes interfering parents, many have been awake since dawn and are hungry and fluttery and uncertain. They are coaxed and encouraged, complimented and cajoled, supported and scolded. They are children in a brisk and demanding adult world and they keep their eyes on the ground and their smiles hidden. They feel the pressure of performing and some dig in with a sudden change of heart, tears well up and they want only to go home and back to their playground. Others posture and preen with a self centered pride and confidence, unwilling to take direction or accept instruction. Still others are just having fun. It becomes a circus, an assembly line, organized chaos. And then they reach the young man with long hair and bluejeans and everything changes.
He works quickly and effortlessly, moving with a fast paced grace and agility but always speaking to them with kindness and charm, making small adjustments here and there, changing a pose when needed, checking the light, smiling, and at the last minute, gently adjusting a stray strand of hair from a blushing cheek. Under his spell, they come alive, forgetting their fears and awkwardness, forgetting the camera. Their laughter is genuine, their smiles natural and easy. They have made an unexpected friend and some have even fallen in love. They run for the next wardrobe change and makeup session, enchanted and eager to continue, they could do this all day.
All it takes is a little kindness, a little bravery, a little magic.
At 2am, there's an odd collection of people at the local 7-11.
A police car is parked prominently at the door, the officer lounges by the ice machine, one hand resting casually on his holster, the other holding a styrofoam coffee cup. I suspect he is more watchful than he appears and he nods to me as I enter. The cashier is making change for a sleepy-eyed teenager in ragged jeans and a black Hard Rock Cafe tee shirt and there are several young women gathered around the coffee machine, all in the telltale uniforms of casino workers - it's impossible to tell if they're coming from or going to work - they chatter like crows on a power line, laughing and bright eyed and loud. A much younger woman comes in with an infant sleeping on her shoulder, a truckdriver with "Mac" monogramed on his navy shirt stumbles through for a newspaper and a cold can of Coke, three young black men try to come through the door all at once, good naturedly pushing and shoving each other and speaking a language I don't recognize. At the beer case, a disheveled and confused looking old man struggles with a 12 pack of Bud Light, unable to coordinate the sliding doors and stay upright at the same time. He trips and falls on his way to the cashier and the 12 pack of beer hits the floor and cracks open sending a dozen beer cans rolling in all directions - the casino women help him to his feet and collect his beer with encouraging words and sympathetic smiles. He mumbles his thanks and leaves, clutching his paper bag of beer and weaving slightly. A professional looking man in a three piece suit enters, carrying a briefcase and checking his watch - he strides to the magazine section, snatches a street map and returns to the counter, tossing a $5 down for a .99 map and doesn't wait for change - like the white rabbit, he is late for a very important date and it shows. A couple approaches, holding hands, and he holds the door for her with a low bow and a flourish - she enters like a queen and curtseys to him, then they rejoin hands and head for the Icee machine, in love and thirsty. A woman in flowing pantaloons with a bejeweled navel emerges from the restroom adjusting her veils and muttering - an enormous brass safety pin holds her shoulder shawl in place and she walks with dignity and quick, sharp steps. She receives no curious looks, no one even appears to notice her as she flings open the door and climbs into a scarred up, old VW bug.
I pay for my cigarettes as a half dozen helmeted, black clad bikers pull up in a roar. The one who holds the door open for me is tattooed wrist to shoulder with a gold stud in one ear and his silverish hair tied back in a pony tail. When I thank him, he gives me a crooked grin and tells me Anything for a lady, ma'am, and gives me a wink. I smile in spite of myself.
It's 2am at the 7-11 and the world is full of night people and unexpectedness.
When we was in junior high school and riding the bus regularly, the parochial school kids rode along with us, all neatly pressed in white shirts, plaid skirts or pants and blue blazers. They carried backpacks with the St. Joseph's emblem and brown bag lunches and we called them cookies, as if they'd all been cut out and baked from the same mold. They were prim and remarkably well behaved, quiet kids and the chaos of the busrides never seemed to touch them. They were protected and insulated by their uniformity, all cut from the same cloth, all predictable and plain vanilla. We saw them as easy targets, clustered together in their little groups and always standing out. We were not especially nice to them, feeling, I suppose, an ill defined sense of resentment at their togetherness and group sameness. There was safety in numbers in those uneasy school days, safety and a sense of belonging and I think on some level, we realized that and envied it. In many ways, it was an us and them world. Still they were given little slack - teased about their uniforms and catechism, the high school kids would steal their lunches or bus money, and in winter they would be victimized by snowballs. They never fought back, never lashed out, never retaliated and their pacifism only encouraged more abuse. Unlike so many of us, they had learned to turn the other cheek and to their credit, they practiced what they had learned against a never ending stream of bullying and merciless taunting.
By high school, we had all grown up a little and although we all still rode the same bus to school, the atmosphere had calmed. There was still a distinct separation between those who wore uniforms and those who didn't but the teasing had been passed to the next generation and we had no time for such childish games. They went their way and we went our's, riding the same bus each day but not interacting, neither side willing to make a move toward the other. I wonder now what we all missed by this stubborness and pride, what friendships might have formed but didn't, what common interests we might have discovered but didn't.
There's comfort and security in conformity yet it can also breed suspicion and alienation. We should learn to appreciate the former and overcome the latter in all things. A pride of lions may not have much use for a family of tigers, but they're all still cats even if divided by nature or society or competition. Unlike we humans, lions and tigers and bears don't divide themselves along lines of differences or prejudice - lucky them.
The back door was open to the morning sun and the warm salt air was sweet. Nana had given me a quarter to fill the woodbox and I was carrying armfuls of wood and carefully stacking them while she hung the morning's wash and the dogs ran about the yard. My mother stood in the kitchen smoking and drinking coffee at the sink - my brothers were fishing off the breakwater, I could hear them yelling back and forth to the incoming and outgoing boats - and the day was filled with promise and sunshine. Nana had taught me to wear work gloves to avoid splinters and how to carry the thicker, heavier pieces first, then the kindling so that the smaller, lighter pieces could be brought to the stove first. She would lay the kindling atop the old newspapers then carefully strike a wooden kitchen match and the fire would catch instantly. Once it was burning steady and bright, she would add several pieces of the heavier pieces and in no time the entire kitchen was filled with a welcoming wamth. Fire, she reminded me each morning, is to be handled with care, respected, and never to be trifled with. It's dangerous to be careless, even with just the kindling.
The woodshed itself was the size of a garage and filled to nearly overflowing with neat stacks of wood. The scent of it was magic to me, a clean, sharp smell like a forest or a cedar chest. Inside we played jacks or dominoes and even a few forbidden games of Spin the Bottle. The cat from next door had her kittens there, owls nested in the eaves, and sometimes we would see a wild fox dart through on a hunt for mice. I kept treasures there - a diary,
stolen cigarettes, shells from the beach and dried flowers, letters from home, Jersey Milk chocolate bars and thick rectangles of sticky, sweet McIntosh toffee wrapped in red plaid paper with bright gold trimming, so rich and sugary that it was all but forbidden. It was kindling of another kind - the small secret things of growing up and experimenting with defiance and disobedience. Adults never came to the woodshed and it became a private place, a children's place, a hideway, a fort, and a refuge. I spent rainy afternoons just inside the door, making circles in the sawdust and reading while I watched for the fog to come in. The lighthouse on Peter's Island would gradually disappear into the mist, one small piece at a time, and the steady sound of the foghorn would blow all afternoon and into the evening. Westport vanished and sometimes I couldn't even see the house or the flagpole. Sound changed and became muted and non-directional as if it were coming through layers, walking its way through the weather with a slow, measured pace. Nana would open the back door and call me in and the kitchen would be ripe with the smell of homemade pies and fresh coffee.
The next morning would dawn clear and bright with no trace of the fog except for the dampness on the kindling I carried. Would that people could self correct with so little effort.
My brothers and I were in grade school when my mother decided it was time for us to learn to swim. The swimming pool at the YWCA was bright blue with chlorine and gave off a fierce scent of chemicals that made my eyes tear and my throat itch. The pool room was cold and wet and hollow with noise, the sounds of voices and splashing water bounced back and forth on the walls and hurt my ears. My mother handed us over to an instructor and walked away.
It was a new experience and though I felt mildly wary, I don't remember being afraid. We entered the pool as directed and followed instructions - both my brothers took to it immediately but I hung back, not ready to join the fray and not completely trusting of them or the teacher. After that first lesson, they were both practically swimming like eels and jeering at me for swimming like a stone. The instructor assured me that it was perfectly safe but I began to feel shut in and trapped in a waterstorm of screaming children and blue water with no ground beneath my feet. I fought the water and when he let me go to try a stroke on my own, I panicked and went under, breathing water and choking, flailing and seeing my brief life flash before my eyes. There was no dignity in drowning in the YWCA pool but for a few seconds I was sure that would be my destiny. He brought me up gasping and desperate for air, coughing up chemicals and shaking with shame, my eyes burning and my throat raw. The second time was worse since I now knew he would let go and I tried to avoid the water but it flooded into my nose and mouth and I went down in a swirl of airless terror, blinded and unable to breathe. The third time I didn't fight, sinking calmly and holding my breath until I reached the bottom of the pool, then exploding with fear at the water above me and my inability to reach it. I went deaf and became only dimly aware of where I was, then he pulled me to the surface and into the fluorescent lighting and wet air resounding with my brothers laughing and taunting. Enough for the first time, he finally said and let me climb out and run for the safety of the dressing room.
There were several more excruciating swimming lessons, different instructors worked with me and tried a variety of methods, there were more group sessions and even one on one private ones in a quiet, empty pool but in the end nothing worked and I was sorrowfully deemed unteachable. My mother was humiliated and furious and my brothers had ammunition that would last them years. I was simply grateful it was over.
There were other attempts over the years - dear friends and husbands would shine with confidence but fail and shake their heads, my daddy would try and give up with a smile and a philosophic hug, but I never learned to swim and after a time I accepted it as a limitation and not a defect. There's a world of difference between the water above and the water below.
When young, we were cheap drunks.
A last minute party was thrown together at someone's apartment, almost always a walk up, and we gathered to eat snack food and drink cheap sangria and solve the problems of the world with the arrogance of youth and the certainty that we could do a better job. We hung banners from the windows, protested against ROTC on campus and the war, smoked joints and woke the following day with headaches and regrets. We worked for peace, for candidates we believed in, and we dismissed the older generation with ease. We had slogans and protest songs and were part of a greater good that our parents didn't understand. We sat in and we marched, wore tattered jeans and feathers, we were about change and creating a better, safer, more free society. We scorned marriage in favor of open committment, celebrated sex, promised not to judge ourselves or each other. We worked but only at jobs we saw as worthy and apart from the establishment. Our heroes were folk singers, our values humane and our lives uncomplicated. We reveled in the disappointment of our elders at our lost causes and our youth. We favored communal living and universal health care, sought a more equitable playing field, vowed to never surrender our idealism or compromise our ethics, situational though they were. And we never learned much from our mistakes or defeats except to try harder - there was too much we didn't know or refused to accept. We spent weekend mornings with the old veterans at work in their Victory Gardens, pulling weeds, picking vegetables and listening to stories of France and the invasion at Normandy. We gave spare change when asked, donated what little we could afford to the homeless, traveled by bus or subway and took vows of integrity and sincerity to music and friends. Though we didn't know it, we were like each prior generation, we felt brave and misunderstood and driven to want to make a difference.
We were cheap drunks, quick to criticize and fight injustice as we saw it, tolerant to an extravagant excess, poor and mostly happy. Life had many surprises and changes waiting down the roads we would travel and looking back would become a luxury. Cheap sangria gave way to good scotch, idealism grew and matured into realism, marriage beckoned and divorce followed, our liberalism made a long, slow right turn and then we were grown and living in the world we had vowed to change but which had changed us. Some of us stayed on the path of conviction and some wearied and sold out, some took the experimental drugs a few levels higher and drifted away into addiction, some died and were mourned, some succeeded and some failed. The ordinary-ness of life was too much for some and too little for others.
And now we are older and wiser and still fighting the battles we've discovered in ourselves.
