3.2.13 Being Eighteen - A Touch Of Memoir

          In 1971, I was 18, and had been living in Southampton, NY, going to LIU there, studying Fine Arts and Philosophy. I was deposited by my family into the prearranged girls dorm room, but the next day my boyfriend arrived at my door, and spirited me away to his, having sought and procured a tiny private room in a three floored guy’s dorm, which I was off to as fast you could say yup.

            We had been separated for the summer by my parents, who had banned him from my life, then somehow unthinkingly delivered me to the same college he had been going to for a year, with some unerring fantasy playing in their heads about how I would stay the course they had selected for me.

            After a semester of both of us taking classes , gradually bringing his Yorkie from his NY home and adopting a grey cat by the name of Jeremy, we left the dorm and rented a tiny house by the ocean, working jobs at a Greek restaurant to make ends meet, while trying to keep up with classes. By the end of the school year, we both had tired of the social scene, which involved every student at the school spending all their free time smoking pot and doing nothing at all. It was boring, it was alarming, and we hatched a plan to take his new trust-funded Volvo across the country come school’s end, and search for a new home, a more vital and involved place to live, and especially one that was far away from the reach of my parents.

            That May, we took to the road, delightedly blaring Santana on those old 8 tracks, and breezed through Boulder, visiting Gunnery friends of his, and discovering that it was so hip and happening- it was not at all appealing. On we went, on our search, slowly deciding that Albuquerque was our destination, having an old Gunnery friend there also whom we could crash with, while I planned to take Lithography classes at UNM.

            We arrived just when Albuquerque exploded with riots, people our age demonstrating against the war and many social issues. We drove through town amazed, there being no Iphones or internet or anything that would have warned us of the state of the city. The police presence was magnified , the weather a usual 100 degrees at any point in the day. Many had been jailed, including our friend, who had been wandering to the grocery store and been snatched up by the police, despite his own protestations as to his destination.

We did locate his apartment and  roommates, and he did return the next day, shaken but okay enough, and so we settled down to life in Albuquerque.

            Unlike the South Shore of Eastern Mass, where I was born and raised, Albuquerque WAS diversity. So many different types of people on every young-city block.

I grew up with parents who were very involved in the Civil Rights Movement, the NAACP, a father who marched in Selma, and  a mother who went to stores that purportedly did not serve people of color  and confronted the owners.

Once when I was in grade school, I got off the bus with my little brothers, walked the 1/3 mile driveway down in the woods to our house, went in to get snacks while my mother was off who-knows-where with whatever babies and toddlers we had at the time, and walked into the living room to see the back of a man, standing there, looking out the window in the door.

Scared to death, I silently gathered my little brothers and we made our way upstairs to the bathroom at the top of the stairs. The door only had a latch, none of our doors had locks; we didn’t even have the keys to the front and back doors. I huddled with them there until we finally heard him leave. Turns out he was one of the confronted. Another confronted once followed my next younger brother, on his bike, riding home from a piano lesson. Followed him the whole way. I guess a very odd way of returning the threat to my parents.

We would go to all-black churches , meet other families involved in the NAACP,and go to the service. After, the parents would have meetings while all of us kids played, me having my first crush ever on one beautiful boy my age, so agile and funny and sweet, we talked forever when not arm wrestling or racing each other to the stop sign down the street. The parents ended up drinking a lot, which invariably happened when in the company of mine, and when we left, there was never any further contact.

The involvement with the NAACP brought many to our town, and our home for dinners afterward.

Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers, irresolute activist of the civil rights movement, was invited to come to speak in our area, and afterward joined many at our home, enjoying my mother’s proclivity for gourmet cooking, and later, her proclivity for close dancing, alone, in the library, while everyone else was gathered off in the living room, a moment I watched in the window’s reflection , perched , unseen, on the stairs, one more observation banked into my childhood file on ‘how some people live their lives’.

My mother asked Cardinal Cushing to come speak at one point in support of  racial issues, which he did, and I remember his graceful voice and how powerful yet peaceful he seemed, as he confidently and with great ease addressed the crowd. He was made Cardinal when I was six years old, and later I learned he was instrumental in The Second Vatican Council during the sixties,  speaking eloquently and passionately to fellow Catholics, the Vatican , and the world - about the cessation of blame cast upon Jews . It was explained to me as I grew older, but the idea of blaming a people for years and years, with such ferment and vitrol, was something I could not conceive of. He was a Cardinal who promoted renewal, and I wish he was here, today, to contribute to the changes sought by many.

I had always felt such an intense claustrophobia about my  surroundings in my town. It  took me years to come to understand the privilege I was born to. How protective and enabling, and yet restrictive the culture was. How punitive it was of others that were not white or Protestant or middle class or moneyed.

Not that the people weren’t nice enough. But so many did not say what they meant. Or said one thing, and then, behind a back, said the opposite. It was something I came to associate with WASPS.

One day my grandmother told my then sister-in-law what beautiful long hair she had, and when the  young woman left the room, my otherwise sweet grandmother confided in how disgusting she thought long hair  was. I stood, amazed at the normally kind, very religious Baptist woman, puzzled as to why she would be moved to say such a thing, when it was in fact so utterly unnecessary.

I simply could not wait to leave. Ever.

In the small New England town there were two families who were Jewish. Two. There was ONE family who was African-American, who lived in town. Their last name was… Garret.  They owned a small , pretty house next to….the town dump.  Really.

We were brought attending a Unitarian Church. Our God allowed anything. ANYTHING. Truly. As I grew up, my Catholic friends would teach me about sins and hell and all, and I would be amazed that my God let you do anything. Go to church. Go drink lots of Martinis. Do anything. But I was well brainwashed, I like to say. I was brainwashed to believe, deeply, in the equality of all. That all deserved justice and equity. Not that all people are the same, or have the same abilities or devotion or humility or honesty. But that all people, and to me, all beings, were equal in value and in what they deserve. It was a good brainwashing, one that serves me and my siblings well, I think, as we did not inherit the quiet or at times not so quiet biases and prejudices of our parents or our town or culture. Somehow we were sent out from our little Unitarian church believing in political action and equal rights for all, anytime, anyplace.

Their younger son of the one African- American neighbors became my big brother’s best friend for  years. My mother helped him be considered for admission at Mt. Hermon, as her alma mater was Northfield School. He was bright and wonderful, tall and powerful, all the things that drove white people nuts. He got in, and I think was actually traumatized, as many people of color or class or sex difference are, when thrust into a situation where they are so very considered other. Not only other, but less than. Over time he seemed to become more and more angry, no mystery there. I am uncertain as to where this led him, in the mix of the life he was born into.

My entire upbringing was WASP, middle/upper middle class. I remember as a child , maybe 8 or 9, sitting in the car with my father at a traffic light one day, and telling him I could list all the ‘good’ towns and all the ‘bad’ towns of Massachusetts. He laughed, and said “Ok, go ahead. “ So I did. Mattapan. Charleston. Medford, versus  Scituate. Duxbury. Cohasset. All class stuff, and I wasn’t sure what it was at the time; just that there were all these borders and rigid places and it made me feel stiff and stuck, the white waspy gatherings and tennis clubs and ways of speaking and the assumptions, such as mine, that all fathers had OFFICES, until I met my husband and realized that was a class related obliviousness. My father didn’t explain a thing, just listened per usual, and changed gears when the light turned green.

After emancipating myself from home and my home town, arriving and living in New Mexico was a dream in terms of being immersed in a sea of so many kinds of people that the predomination of WASPS disappeared. Not only was it in the midst of a cultural explosion, but all bets were off when it came to choices and lifestyle,  the trustworthiness of government and possibility and, best of all, idealism. My forte.

I did find out that you had to apply to the Lithography Department of UNM about 50 years ahead of time, have had 30 art shows of your work, and 900 years of experience creating Lithographs before they would consider you. But I did keep studying art and other things, 3 classes a semester, because in those days you could work as a waitress, no matter how much you sucked at it, and still get a grant to have free admission to college. Amazing.

This is no longer the case, yet one more privilege that has disappeared from our young who seek an education and access to a life of insight and perspective from a Liberal Arts Education, and occupations that can  manage to support an individual or a family.

At UNM, I had the luck of studying with a drawing teacher who could tell  , quite accurately, how long you had spent on your homework, the mandatory minimum for each class being three hours. In my education , there was no room to mess around.

All summer it was routinely 100 degrees, and dry. It did rain every day for a half hour at 4:30. No storms. No weather surprises. Maybe a dust storm now and then, which I eagerly looked forward to. Drove me nuts. I am a New Englander, and rely on unpredictable weather to interest me, to soothe me, to inspire me. I couldn’t write, paint , or photograph a thing, so accustomed I was, from birth onward, to the unrelenting presence of weather ; in Albuquerque, the skies was sunny and beautiful every single day, and it simply drove me crazy. Ultimately it was the reason I left New Mexico. That’s right. Deficient weather.

Once while I lived in New Mexico, it did storm, accompanied by a deluge of rain. It poured. And all the highways ,complete with huge elevated freeway passes, flooded. They flooded and cars screeched and crashed and stalled out. Turns out they had built the freeway system with no drainage. That was hilarious to learn. The few times it got cold and the roads froze, of course there were massive pileups everywhere, no one getting that maybe if the road is icy, you have to drive differently.

Eventually my boyfriend and I rented a tiny house in a Barrio, and we used the furniture it came with, while he went out and rented a piano to survive on, not having really met up with the guitar yet. Our bed was an old metal thing on a wire bedspring. One night we woke in the darkness, the bed whanging back and forth violently. Seems a car full of drunk people had overshot the curve in the road, and headed right into the corner of our small house, so small that it rocked on its little foundation. We went out to see if everyone was ok, watching, surprised, when  they came to, backed up with out a word , and took off.

One day while my boyfriend was at work, I decided to take the nice new Volvo out into the desert. Went sailing past Arroyos and Mesas and in the process got the car good and stuck. Had to walk for miles, no water bottles in those days, back to my home, and pay up for a tow truck to go get the car. The greatest feeling in the world, to me, and brand new. You screw up, and the only person you have to deal with…is yourself. That was the  wondrous epitome of adulthood, at 18.

Our old Gunnery friend had a girlfriend who he ended up having a kid with later, and she and I both needed jobs at the time, she being an art student also. We found an ad in the paper looking for people to cold call for The Arthur Murray Dance Studio, went, and grabbed the jobs. Got dropped off there every evening at 6 by our boyfriends, sat in a 10x10  airless room, chain smoking with two other women, an intercom thing on the upper corner of the room that allowed the owner to listen in.

Our job was to go down listings in the phone book, have a fake name, call up people, and try try try to get them to come in for…wait for it….wait for it….free dance lessons. I know. Incredible, right?

Every once in awhile it worked. And it did pay some. Just enough, for a while. 3 hours a night,5 nights a week. Out in the studio would be people having dance lessons. Inside the room, we would chew gum and talk to each other about all kinds of things and then try to get some calling done, every now and then getting some sucker to agree to come in for a free dance lesson.

One night I called this guy, my index finger keeping track of his name on the thin paper of the phone book, waiting while the phone rang, and then this voice answered. I did my little spiel, going on and on, and he didn’t say a word. I stopped for a sec, said, “Hello? Sir?”

It was then he said to me “ I just walked into my house after work, and there is nothing left. Nothing. “.

Immediately his best friend, I asked “ What do you mean???”

He replied, “I just got home from work. I have a wife. I have furniture. Dishes. Towels. A TV. It’s all gone.”

I was blown away. At 18, I had never even considered this possibility. To anyone. Anytime. I said “This just happened??”

“Yeah.” He said. He said there wasn’t even a chair to sit on.

His BED was gone.

We talked for an hour. I asked him how he was doing. I asked if he had any idea anything was wrong. I asked him what he was going to do. I asked if he had enough money to go get a bed to sleep on tonight. He told me what it was like, being him, standing there, talking on the phone to a stranger, coming home to a completely wiped out house, not even a note left.

Years later, I considered that possibly there was stuff he didn’t say, or that happened and he wasn’t conscious of. Who knows the whole story, both sides, of anything? No one does. But still, I was shaken. After that hour, we finally said goodbye, and after the other women asked me for the goods, because they had been overhearing the whole thing. On the way home, I told the guys too.

The next week, I called the him back and asked how he was handling things. He had a bed and some dishes and was doing better, thank you. He was going to be ok. I told him I was glad, and said so long. Blew me away.

At times, friends would come visit.  It was so exotic that I had up and left town and wandered across the country. All kinds of people came to gape and consider and see what was up.

One of the first things they  would ask was “Where’s the TV?”. That always seemed so hilarious to me. I was always a book person or a drawing or writing or hiking or wandering around or photographing or doing something restless someplace person. I’m not sure what would have happened if I had been born to a time where  you were a teenager or young adult with Iphones and computers and cable and video games. But I still don’t think any of them would have provided solace from my restless curiosity.

 These visitors would ask what we did when we weren’t working. Why we lived in a Barrio. Why we were so happy. In answer, e would take them to the top of the Sangria Mountain Range, which you could drive up, the winding road magnificent, the frozen air on any stifling hot summer day a shock to your system. The view forever, as you stood astride the only landmass of height for miles and miles. Off in the distance were the Mesas, with their wild but subdued range of colors, that shifted as the sun rose or set. Below the Sandias were the outlying hills, with scrub brush and snakes and , at times, a Roadrunner. It was a magical place to wander around. Once we had driven out as far as we could, up to the shoulder of the mountain range, and left the car behind, as we tromped about. Wearing my everpresent Dr. Scholls sandals, I almost walked up to a Tarantula. It ran after me for a bit, possibly because we were near it’s home. Gorgeous huge creature.

When my parents were getting divorced, after I began letting them call me at the neighbors phone, they came out to see me. They were not speaking. I was still 18. I remember only one thing; that I was so relieved they were finally ending such an argumentative, mixed up life together. I was uncertain as to whether anything would be better, for them or myh siblings, after. And then,  like many kids of divorced parents, I was taken by surprise at the bittersweet  disappointment that never, ever, would the two of them manage.

In my one memory, the three of us are in the cable car that was carrying us to the top of the Sandias, our destination being an  elegant restaurant at the summit. If I leaned close to the windows of the cable car, I could gaze far far down to the steep, rocky sides of the mountain range, to the Mule Deer that clambered across the small visible paths, as one parent, then another, spoke with me, in competition as if the other was not physically there. It was exhausting. I am still not certain why they chose that trip; save that I was the sole offspring not at home or nearby, and it was some sort of odd closure proffered at my expense.

On weekends, we would often go with friends to a Native American Reservation a few hours away, off in the desert, to a hot spring that was enclosed in a building with no roof. The hot springwater flowed into a large rectangular cement pool, everyone invisible in the steam that rose as hot water merged with the cool desert night air. The star filled sky, so enormous and so much closer than any sky in the East, filled your vision as the sulphur scented water pulled waste from your body and softened every sharp edge in your life.

Off into the mountains was another hot spring, necessitating a few hours drive to park in a parched area next to a forest. Out you would clamber, water and food and towels in hand, to climb into the wilderness for an hour or so, until you came upon two small pools- their steam rising up even in the day, even  on a hot day, the trees shading the small hallow, some individuals quietly and nakedly lingering in the waters. Noone spoke, only smiled to each other, the nudity such a norm in the idealism of the too short moment in time, as people lingered in the savored land, then toweled off and quietly made their way home.

One Saturday we woke early, had eggs soaked in bacon grease that we kept, unrefrigerated, by the tiny kitchen stove, and on impulse decided to see how close to Mexico we could get in one day. Off we went, music filling us…Clapton and Hendrix and Grace Slick and Janice, filling us as we joined the few cars and trucks on the sparse highways in the beaming heat. You could stop at a rest stop, go pee, get a cup of ice water from the guy at the gas station, sip some, pour the rest on your head and down your front, and in about 5 minutes, dry you would be once again.

Not sure, but I think we got to Juarez , were allowed across the border with just licenses, drove around a bit, ate at an amazing small restaurant  with food that was so delicious you could not stop downing it, even as your eyes and nose ran and you gasped for breath while foolishly gulping water and grabbing up your food once again.

People in New Mexico thought nothing of driving for hours to get to a restaurant or other destination, and most trucks and cars went about 100 most of the time. If you were driving to Colorado or Arizona or California, and you were driving all day and all night, you would just hook yourself to some semi, and speed up or slow down with them, to avoid tickets.

We once visited Santa Fe, as it was all hyped up by everyone. Seemed to be a beautiful town, with the typical Old Town and New Town areas , but somehow Albuquerque, with its pawn shops and multifarious neighborhoods , really touched us, and gradually we belonged. There were small natural foods restaurants popping up, with those first really weird rice crackers that truly, at the time, tasted and chewed like Styrofoam, and the whole wheat bread that could break a tooth. One friend at a gathering impulsively gave me a skirt her great grandmother had sewed and embroidered. Her Grandmother was from Mexico, and it was a heavy, stiff maroon fibrous cotton, covered with spinning wheels and edged with peacocks, which sat in my cedar chest until a few years ago, when  I sliced it up the middle, sewed a band, and hung it on a dowel on the wall, resplendent in its aged beauty.

One day our Gunnery friend and his girlfriend came over, and she was unusually subdued. Turns out she was on her way from an art class, on her bicycle, when a carful of men drove by, and hit her on her backside. She swerved, fell of her bike, and the sense of distress and violation persisted. I remember sitting with her, trying in vain to imagine what she was feeling, making attempts to talk with her or understand, all to no end. It was that moment that inaugurated  in me the intent to learn somehow how to develop a sense of how another was feeling. To develop that sense, and to grow a capacity to ask the questions, listen to the answers, and with them, cultivate the ability to empathize in such a way that the person was comforted and healed a little bit, and I was enlarged and grown.

It was then that my boyfriend and I heard of Re-Evaluation Counseling, or Co-Counseling, and decided to drive a gagillion miles once a week to pay for a class. The classes were happening all over the country and world, and were a part of the movement of peer counseling, where instead of paying a therapist, you could become part of a community which was learning to set certain boundaries and then support each other’s healing. You sat together with a teacher who described the process , and then went off and sat cross legged with someone,  confidentially taking turns describing experience and learning to express and ‘discharge’ the emotions. It was a pretty cool model, one that over time and with more involvement revealed its capacity for dogma and rigidity, but like many good ideas, had pieces that many of us retained with good benefits. And it began to provide for me a way of studying how to become aware of others’ experience, observant of their cues, and develop an awareness of my own distresses and capacity for developing clarity and changing.

Eventually, despite the beauty of the land and the relief of the racial diversity, the weather got to me.

Sometimes it’s good for young people to go off far from home. I have told my  kids this. Secretly I know that the sooner they wander off, the greater the chance that they will return locally for the long run.

 I tell them what I learned from living far away from New England- that sometimes even those who love you most- can unintentionally limit who you  can grow into. That moving out from under their influence and unintended assumptions, and wandering afar, sometimes enables you to grow into anyone you can manage to grow into, without anyone reminding you or limiting you – to their concept of who you ‘really are’.

And then sometimes, when the weather in the place is incessantly sunny and mild, the days foreseeable as all hell, you pine for the unpredictability of New England’s worst; you simply have to pack it all in and go on home.