I was too excited to sleep. I kept seeing John’s face in my head; I went over and over everything we’d said and done. I couldn’t wait to see him the next day.
John picked me up early the next morning and we spent every waking hour together for the rest of the week. I had never been so happy in my life. I felt more accepted than I had ever felt, more understood. John was a stranger but he saw me more than anyone ever had.
For the first time in my life, I felt loved unconditionally by a male whose feelings I returned. I’d felt this with Pam and for a while with Sunny, but never with a boyfriend. There was no pretense, no worrying about what the other person might think—not even worry about hurting his feelings. It was all so easy.
I no longer felt alone. I had found my soul mate. We were in love. Without a whole lot of talking about it, we knew we would be together for the rest of our lives. We made plans for him to come see me in Bakersfield the very next weekend. He lived in San Luis Obispo, a town a little inland from Avila Beach, with his mother and stepfather.
John had recently come home from a tour of duty in Panama. He was a Green Beret. It was 1966, just before the Vietnam War, a time when patriotism was still a virtue and fighting for your country was seen as a noble act—even when it wasn’t so clear how fighting in Panama was really helping the U.S. There was a popular song called “The Green Berets” that extolled the virtues of the brave men who risked their lives for our country, and there was also a movie of the same name.
Although John didn’t go into details about his experiences, I knew he had been traumatized by his time in Panama. This was the darkness I recognized in him that first night we met at the campfire. He cried and shook when he first told me he had been a Green Beret, and that his mission had been top secret. For that reason and because it was so difficult for him to talk about, it was the first and last time he told me anything about it. Still, his whole experience lay heavy between us—speaking volumes about who John was and who he would become. Perhaps our mutual trauma was what drew us to one another in the first place.
I couldn’t wait to tell my mother about meeting John when I got home from my trip. But as soon as I saw her I knew that something bad had happened to her: her mouth was set in a grim line, and her chin was all scraped up.
My happiness about John was replaced with concern for her. “What happened, Mom?”
“Some teenage thugs knocked me down and stole my purse,” she said angrily.
“Oh my gosh. When did this happen? Where were you?”
“The night you left. I was walking to the liquor store. I had all my vacation money in that purse.” In addition to being angry, she also sounded sad.
I felt terrible. Here I had just experienced the best time of my life and all the while my mother had been suffering. She hadn’t planned on going anywhere, but she had taken a week’s vacation from work while I was gone.
“I’m just going to sleep in and relax,” she had told me before I left. “I don’t want to have to worry about doing a damn thing. I’ll paint if I feel like it. I bought a new mystery to read. But other than that, I’m doing nothing the entire time you’re away.”
But instead of having a relaxing time, she’d spent the past week getting over being traumatized and nursing her wounds. In addition to her chin, she also had two scraped knees. And she hadn’t even had the money to buy herself beer. She’d finally borrowed some money from Mrs. O next door to get her through the week.
I couldn’t help but see the parallels in our lives—and the irony. My mother always seemed to need to knock me down whenever I was happy, and here she’d been knocked down herself when she was looking forward to a relaxing time, a time without me.
I had never seen my mother so vulnerable. She always seemed strong, no matter what came her way. As much as she complained about other people and about having to work, when bad things happened to her she never complained much about it. She just moved on. But she seemed to be having a harder time getting over this. She looked hopeless and helpless—broken in some way.
And something else happened because of the mugging: I felt guilty. Guilty for not having been there; guilty for being off having my own life. And especially guilty for having such a great time while she was home suffering.
I wanted to have my own life, to be away from my mother and from Bakersfield, but not at her expense. This incident gave me a glimpse of just how hard it was going to be for me to leave my mother and start my own life.
John drove two hours to Bakersfield every Saturday to spend the day with me. We spent no time at my mother’s apartment— we’d always drive to a park where we could spread out a blanket and lie down on the grass together. It felt like when we were together we had to lie down. The passion and intensity between us made us dizzy and we simply could not stand or even sit up for very long. We kissed for as long as we could stand it—usually until John became so aroused that he
