My depression deepened into a constant that varied only in intensity. I remember finishing Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins during my sophomore year. It was the final day before the month-long holiday break, and the campus was deserted, smelling (finally) of winter and dry leaves. An empty month lay ahead. Even the book, with its fascinating characters who led full, exciting lives, was finished. I dropped it reluctantly in the library return slot and thought again about suicide.
At twenty-two I had a nervous breakdown. I was doing well in school, but it wasn’t enough to pull me up from the emptiness of my personal life. I ceased functioning at home, crying constantly and sleeping as much as possible. I became obsessed with my weight and the most efficient way to commit suicide.
Fortunately, I was still living with my parents. My sister had moved in with a boyfriend. My brother, who was fourteen when we arrived, had made the best adjustment, getting his GED, a good job and a nice car in short order. He was busy playing in bands and going out to Hollywood clubs with his many friends. So my parents, who weren’t meeting scads of people themselves, had plenty of time to babysit me. For the next two years, I lived in a bizarre netherworld, finishing my B. A. and falling apart. For a while I was incapable of going to the supermarket alone. I’d stand there, bewildered: What did we need? Why was I there? If I stayed in my bedroom with the stereo on for more than a half hour, my mother pounded on the door until I came out. She walked dozens of miles with me around our subdivision as I ranted about ending my life.
I visited a therapist in a tony office on Ventura Boulevard. The color of her suit matched her shoes and fingernails. She told me I was an intellectual snob and needed to go Jewish folk dancing, where I would meet nice boys. ‘Call me,’ she offered while ushering me out, ‘if you feel suicidal over the weekend.’
‘You,’ I thought, ‘are the last person I’d call.’
Eventually the worst of it lifted. I graduated with honors. My brother moved out to pursue his nocturnal music career. I remained in our large house. I paid my parents a little rent and continued to help around the house.
At twenty-five I met my husband through a personals ad I placed in an alternative newspaper. I was meeting no men, the ad was free, I had nothing to lose. I received hundreds of responses, finally hitting on the line ‘looks and money not important’ to winnow out callers boasting of ‘industry’ jobs, yachts and horse ranches. John’s voice message only said: ‘Call me and we’ll savage the right.’
We met for coffee and nursed cappuccinos for three hours. We met at Venice Beach and strolled the boardwalk, poking into bookstores and head shops. I told my mother, ‘We get along.’
‘You’re going to marry him,’ she said.
It would be disingenuous to close with counterculture girl met counterculture boy, had counterculture wedding (the groom wore shoulder-length hair and a Jerry Garcia tie; the bride didn’t have a manicure) and lived happily ever after. We each continue to act in two worlds. John is an environmental engineer with an inter-national company that drug tests its employees. His gorgeous long hair rests in an envelope in his desk drawer.
John has a rare chromosomal aberration called Becker Muscular Dystrophy. It is a slow wasting of the leg and hip muscles, sometimes compounded by pulmonary and cardiac complications. Recent medical research has prolonged the lives of those afflicted, but we live with the knowledge that we may not grow old together.
He was diagnosed at sixteen and promptly decided to live as he wished and fight like hell. His attitude gives mine ballast. Unlike me, John had many friends when we met, some close. I had long before internalized the idea that the only relationships worth pursuing were of the Caroline and Michael variety. I learned from John that an acquaintance based on a few shared interests can be rewarding, and that such relationships don’t represent the surrender of core values. Instead, they are companionship, a shared glass of wine or a hit, a pleasant evening, a party to attend. I learned not to expect an intense communion at every encounter.
In fact, I stopped looking for it. I now have a few friends. None are remotely like the relationships I witnessed growing up. I am still lonely, though less so, and prone to bouts of depression. I suspect I always shall be. But knowing my happy marriage may not last forces me to attend to the present.
I am now thirty-one years old and hold to my early pursuit of a foot in each world. To an extent, I feel alienated by each; I’d no sooner vote for Elizabeth Dole than I’d live without running water. This lands me in a gray place, going into the straight world for my paycheck, then veering toward the counterculture for a reaffirma-tion of my values.
My parents, now in their late fifties, continue their coun-tercultural ways, fond as ever of lava lamps and always the oldest attendees at rock concerts. After an earthquake damaged their home, they moved to the Southwest, to a blindingly bright white house that deflects the desert sun. Surrounding them are young Mormon couples who make their anti-Semitism plain. Membership in the homeowners’ association is mandatory.
So my parents move quietly, pulling the drapes before switching on the lava lamps, keeping bottles of air freshener on the coffee table in case a neighbor knocks. They have made a few acquaintances, all younger. They do not know where Michael and Caroline are; at times, my mother insists they are dead.
For all intents and purposes, they are. But a breeze continues to blow through the window that they opened.
River Light
Thirty-one years ago a baby girl slipped into this world. Spoon-fed love and wild ways, she grew to be a rag- tag tangle-haired woods baby. Small child thriving on the seeds of rebellious plants, rebellious ideas. Child encircled in the arms of a culture running counter to concrete streets, camouflaged intent and white bread, white sugar ideas.
Who I am is informed by, but not defined by, the fact that I am a ‘hippie kid.’ I stand in too many camps for only two feet, and the camps are not always at peace. I am an avid feminist and an anti-censorship, pro-sex ‘pervert.’ I believe in decadence, but cannot become passionate about money. I am a dyke who wants children, a woods baby living in the heart of the city, a pacifist who has taken self-defense.
We were the golden children, angels of the woods.
My stepmother (long since left my dad) worries that I do not prepare for my retirement, while my father (still the hippie radical dropout) worries that I do not prepare for the fall. My mother, burned by ‘free love,’ worries that I’ll be stung by the polyamory that I embrace, and my stepfather keeps his own counsel.
The child whose first word was ‘hot,’ but whose second was…possibly not fit for the company of grandparents. A child who understood the concepts but who, stretching at the applications, still asked, ‘Is this one of those times I don’t say ‘fuck’?’ The child who ate with four forks, three knives, some spoons, but mainly her hands. Who now reads entire books on manners (the last one titled, appropriately enough, Please Don’t Eat the Doily). The one who now prides herself in knowing how to formally introduce.
I come from two ‘failed marriages.’ But with each separation and subsequent addition, those who cherish me grew in number. And my love for my original parents did not diminish. I had ample for all-and so do not believe in the scarcity theory of love. I do not believe affection is finite, because that has never been my experience.
The child who would climb into anyone’s lap, even if only just introduced, because a friend is a friend regardless of how long the acquaintance.
Nothing lasts forever. Each friendship, each relationship, must change, flow through its cycles, transform endlessly into new gifts, new treasures. If we resist this movement, the relationship shatters, like ice in the moving tide. But if we are open to re-creation, then we become stronger with each new turn.
Child brought up on Gandhi. Who presumed good intent, and love as the common denominator. Child taught to move gently through this good life-that each action, no matter how small, affects the whole.
I can no more write of the deadening pain of loss than I can of the breathless confusion of new love. Love’s ecstasy is like being stoned on almost too many mushrooms: Those who’ve never tried it have no comparison; those who have still do not share a common experience. Each trip takes you down a different path. And to paint a picture of true loss is to create something that is indecipherable to the uninitiated and unbearable to those who have felt its paralysis deaden the senses.
The child who, for all her strengths, all her freedoms, is nevertheless but a child. Still must be fed, must be
