This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius…
In the late 1960s people my age were getting free from parental domination and fear of pregnancy. The music all around was explosive, mind-shattering, the opening of an inner ear.
But I felt left out of it. My father died suddenly at the end of 1968 and not too long before that, my heart was shattered by the loss of a first love. While people were tie-dying T shirts I was stuck in a suburban wasteland with my mother and sister. My mother and I had little between us nor did my sister and me. Not far away, a very few miles away, was the University of Pittsburgh where students my age lived in shabby apartments in South Oakland, playing loud music and having fun.
I met Mark Hoffman in the beginning of my sophomore year, September of 1969. We fell in love very quickly and all the repressed emotions within me burst free. Healing of the pain from the past was imminent. Here was a new love, obviously very intelligent, hard-working, well-read, from New Jersey which was almost a different culture. Mark knew things, fascinating things about music–he was a big fan of Bob Dylan and The Band. Most importantly he introduced me to Hermann Hesse, the German writer. Mark had read all his books and I practically consumed them in my quest for healing of the emotional pain from the not too distant past. The novel Steppenwolf provided the key to my inner self and I owe Mark endless gratitude for giving it to me to read. I wrote a poem once called “A Boy Gives A Girl A Book.”
After a lot of unpleasant family arguments I separated myself and moved out. Mark and I began living together in the spring of 1969. We lived at the end of Atwood Street in Oakland.
Yes, we were rebels in some ways but we didn’t drink, didn’t take drugs, and I was very careful about getting birth control pills. Mark worked hard at everything he took on and I did, too; we both had part time jobs. We were swept up in our new freedom, unlimited sex, even taking some courses together. I remember walking slowly down Atwood Street to the University campus, just breathing in the sweet smell of marijuana–I didn’t smoke pot until I was much older. I was “high,” though, on freedom from family ties, also free from the end of high school with nobody taking me to the senior prom. That seemed childish now. I was a woman now.
No, we shouldn’t have gotten married. We were meant to be comrades and students together. How many times have people said that? Oh well. There was a time while still a student that I got really interested in Russian history and literature. Mark and I took some of those courses together, discussed them for hours. We loved taking long, long walks through Pittsburgh at night and pouring out our ideas about writing and philosophy. I loved those times.
lgmwriting 