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OK I'm the OP so I'll cheat and include one important development over Labor Day 1971 and extend out to early October 1973 or longer than a year.
Text additions from a post I wrote 15 years ago are in dark blue. I could not show deletions, mostly of material only relevant on a Canadian forum.
=============================================================
I am writing this on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of my father’s death (January 5, 1973) and my going to Temple today to mark that anniversary.
The period of my life bracketed by my father’s death was a period of my life marked by great promise, great tragedy, and great change. Unfortunately and sadly, I have not always lived up to that promise, though at 45 (now 60) I suppose there’s still time.
Over Labor Day weekend 1971my father had a colostomy. This effectively ended the really privileged part of my life as the only child of a prosperous interior architect. We were told after the surgery that "they got it all" but my reading the school and local library (I was a 14 year old high school freshman) belied the happy horse manure.
I turned 15 in April 1972. While I always did well academically, I had never done well socially and that year, my freshman year of high school, was about the worst. My parents were asked to consider putting me in another school after a kid named Charlie chased me down two flights of stairs and through much of the school, whirling a bicycle chain. I wound up being able to hold a set of doors against him. When authorities finally arrived, Charlie told them that I had just bitten a dog outside the school's front door. My parents were "recommended" to find a private school for me. My mother favored this approach, my father not as much. Needless to say, Charlie was not disciplined. That summer, I was thrown out of the first camp I went to after half the summer.
The second half started the more positive phase, though marked by a developing tragedy. First, the bad part. My father’s colon cancer had started to recur, though we didn’t quite know it, at least officially. Now the good part.
I went to a different camp for the second half of the summer. It featured limited travel as part of the program. For the first time in my life, I made friends relatively easily. One of those was a girl. We repeatedly ran into each other and were singing the same song, coincidentally, each time. I think the songs were Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. The other was Led Zeppellin’s Stairway to Heaven.
After returning home, my school was still pretty serious about getting me out, but they had no grounds to expel me. My family and the school settled on my starting some activities that began before school started to see what happened. I chose marching band (I played tuba, which was odd since I was 5’5”), the school newspaper and soccer. Both went well.
That semester, I was active in those activities as well as the weather club (which is why you see me on the Kyoto threads constantly). Though in soccer I was a fullback, they put me in once as forward, because the New Rochelle team was getting a bit aggressive. I scored a goal during my 3 minutes in.
During that period, I made lots of friends, many of which I still am close with 30 (45) years later. It was one of the happiest, most productive periods of my life. It was, unfortunately, also marked by my father’s rapid decline and death from cancer. We played tennis for the last time in October 1972, distributed campaign literature for McGovern on November 5, 1972 and he died at the beginning of January 1973. The silver lining, if you can call it that, was that the death brought me back into the Jewish fold, and I became close with my soon to be stepfather of 40 years, until his death. That spring I became close with one of the friends I had made that fall, and remain close.
Summer 1973 was an entirely different kind of experience. While my relationships weren't perfect on my summer teen tour they were quite good. And I met the person who became the "best man" at my May 1991 wedding. Basically I was for really the first time not the recipient of demeaning "special handling." Things were not "happily ever after" and there were bumps along the way. But that limited period of time was a sea change.
When I say I have not always lived up to the promise of that period, I mean that I am not all that I can be. I am, on balance, not satisfied with the friends I’ve made since that period (with the exception, of course, of my wife). I have allowed myself to be sidetracked by petty insecurities and concerns, things that, in the long run, didn’t and don’t matter.
If there was a time I’d like to go back to, it’s that period. I’d like to start over from the end of that period and do many things differently and better.
Text additions from a post I wrote 15 years ago are in dark blue. I could not show deletions, mostly of material only relevant on a Canadian forum.
=============================================================
I am writing this on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of my father’s death (January 5, 1973) and my going to Temple today to mark that anniversary.
The period of my life bracketed by my father’s death was a period of my life marked by great promise, great tragedy, and great change. Unfortunately and sadly, I have not always lived up to that promise, though at 45 (now 60) I suppose there’s still time.
Over Labor Day weekend 1971my father had a colostomy. This effectively ended the really privileged part of my life as the only child of a prosperous interior architect. We were told after the surgery that "they got it all" but my reading the school and local library (I was a 14 year old high school freshman) belied the happy horse manure.
I turned 15 in April 1972. While I always did well academically, I had never done well socially and that year, my freshman year of high school, was about the worst. My parents were asked to consider putting me in another school after a kid named Charlie chased me down two flights of stairs and through much of the school, whirling a bicycle chain. I wound up being able to hold a set of doors against him. When authorities finally arrived, Charlie told them that I had just bitten a dog outside the school's front door. My parents were "recommended" to find a private school for me. My mother favored this approach, my father not as much. Needless to say, Charlie was not disciplined. That summer, I was thrown out of the first camp I went to after half the summer.
The second half started the more positive phase, though marked by a developing tragedy. First, the bad part. My father’s colon cancer had started to recur, though we didn’t quite know it, at least officially. Now the good part.
I went to a different camp for the second half of the summer. It featured limited travel as part of the program. For the first time in my life, I made friends relatively easily. One of those was a girl. We repeatedly ran into each other and were singing the same song, coincidentally, each time. I think the songs were Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. The other was Led Zeppellin’s Stairway to Heaven.
After returning home, my school was still pretty serious about getting me out, but they had no grounds to expel me. My family and the school settled on my starting some activities that began before school started to see what happened. I chose marching band (I played tuba, which was odd since I was 5’5”), the school newspaper and soccer. Both went well.
That semester, I was active in those activities as well as the weather club (which is why you see me on the Kyoto threads constantly). Though in soccer I was a fullback, they put me in once as forward, because the New Rochelle team was getting a bit aggressive. I scored a goal during my 3 minutes in.
During that period, I made lots of friends, many of which I still am close with 30 (45) years later. It was one of the happiest, most productive periods of my life. It was, unfortunately, also marked by my father’s rapid decline and death from cancer. We played tennis for the last time in October 1972, distributed campaign literature for McGovern on November 5, 1972 and he died at the beginning of January 1973. The silver lining, if you can call it that, was that the death brought me back into the Jewish fold, and I became close with my soon to be stepfather of 40 years, until his death. That spring I became close with one of the friends I had made that fall, and remain close.
Summer 1973 was an entirely different kind of experience. While my relationships weren't perfect on my summer teen tour they were quite good. And I met the person who became the "best man" at my May 1991 wedding. Basically I was for really the first time not the recipient of demeaning "special handling." Things were not "happily ever after" and there were bumps along the way. But that limited period of time was a sea change.
When I say I have not always lived up to the promise of that period, I mean that I am not all that I can be. I am, on balance, not satisfied with the friends I’ve made since that period (with the exception, of course, of my wife). I have allowed myself to be sidetracked by petty insecurities and concerns, things that, in the long run, didn’t and don’t matter.
If there was a time I’d like to go back to, it’s that period. I’d like to start over from the end of that period and do many things differently and better.