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A quote: “Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.” ~~ Albert Camus
I’ll start with a story …
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“What’s this?”
An indignant granddaughter is flapping something under my nose.
“It’s me at 15. 1967. Haight-Ashbury.”
“15? On your own, free, when you…”
“When I fill your life with ‘no’s? No cellphone, no dating, a curfew …”
Hot tears are forming reminding me of when I took her in to raise at 5.
“Because it’s all a lie. There was hunger, stealing, drugs. Sex? I was passed around like a party favor and told to like it.”
I look in her eyes “I give you strong fences to kick at so you’ll have muscles when the gate opens.”
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped and modified. Adobe Stock standard license.
Cameron says: She gave me a sultry contemplative look as she took a drag from her cigarette. I shook my head in amusement.
“Is that really supposed to entice me?”
The girl removed her sunglasses and gave me a confused look. “I thought this was considered attractive by mortals these days.”
“You’re out of the loop by about five decades. Let me guess; dryad?” As she nodded, I said “All right. I’m not going to show you pictures of what passes for beautiful right now. But show me your tree and I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re a druid?”
“Nope. An arborist.”
Navig8r says: “The locals call this the time tunnel. Now entering Bisbee, Arizona. Set your watch back fifty years.”
“What was that other description you had for it?”
“The town where the flower children went to seed.”
“Well, that one looks a bit out of place.”
“How so?”
“The clothes are straight from Woodstock, but she can’t be much over thirty. More likely a well weathered twenty.”
“And your point is?”
“It’s a mismatch. The flower children are all geriatric like us now.”
“They’re around too. Just keep watching.”
“So what’s with that one?”
“This is Bisbee. No further explanation needed.”
“Toni came by her rebellious streak honestly.” Rayna DeVilbiss pulled a photograph off the mantelpiece. “Her great-grandma was a sophomore at the University of Arizona in 1967. Instead of going back to the family ranch for the summer, she ran off to San Francisco with a bunch of her friends. Her parents were beside themselves with worry, but the police told them she was a legal adult and they couldn’t force her to go back home.”
Rayna considered the image of a young woman in a hippie’s love beads, smoking a cigarette that might not necessarily be tobacco. “Grandma always recalled that summer as both a grand adventure and a youthful foolishness. But she was one of the lucky ones. She didn’t addle her brain with all the drugs floating around, and she didn’t catch any nasty STI’s from all the casual sex, but over the years that followed, she saw what happened to a lot of her friends. And those stories always made me so relieved that Toni was too much of a nerd to get into that stuff, and missed where she was headed with all her computer games until it was too late.”
Dupin says: Ah! Those were the days.
Simple and free, with hardly a care. We worked enough to keep the micro-bus running, plus food, drink, and smokes. The days were good, and the nights even better… so long as I don’t think too deeply about it.
Eventually, we all joined the system, or at least mostly. We still tried to live the free life and not care too much about it.
As I sit here in my wheelchair, one foot amputated because of diabetes and trying not to cough up my remaining lung. I do think back. Maybe we should’ve cared more.
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