Leaving the World
My first exposure to Buddhism was during a weekend in a monastery in upstate New York, a gorgeous place with gleaming wood and a literary pedigree, albeit one that had been tarnished by some shady behavior (no, it’s not just the Catholics). The weekend was offered as a sober retreat, and I was willing to go mainly because I had a major crush on an angry Jewish guy who had signed up. We had been flirting, and the four-hour drive sealed the deal enough that, upon arrival, we snuck into what later proved to be a private sanctuary for the students and monks and made love in the hot tub.
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On This Birthday I Promise It Will Never Be Like This
My mother stands in my room – not my room, but the room I use when I visit my parents – and she tells me I am missing school, missing the bus, late for high school. She is eighty-six, I am fifty-three and no one is supposed to be at school. She will not drive me; I must hitchhike as I did when I was in high school if I overslept. Her tone is urgent and slightly frightened. I say, “No Mom, go back to bed, go back to bed. You’re dreaming.” She disappears and I lie there in that room that isn’t my room, in the bed that is single and narrow, and I try to fall asleep again, but it is hard. I am afraid she’ll come back and scare me like she used to when I was little and the night had lasted forever with my father shouting, the sound of glass breaking, my mother’s pleading about something, more yelling, possibly a car starting – who will die tonight?
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The First Heartbreak: A New England Bicycle Odyssey
Cindy and I perfected our plan to go bicycling with an American Youth Hostel group all over New England for six weeks. Never mind that neither of us had any real talent for riding bikes or interest in canoeing or hiking which this trip also offered. It would be six weeks without our parents, with each other, six weeks of freedom albeit requiring that we ride a bicycle loaded with forty pounds of gear, upwards of eighty miles a day, through the mountains of New Hampshire. Cindy told her parents my parents had agreed to let me go and I told my parents her parents had given her permission, we both lied about the amount of adult supervision, we both confessed to a secret passion for long distance bicycle riding and both of us asked for ten speed Peugeots for our respective birthdays.
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