II
- Cece
Growing up with a doctor for a
father and a mother who devoted her time to volunteering wherever she
was needed, I had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to
learn needlework. When I started college in Boston the word “hippie”
was new to most people and it was only a few years after the famous
Summer of Love. I majored in biology because my father had dreams of
me following in his footsteps, but that was not to be.
Although Boston was little more
than an hour commute from Pitts Crossing, I managed to convince my
parents that, by sharing an apartment with three other girls, I would
save commuting time and, thus, have more time to study. Maybe I would
have wound up becoming a doctor if I had actually done that. However,
what I did with those two hours, and quite a few more, was hang out
in Cambridge or on Boston Common listening to music, talking, and
smoking pot. I imagine the four decades worth of high school students
I went on to teach would find that quite amusing—cranky
old Miss Cecelia McGill, decked out in love beads and tie-dyed granny
dresses, getting stoned out of her noodle on the swan boats in the
Public Garden.
It was a time of experimentation
for most of us: sexually (the less said about that, the better,)
spiritually (my socially-committed, Unitarian parents endured my fits
of Buddhism and Wicca,) and politically (perhaps you would enjoy
hearing about my relationship with Abbie Hoffman, but that will have
to wait for another day.)
Then a transformative thing
happened—someone left a copy of the
first Woodstock
Craftsman's Manual
in our apartment. The cover was bent in half from being used to roll
joints but I picked it up, paged through it, and lost interest in
everything else. Within days I had filled our little apartment with
cords and wooden beads, and was making macramé plant hangers,
bracelets, and shoulder bags. I even made a macramé hammock that I
still have up in my attic somewhere. I moved from macramé to
candle-making, then on to tie-dye, soap-making, and different kinds
of needlework.
For awhile I was also in love—or
as close to being in love as someone like me is capable of being. His
name was John MacKenzie, but everyone called him Mac. He was a big,
hearty, easy-going boy with a wild mop of curls that turned blond in
the sunlight and a thick beard that was the color of the hay he had
grown up bailing on his father's farm in New Hampshire. Mac was the
first person in his family to go to college and he planned to be a
veterinarian. We met in a series of science classes. In no time we
were studying together, then hanging out together, then sleeping
together.
It was Mac's idea for me to spend
the summer in New Hampshire at a crafts commune near his father's
farm. So, when spring term ended, I went home with him. That was the
happiest summer of my life. I spent my days with my fellow craftsmen
producing endless
amounts of hippie artwork that we tried to sell at craft fairs and at
roadside stands. I spent my nights with Mac. But, as I've said, the
less said about that, the better.
In recent years I have noticed that
there is a nostalgia among young people for that era. They buy
tie-dyed clothes on eBay and Etsy, listen to the Grateful Dead and
the Rolling Stones, and, when they find out I was an enthusiastic
participant in those years, they ask endless questions. Of course,
when I was teaching I had to at least pretend to be a respectable
member of my community but, now that I am retired, I don't mind
spinning a few yarns. They
are largely borrowed from Richard Brautigan and Tom Wolfe novels
because, quite frankly, there's not a lot I remember—that seems to
be a common affliction among my contemporaries.
Read the rest of the story: The Monday Night Needlework and Murder Guild on Kindle or Nook.
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