The Grateful Dead, God bless 'em, enjoyed a career that spanned 30 plus years. I enjoyed them for perhaps 25 of those, although not as devotedly as others who built a lifestyle around the band and their pantheon of counterculture icons. I was too young to be part of that San Francisco scene, and too far east, but I caught the bus when it went by and I stayed on the bus in various ways for a long time.
I can safely say that I got to enjoy an extended young adulthood. Long after I saw age 35 and even after Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, when I turned 40, I made my place in this world with other Deadheads, enjoying a sort of idyllic life and yet trying not to fall into the "hipper than thou" trap. It made for interesting times, sometimes incredible fun, and a social safety net that could catch me, with all my eccentricities, when I fell. In retrospect, and I say this because I now find myself on the margins of this hippie caste, it was indeed a long, strange, trip that has culminated in a clearer understanding of what went wrong with the counter culture.
My own story is nothing special. I grew up in a nice suburb in a nice "medium sized manufacturing city" as an old friend used to call it. I knew that I heard that different drummer early in my life when I got wind of rock and roll and The Beatles. When the Summer of Love happened I was barely out of grade school. When Woodstock happened I was fourteen years old. I wanted to be a part of rock and roll and the music scene and was rabid about reading everything I could get my hands on. I had the first issue of Rolling Stone. In later years, when Cameron Crowe wrote his screenplay for "Almost Famous," he was writing what I dreamed of. What would eventually be diagnosed as a crippling case of clinical depression and imposter syndrome as well as social anxiety would keep me from realizing those dreams. For the most part I dropped out. I was never in danger of addiction, however, since I had a low tolerance for alcohol and most drugs. I wasn't a drinker. I did inhale.
The difference between then, or life up until May, 2000 and now, is that I have been away. The past decade has been a crash course in focus and determination. More to the point, coming home made things stand out in much sharper focus. There is the old song from the world wars that goes, "how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris?" (pronounced in true American hick: pair - EE). Well, I have been to the academic Paris. I did what most every red-blooded American single mother does when faced with a child starting Kindergarten: I went back to college. It was the best of both worlds decision in that it kept my child from being a latchkey kid.
Going back to college was my first clue. My friends were incredulous, my family dubious. I had a checkered employment past (I feel that I was doing "research" for "life skills"). I had started college once, but wandered off, never really quitting, just "putting it off for a year or twenty."
... continued
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