Junior Jitters and Heartbreak

Eleventh Grade, the Junior Jitters year.

Life after high school was unimaginable. I worried about finding a job, paying income taxes, getting married, having children, and washing and ironing and paying the bills. I wanted something more. I wanted to dream.

Me in 1968

I knew my grades wouldn't get me into college. "I don’t know anything except avoiding homework, loving people, chasing boys, and wants and hopes and dreams and music and writing and reading and beauty and needing friendship," I wrote.

When Nancy Ensminger and I were nine years old we had discussed what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wanted to be a writer because I believed writers had the power to change people's lives. At sixteen I hoped to "learn to write" and publish. I wondered if I could "take up writing in college." It seems "impossible & improbable & obscure & obscene, but in dreams I see it as reality." My second hope was to "be a friend to mankind" and "a help to people."

I wrote in my journal,

"Could N. Gochenour be transformed into a poet or short story writer?  This mass of misspelled words and incorrect grammar be shuffled around to form a tangible and solid author-type person?
Do I dare to satisfy my childhood dream?  Do I dare to step out?  Do I dare try my hand at being somebody?  Can I succeed?"

I was very internally focused in my scribbling.

"Have you ever stood quietly and felt your heart beating inside of you? Be very still and don’t move or breathe. If you listen, you’ll feel it there. So faintly..."

"Thin lined paper beckons me to write. It makes me want to mess up its unblemished surface. It makes me want to write nicely with round, even letters and long words. I find it hard to pass up thin-lined paper. I have this need to create and write. I love writing—writing anything, even if only the alphabet or a perfection of one work, with curly-cues in all the right places. And I want to write of how [the boys I liked] never come, but always just look at you with those heavy eyes, and it’s always [the unsuitable boys] who find you. And how you are flattered into it though you know such differences exist and they aren’t the ones, but the [boy you like] goes off with other girls."

1968. My 'at home' uniform: sweatshirt, jeans, and moccasins.

On October 1 I wrote, "What am I doing? Taking history, economics, chemistry, I'm in PAC, editor of "Our Paper" [a project of the senior high Sunday School class at St John's Episcopal Church]. I write poetry. I also participate in that All-American game--Boys."

Herald article on the Political Action Club

On October 2 Mr. Warner came into Mr. Perry's economics class and called out, "Debbie!" and I said, "No-Nancy." I wrote, "He informed me to take International Relations. With that, Perry, Burroughs & Arndt I'd be prepared for college. Before he left he gave my book a karate kick off the desk & exclaimed to Mr. P, "You've got some ugly girls, too, huh?" Mr. Perry shook his head as Mr. W left, and a girl asked, "Who WAS that man!"

Mr Warner in my International Relations classroom, 1969

At least one teacher was talking to me about college.

On October 3 I wrote that everyone was carrying transistor radios to hear the World Series with the Detroit Tigers vs. the Cardinals. On Oct 11 I wrote that the Tigers had won.

I went to the first football game wearing my navy coat, a skirt, and my hair pulled back under a black lambswool pill box hat I found at a garage sale. My hat was crazy and a hit. My teachers remarked on it, with my chemistry teacher Mr. Heald teasing and asking if it was bear fur.

I went campaigning door-to-door with the Political Action Club. I recall we were for Romney for governor.

I bought and read news magazines, then cut the ads out to adorn my bedroom walls and to use in collages to illustrate books I made of my poetry. I had several poems in The Herald--pretty awful, derivative stuff! Including this poem:

page from my poetry book

We are all one in our fight.
our strength is one strength in our strife;
our weaknesses merge into one weakness;
our ideas build like blocks
to form one universal conception.

But when strength is pitted against strength
in one being;
when ideas are kept apart;
building blocks are missing
and the conception falls
as we will fall
if we are not all one in our flight.

a collage I made for my poem Spring Fever

Herald Staff 1968-69. I am in the second row on the far left

wearing one of Mom's 1950s wool skirts which I shortened.

One of my first articles for the Herald

 I got my class ring in October. I wore it proudly.

Me with red hair

My hair had become dark golden brown and Mom suggested I lighten it as I was born blond. Instead, I became a redhead! It took three generations to accomplish it, with my mom and grandmother helping. My Grandmother and Mother also encouraged me to try contact lens and helped me earn the $200 to buy them. They were green, to enhance my hazel eyes.

On October 20 my family went to Tonawanda. I wrote,

"We went to visit the Kuhns last night; called Nancy Ensminger. Saw the Randall’s today. V. N.! [Very nice] Mike R. is tall--And very cute. Quiet. I got in my 2 cents of mouth flapping. Amused him, too. Very Outgoing: in other words, NOISY, when I could be. Nice time, had coffee & pet their dog, who’s getting bald, and their gray cat, who has a fluorescent orange ball. Razing between Uncle Ken & I. Says I’m a hippie ‘cause I got de long hair."

Mike R. and I had played make believe about space aliens as kids. He grew up to become an actor and television weather reporter.

Nancy Ensminger and me, age 16, October 1968

"Oct. 21 Wore my contacts 5 ½ hrs. today. Yesterday I saw Nancy E. We talked, had our pics taken in a booth (25 cents) at Niesner’s, ate spaghetti, talked, said 'hi' to Bruce [Nancy's brother], and talked. Today we went to the store & I gypped Mom outta $1.99 for a shirt, $1.00 for pantyhose, and $1.00 for 4 scarves. We went to see a certain Louise Cole & mom got her wig fixed & we had pheasant & rabbit (and woodcock) sumpthin' or other that wasn’t half bad at all. I hardly—didn’t even—recognize my “old friend” --ha, ha-- Allan (Al.)  Dark hair and cute. He smiled when I got my mouth moving (same as with Mike) and got, in the end, so we could talk & joke & without bein’ scared of scaring one another or something & all. Showed me his pigeons & rabbits & chickens." [Louise Cole had been our hairdresser when we lived in Tonawanda. Her son was Allan.]

Nancy Ensminger, 1968

Nancy 1968

"Oct 24 We went to the Waterson’s [Doris Waterson was Mom's best friend from high school].  Eric [her youngest son] is lovable. Tom [her older son] there—shot a pheasant. Eric wanted to know what I was giving him this time!  I said, “A kiss!” No! But wait—this time you’re supposed to give ME a present! (Mr. Waterson said to say I wanted “Bunnie”) No—I couldn’t have him! I could have the black-nosed bunny—No. A Tiger?  No—send me your picture. (Eric had his school picture taken that day.)

"Yesterday Debbie [Becker] thought I had a beautiful voice when I played my guitar. Went to Guenther’s. I hardly recognized Stevie—er, Steve! Yipes! I didn’t let him be shy. I teased him. He needed a specific screw for his gun. Linda, Elaine, me, Deb & Steve all piled into the car & took off to about 50 billion stores looking for it. That’s about the extent of it. Tomorrow we’ll return, and then Monday—back to the rat race."

I was still doing art

My art reflecting the social times and psychedelic style

my poster, a typical 60s motif

My junior year classes included Chemistry with Mr. Heald, Herald Staff with Mr. Rosen, Economics with Mr. Perry, International Relations with Mr. Warner, Speech, American Lit, and US History.

I read the 1958 poem Univac to Univac by Louis B. Salomon in Speech class. Hear it here. It is about computers wondering if humans might take over the world. I also read my poem about the Christmas tree under the pen name Stephanie Valentine.

My Chemistry class was in the early afternoon. Mr. Heald would kick the metal trash can to get our attention when we drifted off. Sometimes my hand would keep writing as I nodded off and I woke up with my page all scribbled over. (In college I avoided early afternoon classes because I was still falling asleep at 2 pm!) I did not do well, but learned something because I wrote,

if only out of all this confusion

things could fall into an order--

any kind of order--

so i could observe the situation

and make decisions

but, no, it is as unstable

as an ozone atom.

I wrote that my Economics teacher "Mr. Perry spent the hour pointing out all the reasons why we should commit suicide or something because of the world (U.S.) situation." And I also wrote that I was tired of memorizing tariffs and laws and 'every darn thing.' I passed the class because I grasped the theory, but was inept at the application. My conversation starter became, "And what do you think of the national debt?" 50 years later it is still a relevant question!

I was in Girl's Choir for the second year. I had been in choir with many of these girls for two years now and had many friends. I have the best memories of these girls. We learned the Hallelujah Chorus that year and I would sing it walking through the hallways at school. (I still sing when walking, in the car, feeding the doggies, often making up songs. Still weird after all these years!) I also made new friends, Alta and Carol, who were a year older. 

We participated in the All-City Secondary Vocal Festival on Friday, April 25, 1969, at the Kimball High School Gymnasium. The Combined High School Girls’ Choirs performed:

     Gloria (from “Twelfth Mass”) —Mozart

     Go Not Far From Me, O God—Zingarelli

     Say It With Music—Berlin

     The Wizard of Oz Selections—Arlen

Girl's Choir 1968-69. I am in the third row, fifth from the right end.

Once night Dad drove Alta and me home from a football game. The radio was on and Alta and I sang along to Hey, Jude.

Alta introduced me to a boy who liked me. He took me to his church youth group, which was fun, but the church was very conservative. I remember seeing piles of books about the threat of Communism. The church was against dancing, smoking, drinking, etc. He stood me up one night when we were to go Christmas caroling so to cheer me up Alta took me to a party she was going to. Later one of the boys at the party told Alta he'd like to date me. She didn't think we were each other's type.

My friends Dorothy and Kathy bought me a Christmas present from Jacobson's, a tiger stripe fur hat from Jacobson's! I was very moved. The hat was weird enough to be just my style!

In January I was getting to know the boy from the Christmas party. He was a year older and not typically 'my type.' He was complicated with a difficult home life. And he wasn't interested any more in poetry or books than the other boys who wanted to date me. He got along with my folks and was at my house frequently. I really liked him. I fell into the trap many young girls fall into, thinking that we can solve a boy's problems. He warned that he knew he would "blow our relationship."

We went to the French Club Dance, meeting up with my friends and their beaus. Mom took my photo. It became a family legend! Mr. Warner, my International Relations teacher, made fun of it saying, “St. Nancy of Gochenspeil—This is your airline stewardess.” He kept it to share with his other classes.

Me before the 1969 French Club Dance.
That eagle is still in the family. It is not attached to my head.

Before the prom my relationship with my boyfriend had mutually ended. It broke my heart, yet I was determined to remain a friend because I knew my mom was a good support to him. Later I realized our break up was wise and right. But at the time I wrote a lot of bad poetry over it and it took many months to move beyond the pain.

May 9, 1968, a week before the anniversary of Joe Boten's death, I was feeling very low. I wrote that Mom gave me a Librium and drove me to school. It shocks me now to know Mom was on Librium and even more shocked that had given it to me. Because her psoriasis was believed to be made worse by stress, perhaps her doctor believed the Librium was good for her. There was a lot of bad medication going on back then, and Mom was desperate enough to try anything. Her neck, hands, and major joints were deformed by psoriatic arthritis. Winter found her crippled and bedridden. Neighbors came over during the day to help her out of bed.

Every week, I would put olive oil or a tar ointment in her hair at night. She wrapped her head and let the ointment loosen the psoriasis plaque overnight. A stint in the hospital involved a treatment where tar ointment was applied on her entire body, then she wrapped up in Saran wrap and let it soak overnight. Another treatment involved UV light therapy, but it was stopped when she developed pre-cancerous lesions. She was on and off Cortisone, which made her swell up and thinned her skin.

Mom relied on me to help her in the kitchen. I mashed potatoes and opened jars or cans because her hands were so crippled. I went shopping with her to help carry the bags. I did the Pepsi runs to keep her supplied so she didn't have to get up. Mom thought I would make a good physical therapist since I already was a home care health aide in training.

Also on May 9 I obtained an application for my family to host a foreign exchange student the next school year. A family friend was involved with Youth for Understanding and we had hosted an exchange student for a weekend.

Dad wrote in his memoirs, "We got to know one of Joyce's parent's neighbors in Berkeley, whose name was Anita. She was involved with a student exchange program called Youth for Understanding. She asked us to take a temporary exchange student. Joyce, Nancy, Tom and I talked it over and we decided we would like to get involved with the program."

I wonder if Mom thought it would get my mind off 'boy trouble' to have a sister.

Here I am with the exchange student we hosted for a week.

I already had a prom dress and, boyfriend or not, Mom was determined I would still go to the prom. I personally didn't care.

A neighbor boy had returned from Vietnam and his mom and my mom arranged for him to take me to the prom. Again, we joined up with my friends and their beaus for dinner. My date was nice, but we had nothing in common. He was very old fashioned and didn't believe in women going to college. I had to see my old beau with his new girl. I got to wear the dress but I did not truly enjoy myself.

Ready for the prom, 1968

I was determined not to fall into the depression I had suffered the previous year. My mantra became Resurgam-- I shall rise again. I believe I heard the term from Jane Eyre for it is on the tombstone of Jane's Lowood friend Helen.

I collected sayings to support me.

Jeremiah 8:4
“You shall say to them, thus says the Lord;
When men fall, do they not rise again?
If one turns away, does he not return?”

"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62

This may have been the summer when I met a church challenge to attend every Sunday all summer long. I won a copper metal bookmark.

I was awfully tired of growing up. I wrote a short poem,

When do the lessons end?
Is there so much to learn
to comprehend
that the lessons must go on forever,
no holiday, no end?

Summer came. I took Student Drivers Ed in summer school. Learning that alcohol kills brain cells I vowed to not drink. I figured I needed all the brain cells I had! And I did not drink until I was in my late twenties and my husband and I ordered a glass of wine at dinner.

In July I turned seventeen. I wrote that I had been naive and now I was 'corrupted' and looked with old eyes. ("The delicate core of my mind/is made of hopes and dreams/corrupted and destroyed/by harsh reality," I wrote in one poem).

I was truly concerned with the future, thinking more seriously about college, but I had no clue about how to get into college. My folks assumed I'd get married and that my brother would go to college. I was never pushed to improve my grades or rewarded for doing well. Although my orphaned grandfather Ramer had put himself through Susquehanna College and seminary and Columbia teacher's college in the 1920s, and supported my interests, he never said anything about my going to college either. And I still had never talked about it with my folks.

I had changed a lot during the year. I knew I was going to survive seventeen, and not only would I grow up--I finally wanted to.

On July 20, 1969, America landed men on the moon. Alta asked me to write a poem about it.

On the Virgin Soil, Touched

black, endless
rhinestone-set velvet
split
by a small silver needle
traveling by stitches
through space.

finite, three lives
existing
to carry out an excursion
in the name of mankind.

in-the-image-of-God
one foot
touched
the sterile
virgin
soil,
that now knows man.

millions afar--
eyes turned upward--
mouths
no words to form
speech taken away
by wonder
by fear
by sense of man's potential power
standing
in awe
of one foot
and the moon
the friction, touch
coming between.

Around fifteen years ago I made my quilt When Dreams Came True to celebrate the Apollo 11 mission. I used copyright free NASA photographs, fusible applique, commercial fabrics, and machine thread work and machine quilting.

When Dreams Came True by Nancy A. Bekofske

detail from When Dreams Came True by Nancy A. Bekofske

detail from When Dreams Came True by Nancy A. Bekofske

detail of When Dreams Came True by Nancy A. Bekofske

detail from When Dreams Came True by Nancy A. Bekofske

Nancy's Sophomore Slump

Me, age 15

By Tenth Grade I felt like an 'old pro' at high school. The year was a heady journey of ups and downs. I went on my first date, studied journalism, saw the end of a friendship and the deepening of others. That spring, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. A boy at school died. And Mom suffered a major health crisis that hospitalized her for weeks.

Me, fall 1967

I had taken Algebra in summer school so I could 'catch up' to my friends and take Geometry as a sophomore. I started out ok, but couldn't keep up and failed the class.

My geometry teacher Mr. Jacobson and I had a 'special' relationship. One day he said I was his favorite geometry student. "He kept bugging me and asked, "Who's your favorite geometry teacher?" That spring, when I was flunking the class, I told one of his honors geometry students to "kick Mr. Jacobson hello for me," and she did. She said he laughed and thought it was 'sweet of me' to remember him. When I came into class he told me, "I got your hello." I apologized, but he said, don't think of it, adding that he was "happy to fill my head with geometry."

About Journalism class I wrote, "Mr. Rosen's going to be a real peach of a teacher." I loved the class, even selling the Herald newspapers and Lancer yearbooks. I wrote, "Everything Mr. Rosen says sinks and goes deep into me. I looked through all my old Heralds and my Lancer.  I bet I’ve looked at my yearbook a million times."

I had Biology with Mr. Gasiorowski whose passion for his subject was infectious. What a great teacher and a great guy. He was a Chicago Cubs and Eddie Stankey fan.

When my dad brought home two rabbits in the spring I named them Eddie Stankey and Stanley Miller, a chemist Mr. G talked about who made amino acids in a test tube. My brother called the bunnies Spot and Snow.

Me with Edie Stankey and Stanley Miller

When Mr. G talked about Desmond Morris' book The Naked Ape I bought a copy. Mom picked it up to look at and was appalled by the description of the human body response during sex. I told her I had read more salacious things in her books which I had picked up and read!

In October my folks went to the Parent open house. I wrote, "Apparently Mom and Dad had a good time at open house tonight. They liked all my teachers, especially Mr. Rosen and Mr. Gasiorowski. Mr. R said, “I don’t know if any of the kids have been telling you what we’ve been doing..”
“Yeah!” Mom said.  “Two hundred sentences…”
“That was a while back.”
“Now you're doing verbs and photography.  She likes your class best, I think.”

Girl's Choir 1967-68. I am in the second row from bottom, fifth from the right.

I was thrilled to be promoted to Girl's Choir. We wore a navy blazer provided by the school. I felt really sharp wearing it to school on days we sang. I was always singing, walking home or through the school hallways. They were a great group of gals and I made many friends in choir. I enjoyed Mrs. Ballmer.

Gym was required for two years. My gym locker was near that of the 'Greaser' girl who had bullied me in junior high, taking my hat and throwing it. One day I was singing while dressing and she said, "She's singing. Are you singing for me?" I replied, "If you want me to." And so I sang the second alto part of the song we were learning in choir. Her friends listened, too. They said I was good. I was never picked on again. It was a confirmation of something I had believed when a girl: if a bad guy came along all I had to do was play the piano or sing to calm the wildness.

I was still pining for the same boy. I wrote, "Mom left me with no hope. But Dad did. He said, “Don’t give up.” He said anything—even a fumble—boosts a guy’s morale. Let’s hope so. Of course, he ought to know, being a guy himself—once."

My old neighbor and friend Mike D. who had moved away was now a freshman at Kimball. I was too shy to talk to him. One day he gathered his courage and asked if I was me and then asked if I remembered the telescope and Homer the Ghost. I didn't have the courage to let him know I really had liked him. Partly it was pride, as I was a year older, but mostly I was shy.

A boy from my homeroom teased me for a while then asked me out. We dated for a few weeks, going to a school dance. We were dancing to My Girl when he kissed me, my first kiss. He wanted to go steady. I liked him as a friend, but we had little in common and I broke it off.

My homeroom class, 10th Grade. I am in the second row, third from right.

I followed several friends and joined the Political Action Club.

I never cared about sports but went to the football games at school to see my friends. I did learn a little about football.

I was writing more poetry:

The sunlight from the window,
Formed a stream of light flowing into the room.
The light illuminated the particles of dust
Floating on the river of melted sun.
The slowly sinking silver moon
Abandoned its position in the heavens
Giving it up to the victor, the sun.
A rosy dawn slowly, silently
Took over the sky transforming
A midnight blue to rainbows.

I read Gone With The Wind and wrote, "I feel I know Scarlet and Gerald and Rhett and Melody and Ashley all personally. I suffer with them. They haunt me, through Rhett's asking Scarlet to be his mistress, through Ellen's death, through when Scarlet finds the Tarleton twins have died. War is horrible. The book is so much a love story, but also it gives an excellent picture of Southern life and a great background to the Civil War. I never knew that was like that."

Other books I read included Alfred Hitchcock's Stories Not for the Nervous; The Moonspinners; The Return of the Native and Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy; Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote; J. D. Salinger's books; John Knowle's A Separate Peace; Green Mansions; The Foundation Trilogy by Issac Asimov; Kingsblood Royal; The Chosen by Chaim Potok; Anna Karenina; and Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein.

Tom and Dad playing at dining room table, Me and Mom.
No one else wore their hair that way. I always did something weird.

The fall began with the murder of a classmate's little brother in the Quickstead Woods near Kimball. Then my Grandfather Ramer was hospitalized after his first heart attack. One night some boys were trying to get the attention of the girls who lived across the street. Dad yelled at them to be quiet. They threw a beer bottle through my parent's second-floor bedroom window.

That October, listening to my records I wrote,

"Life is so baffling and unpredictable. It schemes, and you can only hope you’re on the right side of the conflicting forces and not on the overpowered side. It can cut you down like a scythe cuts the wheat. You fall at its mercy. It can be endless in every way as the stars. It can make you as exhausted as one lost in a pathless woods.

I won’t cry, no I won’t cry,
I won’t shed a tear
Not as long, not as long as you
Stand by me.

I feel so strange to feel so friendly
To say “good morning,” and really mean it,
To feel these changes happening in me,
But not to notice still I feel it.

"It’s all so strange. To say “good morning” and really mean it.  It makes me think.  Do they?  Does someone care, even if to say a “good morning?”  What is there left to say?  Is there something I’ve forgotten?  One person left blank?

“I can no longer keep my blind drawn,
And I can’t keep myself from talking.”

"But I notice, I feel it. What a strange effect a beautiful, overdubbed melody can have, creating a whole new emotion out of nowhere. Changing instantly how you feel. Maybe tomorrow I’ll know the answers. Maybe tomorrow I’ll know. I can only wait. And hope He will stand by me, as before."

At Christmas, our neighbors the McNabs joined my family for a turkey dinner. I played Christmas Carols on the piano and they sang along. Afterward, Grandma Ramer, Dad, my brother and me took a drive to see Christmas lights.

We ended up in Detroit. I wrote, "We saw Cobo Hall, Ford Auditorium, The Spirit of Detroit, Hudson's Christmas display windows. It began to snow, not much on the ground, but it does look beautiful to look out your window and see snow falling. Yes, we saw Detroit in all its glory, and the dark, back alleys that chill you to the bone. Not far from Grand Circus Blvd. and it's lighted stores, are broken-down tenements. But even there, in cracked windows, can be found a few colored lights, a lighted candle."

We spent New Year's Day in Tonawanda. I wrote, "Now I'm grown I can see people's personalities. Aunt Alice and Uncle Kenny, Skip, Tom Wilson. Skip says I can't marry until I'm 30--get an education. Uncle Ken is funny. Aunt Alice will have a baby in July. John [Kuhn] pities poor dad--"even your own daughter!"--because I pick on his big nose." I wrote that "Nancy Ensminger was impressed by my description of my life in Michigan." Sadly, Aunt Alice lost that baby.

In January I wrote, "I think the world's falling apart. Riots, wars, crime--dear God, I wish I lived on some obscure island in the Pacific or on an iceberg off Greenland. When will man find peace? Will he ever? We destroy all the beautiful things with ugliness. I wish I were a child again able to live in my own magical world and leave the rest up to the adults. But in this day and age, teenagers are caught up in it. Ever since I heard [a boy] talk about being drafted I've been scared for the boys I know. I hate war. Cutting down the nation's youth, without a chance, growing up too quickly."

The Herald, our school paper

On April 5, I wrote, "It happened again. Martin Luther King Jr's murder. Students wore black armbands, shaking their heads silently during Mr. Stephan's speech. They protested that the flag wasn't at half mast until the governor proclaimed it. They were emotionally upset. We all felt bad, and perhaps guilty for our race. We are the future who will deal with this problem. It's fortunate most felt compassion instead of victory."

On April 6, I wrote, "It seems we just all exploded happily over Hanoi's wanting a peace talk, and up, up, up went the stocks. LBJ had to stay and cancel his trip as riots broke out over King's murder and down, down, down went the stocks. I am convinced this country is a mess. Mr. Jacobson's been talking politics in class lately, and Mr. Burroughs is great on current events. I've learned a lot about him about Vietnam, stocks, the racial problem, and other problems of this Rat Race. Mr. Gasiorowski has been preparing us for sex, marriage, and other things about Adult Life and responsibilities. With Mr. Rosen we try to take this world and report all the latest facts on the Rat Race to the Rats themselves. So, in the end, you've gotta get involved. Mr. Gould tries to help your 'love life,' and Mrs. Ballmer helps you get enjoyment out of succeeding and working hard to get to the top. And Mrs. Dubois teaches teamwork. In school, they prepare you for Life."

On April 18, I went to Great Scott on Crooks Rd. with Mom to buy easy meals. Mom was going into the hospital for two weeks and I would be responsible for cooking, cleaning, and getting my brother up and to school. Every few years Mom would try another treatment for her psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.

In May, my journalism class attended a conference for high school students held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We got press cards. My friends and I spent time wandering around town among the college students. I hoped to go to college, too. But I had not talked to my folks about it.

The photographer for the school newspaper and yearbook was the step-son of my Ninth Grade English Teacher, Mr. Botens. He would hang around our classroom, talking to Mr. Rosen. One time they were discussing how to photograph a person in a jar and they asked me to pose. I was wearing the Mod suit I'd bought with the money I found on my way to summer school. I liked Joe, but he was older and I thought he was too cool for me. My friend Dorothy knew him and one day we went to his house so she could return chemistry papers she had borrowed. In April she told me she asked him if he'd date me. She said he said he thought I was cute and would consider--it but he had a girl. That was bitter-sweet.

On May 15, 1968, I came to school and my friend Kathy gently broke the news that Joe had suffered a serious accident. I was stunned. At choir, my friend Peg told me Joe had died. The Girl's Choir sang Happy Birthday and I was offended, unwilling to have life go on in the midst of death. I grieved for days, recalling all my losses over the years. In the end, I decided, "So, follow his example, when he lived. Find the ambition and vigor he met life with. And die with the courage and determination he did, but only when it is time. Now you know death for what it is."

Newspaper articles on the death of Joe Botens

1969 Lancer tribute to Joe Botens

On June 5, I turned on the radio and heard that Robert Kennedy had been shot. One of my close friends was upset, saying her parents didn't understand. There was another school rally and the Principal gave another speech and a prayer for Kennedy's recovery. On June 6 I wrote, "I prayed as I fell asleep: Don't let him die, don't let him die."

October 1967 Free Press photo of RFK visit to Detroit

While Mom was at the hospital the doctors discovered that she was being harmed by the medications she was on and they took her off them, cold turkey. She became very ill, losing both weight and her hair. The family feared she would die. Dad came home from work, ate, and went to the hospital. I was not allowed to go. I stayed with my little brother.  It was an awful, stressful time.

The school year ended. The last day I walked home alone, for all my friends had left already. I was very blue. Summer of 1968 was the lowest point of my life.

The stress of Mom's illness showed in my family. I was falling into depression, moody and unhappy. My folks were short with me. There were fights. They did not understand that stress affects the whole family.

My Uncle Dave was in a horrible car accident in Annapolis. I went with the McNabs to see The Graduate. I traded bedrooms with my brother, making me nostalgic thinking about all I'd experienced while in that room. I went bike riding with my girlfriends. We saw the fireworks display at the Clawson park, just a block away from where I now live.

Mom was still not well when my July birthday came. Instead of a Sweet Sixteen party like my friends had, I was lucky to have a cake and a family gathering.

I struggled with the evil in the world, the loss of my naive belief in the innate goodness of all people. Now, I wondered if I wanted to live in such a world. I prayed to just die and then felt terror. I realized my terror was because I believed in God and feared that my prayer might be answered. I had at least accomplished one goal: I was on my way to a real faith.

One summer day I took my brother Tom and his friend Bruce McNab to show them my daily walk to Kimball. After Freshman year all I could think about was getting back to school. This summer I was nostalgic for simpler, happy days. One year had changed everything.

Bruce McNab and Tom Gochenour

The Nix by Nathan Hill

In Norwegian folklore a Nix is a shapeshifting spirit that lures the unsuspecting to a watery death,. Sometimes appearing as a white horse it will enchant a child onto it's back then plunge into the water, drowning it's rider. Faye tells the story to her son Samuel; the lesson, Faye explains, is that "the things you love the most will some day hurt you the worst."

I was eager to read The Nix by Nathan Hill. Luckily, my local librarian let me know a copy was languishing on the new book shelf for five whole days, which was slaying her, just waiting for me to come in and take it home.

I set aside everything else to spend the weekend reading it. I can't wait to read it again.

Hill has given us a book with great characters, a book with humor and heart, a wise recreation of the world Boomers grew up in, an insightful consideration of the reality of young people today, and with razor sharp exactness, considers the American way of life, politics, inter-family relationships, and ultimately, the nature of truth. Plus for all the terrible things that go wrong in Samuel and Faye's lives, it has a happy ending.

It's about as ambitious a novel as its gets. Perhaps it is the Great American Novel of the decade.

"When Samuel was a child reading a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, he'd keep a bookmark at the spot of a very hard decision, so that if the story turned out poorly, he could go back and try again. More than anything he wants life to behave this way."

Samuel is treading water in a sad job, with a history of failure, seeking escape through online role playing games. Until he gets a call from a lawyer representing the mother who abandoned him 20 years previous. Faye has been arrested as a terrorist after throwing gravel at a politician so awful he makes our current candidates look stellar. Samuel uses the opportunity to discover why Faye abandoned him. The pivitol moment that defined Faye's life was the 1968 Democratic Convention and the student protests that ended in police brutality.

1968. I watched the convention with my Mom, learning (finally, at age 16) how to blow bubbles with bubble gum. It had been a brutal spring, with the death of a boy at school, the photographer for the school paper and yearbook, dead of carbon monoxide poison from sitting in a running car in the family garage. Then there were the murders of Rev. King and Robert Kennedy. I was feeling overwhelmed, disillusioned, angry, and depressed, longing for days of innocence when I still believed in universal goodness (in other words, the year before). Plus, the guy I'd had a crush on for two years still pretended I wasn't there, looking through me as if I were a ghost. The spring and summer of 1968 have gone down in my mind as some of the worst days of my life.

In the novel, Faye grows up with a father who insists on mediocrity and humility. She develops panic attacks and a self-limiting perfectionism. Her boyfriend Henry freaks out when Faye steps out of the proscribed--and very Victorian-- ideal of womanhood. She escapes to a Chicago college, seeking a bigger life than what others have planned for her: contorting herself into the American housewife, the staid lover, a conformist to the lowest common denominator. The house nisse she'd encountered as a girl in her father's basement warned her that misfortune had been heaped on her father's head, and follows down generations. In Chicago, Faye falls into a series of unfortunate events that destroy her hopes and sends her back to the boy waiting for her--and a life she never wanted.

Samuel's quest for the mother brings understanding and empathy, and ultimately inspires him to offer the greatest sacrifice of love: letting his mother go again.

I will be buying a copy of this novel, just so I can underline and note my favorite parts. The character's journeys of self-realization offers pithy insights:

"What Faye won't understand and may never understand is that there is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones." 

"What's true? What's false? In case you haven't noticed, the world has pretty much given up on the old Enlightenment idea of piecing together the truth based on observed data. Reality is too complicated and scary for that. Instead, it's way easier to ignore all the data that doesn't fit your preconceptions and believe all the data that does."

"Faye's opinion is that sometimes a crisis is not really a crisis at all--just a new beginning. Because one thing she's learned through all this is, that if a new beginning is really new, it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid. If you're not afraid of it, then it's not real change."

Believe the hype. This first novel is a must-read.

The Nix
Nathan Hill
Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 978-1-101-94661-9

Read about Nathan Hill's journey to writing of The Nix at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/books/nathan-hill-the-nix.html