To anyone who has ever asked me if they kept me up, to all of Matt and Hilary and Hannah’s friends, pretty much to anyone under the age of twenty-seven.
Many of you knew Matt’s mom, my wife, Diane, and some did not. Diane and I grew up together. I consider my life before Diane to be playful years. We gave each other crisis comfort in addition to play, and we figured out together how to cope with the hard-edged stuff outside of us that we called the real world. I met Diane on the last leg of my 14,000-mile hitch-hiking journey (see what I mean about play) after I arrived on my brother’s doorstep in Cambridge. I thought I was passing through town on my way back to Indiana.
When I knocked on my brother’s door at some wee-ass hour, having mooched my last ride at a rest stop on the Mass Pike, Brian didn’t answer. His Native American worshipping, left-leaning (both politically and physically), ganja-smoking, self-centered mountain man of a roommate did.
Brian dodged the draft by joining Vista, as John had done. They met in Oregon. They both turned their backs on Vista and drove east together. I don’t remember why they chose this fair state, a girlfriend perhaps, or a dart thrown at a map? Our lives, back then, were chaotic compared to many of yours, with careers yet unknown, and the future (beyond the war) rarely considered.
Diane graduated from Wellesley College and moved to Somerville. She shared her first apartment with her college roommate, Ginger Candee, and Shirley, a friend from back home. However, that union was short-lived. Ginger was already sharing Brian’s bed when I came to town in September. Good for me because I needed a place to sleep, and I moved into Ginger’s empty room. I think I thought I was always going home, which is why I kept it so empty. A friend referred to the style as “Early Nothingness.” Much like my bedroom today. A thin wall separated me from Diane and Rich, her love and a graduate of Fordham. He was destined to be a government lawyer and an ex-boyfriend. Who would have guessed that this classical music-loving, rule-following valedictorian would choose me, a long-haired, bell-bottomed, rootless hippie? Like my bedroom, I haven’t changed much.
Diane explained her attraction to me, “You’re not boring.” Rich was the lamppost outside, and I was the unassembled parts for who-knows-what.
Shirley moved within that first year, and that left Diane and me sharing our space with a succession of roommates … nine, I think, only two of whom were men. Yeah, even then. When we moved to Littleton in 1978, we shared that apartment with three different roommates, all guys this time. We lived a communitarian life with people constantly drifting in and out. We grew our first garden and enjoyed watching the antics of the drunken college-age kids next door. We bought our house in Acton four years later with our friend Dan. He moved out and sold his share to another friend, John, who left when he married Ruth. Finally, we had enough money to own the house without roommates.
I trust these details aren’t too boring. I think they’re important to our story. How does one house on Central Street become a place of refuge, love, joy, and shared sorrow? Most so-called hippies boomeranged back to their roots and became knockoffs of their parents. Diane and I did not. We both continued to value friends and family over our occupations and shiny objects. We all know that Diane would approve of her house transformed. Though she loathed rugs, we know she would have loved to see the floors carpeted by your bodies.
I’m a guy from the fifties. My role models were my father, who wore his belt not just to hold up his pants, and Charles Bronson, who never met an emotion he couldn’t suppress unless it was murderous rage. My parents were liberal and accepting (for example – I slept with my college girlfriend at home way back then). Neither parent seemed at ease with the word love. Diane taught me how to love. She showed me I didn’t need to keep my father’s distance from Matt’s friends. I watched Diane with so many of you: she played, she listened, she advised, and she accepted you as you are.
Now, our house is mostly just Matt and me. I do love that, but, you know, I did love having you all share it as if it were your own home with fewer rules. Though you don’t share my last name, I feel you should. I’m writing this after listening to Thanksgiving night’s sounds of laughter and conversation, minus the breaking of dishes and the booming baritones on the back deck. I know you’ll be back, and there will be other times when I wake up to bodies strewn about in outrageous positions. I also know an era has passed. I am sad but happy. Happy for the growth I see in you all.
